Nine months, 24 campaigns, zero attributed call leads.
A UK professional services firm ran Google Ads for nine months across 24 campaigns and could not attribute a single phone lead. Beeyacorp rebuilt the account with call tracking, tightened audiences, added over 200 negative keywords, and switched to target-CPA bidding. Within the engagement the firm reached 476 conversions at £39 per lead, 73 booked appointments, and an 89.6% optimisation score.
A UK professional services firm ran Google Ads for nine months across 24 campaigns and could not attribute a single phone lead. Beeyacorp rebuilt the account with call tracking, tightened audiences, added over 200 negative keywords, and switched to target-CPA bidding. Within the engagement the firm reached 476 conversions at £39 per lead, 73 booked appointments, and an 89.6% optimisation score.
Nine months of spend, and no way to prove what it bought
The firm was spending steadily on Google Ads but its phone, the primary way clients make contact, was quiet. Reports showed clicks and impressions climbing while the practice saw no corresponding rise in consultations. With 24 loosely structured campaigns and no call tracking, nobody could say which spend produced business and which produced nothing, so the account had drifted for nine months without a decision anyone could defend.
The absence of call tracking meant the highest-value conversions were never measured, loose campaign structure gave the bidding system no clean intent signal, and without negative keywords a large share of spend matched free-advice and out-of-scope queries.
Objectives
- Attribute every enquiry. Including phone calls, to its source campaign and keyword.
- Reduce cost per genuine lead. Bring it to a level the firm could plan around.
- Increase booked consultations. Optimise for outcomes rather than raw clicks.
- Rebuild campaign structure. So bidding could finally optimise toward outcomes.
What the data actually showed
This began, like every engagement, with a full audit. Each finding below is backed by evidence from inside the account.
| Area | Finding |
|---|---|
| Tracking | No call tracking in place. Since most enquiries arrived by phone, roughly half of all leads were completely invisible to reporting. |
| Paid Media | 24 campaigns with overlapping, broad targeting. Budget scattered across low-intent searches with no single-intent structure for the algorithm to optimise. |
| Keywords | No meaningful negative keyword coverage, so ads matched a wide range of irrelevant and free-advice searches. |
| Bidding | Manual bidding with no conversion signal to guide it, so spend followed clicks rather than consultations. |
The absence of call tracking meant the highest-value conversions were never measured, so optimisation was blind from the start, and the loose structure combined with weak negative-keyword coverage spread budget across searches that were never going to convert.
The logic behind the plan
Fix measurement first, then structure, then bidding. We installed call tracking with keyword-level attribution so every phone enquiry became visible, rebuilt the account into tight, single-intent campaigns, layered in over 200 negative keywords to screen out irrelevant searches, and only then moved to target-CPA bidding once the conversion signal was trustworthy.
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What we did
- Deployed dynamic call tracking. Wired to the firm’s intake process, making phone leads measurable for the first time.
- Consolidated 24 campaigns. Into a tight, single-intent structure aligned to practice areas.
- Built a 200+ term negative keyword base. Eliminated free-advice and out-of-scope traffic.
- Rebuilt audiences and switched bidding. Moved to target-CPA once conversion data was reliable.
- Established weekly reporting. Centred on cost per booked appointment rather than clicks.
How it was sequenced
| Phase | Timeframe | What Happened |
|---|---|---|
| Audit | Days 1–7 | Full account diagnosis and call-tracking gap analysis |
| Rebuild | Weeks 2–4 | Campaign consolidation, negative keywords, tracking deployment |
| Optimise | Weeks 4–8 | Target-CPA bidding activated on clean conversion data |
| Scale | Month 3+ | Budget shifted toward campaigns producing booked appointments |
From invisible leads to 476 tracked conversions
Pulled directly from the account: the numbers below reflect what the engagement actually delivered.
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Attributed phone leads | Effectively zero | Fully tracked |
| Conversions | Unmeasured | 476 |
| Cost per lead | Unknown | £39 |
| Booked appointments | No visibility | 73 |
| Optimisation score | 56.2% | 89.6% |
In phone-led businesses, call tracking is not optional, without it every optimisation decision is a guess. Campaign consolidation often beats expansion, and negative keywords are a revenue lever rather than housekeeping. Professional services buyers are high-value and research-intensive, and they overwhelmingly make first contact by phone, so campaigns that measure only form-fills systematically defund the ones actually driving instructions. See our approach on the professional services marketing page.
Frequently Asked Questions
There was no call tracking connected to the account. Google Ads recorded clicks and form actions, but the firm took most of its enquiries by phone, so those calls never appeared as conversions and the campaigns driving them looked like they produced nothing.
No. The 24 campaigns overlapped and competed with each other, splitting intent signals. Consolidating into tight, single-intent campaigns gave the bidding algorithm cleaner data to optimise against, which improved efficiency rather than shrinking reach.
Once call tracking made booked appointments measurable, target CPA bidding could optimise toward a cost per genuine lead the firm could plan around, instead of chasing the cheapest clicks. It only works when the conversion signal it optimises to is trustworthy, which is why tracking came first.
It reflects how closely the account follows Google's recommended best-practice configuration. Moving from the mid-50s to 89.6% signalled that structure, bidding, and targeting were finally aligned, though the outcome that mattered was 73 booked appointments, not the score itself.
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