01Not the budget, not the market
The problem was not the budget and it was not the market. Money was going out every day and clicks were landing; the account was buying attention and then wasting it.
01 · Case study / Waterproofing / Northern New Jersey
A NJ waterproofing contractor put $41,102 into Google Ads and got back $287,532 in booked work
An owner-operated waterproofing contractor in northern New Jersey, January to July 2026. $41,102 in ad spend became 99 tracked quote requests and $287,532 in client-reported booked work, a 6.9x media-only return. By August his schedule was full three months out and he asked us to slow the ads down.
Return on ad spend, media-only
6.9x
Every $1 of ad spend came back as $6.99 in booked waterproofing work
Calls and quote requests from the ads
99
Seven months, Jan 1–Jul 31, 2026 · Google Ads conversion tracking
What each quote request cost
$415
$41,102 in ad spend ÷ 99 requests, across the seven months
How far out his schedule filled
3 months
By August he asked us to slow the ads down
02 · Money in, money out
Every $1 in, $6.99 back
The whole engagement in one figure: ad spend on the left, booked work on the right, drawn to scale. The right bar is 6.99 times the height of the left one, and the 99 quote requests are the bridge between them.
Source: Google Ads, Jan 1 to Jul 31, 2026, for spend and the 99 call and form conversions. Booked revenue of $287,532 is the client-reported total from jobs originating in those requests over the same window. Agency fee not included; this is a media-only figure.
03 · The situation
Money out every day, almost nothing back
The ads were live when the year started, and the spend was real. What came back was not.
- 01The first two months of the year returned almost nothing: six quote requests in January, six in February, at $494 and then $833 apiece
- 02At those numbers, a contractor whose average job is $8,500 is paying real money to stand still
- 03The clicks were there. The people clicking were not asking for quotes
04 · The diagnosis
The clicks were fine, the landing was not
02Where the clicks were landing
Clicks were landing on general website pages instead of pages built for the one thing the searcher wanted priced. When someone searches “basement waterproofing near me” and lands on a homepage, they leave.
03The fix that followed
The fix was where the click landed, not how much the click cost. Same searchers, same budget mechanics, different destination: a page about exactly the job they wanted priced.
05 · The build
A page for every service, a source on every call
What we did, in the order it mattered, plus the one thing only the client could do. Every move pointed at the same target: land the click on the job the searcher wanted priced, then count what happened next.
01Built a dedicated page per service
Basement waterproofing, French drains, crawlspace encapsulation, and window wells each got their own page, so every click landed on exactly what the searcher asked for.
02Put call tracking on every lead
Each call and form now carries its source, so budget decisions run on quote requests, not clicks.
03Steered budget to the big jobs
Spend concentrated on basement waterproofing and drainage, the jobs that carry the $8,500 average, instead of spreading evenly across everything.
04What the client changed
The owner runs his own estimates and answered the phone. Every request that came in got a fast response, and that follow-up speed is a real part of why requests became booked jobs.
05Did not do
Did not screen requests for spam or duplicates in these figures. Did not include the agency fee, so 6.9x is a media-only return. Did not project revenue from averages: $287,532 is the client's own booked-job records, confirmed in writing before publication.
06 · The full numbers
Two matched windows, inside the same engagement
Every figure, first window and second window: Jan 1 to Apr 15 (105 days) against Apr 16 to Jul 31 (107 days). Both windows were managed by Magister, so this table shows progress within the engagement, not a before-Magister baseline.
01Ad spend$18,274 → $22,828+24.9%
02Calls + form requests43 → 56 · Google Ads conversions+30.2%
03Cost per request$425 → $408-4.0%
The windows differ by two days because the split falls mid-April; no adjustment was applied. Google Ads reports fractional conversion credit; window counts of 43 and 56 reflect platform-reported totals of 43.01 and 55.98. The $287,532 in booked revenue is a full-period figure; the client's records do not split it by window, so no per-window revenue is shown.
07 · What it was worth
Money in, money out, and who says so
Every $1 of ad spend came back as $6.99 in booked waterproofing work. Where each figure comes from is spelled out here, including the one number on this page that comes from the client rather than a platform.
Ad spend in, Jan–Jul 2026
Google Ads media spend$41,102
Agency feeNot included
Software and productionNot included
So the 6.9x isMedia-only
Booked work back
Booked revenue returned$287,532
Return, $287,532 ÷ $41,1026.9x
Cost per request, $41,102 ÷ 99$415
Booked meansSigned, not necessarily collected
•Where the revenue figure comes from
The $287,532 is the client's reported total of booked jobs originating from these ad-generated requests, Jan 1 to Jul 31, 2026. Booked means signed work, not necessarily collected payment. It is the client's own figure from his job records, not a platform estimate and not a projection from averages. Written confirmation of this figure is on file with the agency before publication.
08 · What went sideways
Two months missed, then a full calendar
Every case study has a sideways column. This one starts with a failing account and ends with a capacity problem.
- 01January and February missed. Twelve quote requests across two months at up to $833 each is a failing account, and we ran it during the rebuild rather than pausing. From March 1 onward the account produced 87 requests in five months at $329 each
- 02By August the owner's schedule was full three months out and he asked us to reduce spend. A capacity problem, which is the kind of problem this work is supposed to create
How the counting worked, and what it cannot see
- 01A request is a Google Ads conversion: a tracked phone call or a completed quote form attributed by Google to an ad click. It is a person asking for a quote, not a booked job. Requests are not screened for spam or duplicates in these figures
- 02Figures credit only leads Google ties to an ad interaction, which understates the ads' full effect: call-tracking data for the same account attributed additional leads to ad traffic that Google's own column does not count, and ads also influence people who later find the business through maps or search without clicking. None of that spillover is included here
- 03The account's conversion-action definitions are pending a final verification pass
- 04Cost basis: $41,102 is Google Ads media spend only, as reported by the platform. It does not include the agency fee, software, or production, so the 6.9x figure is a media-only return, not a return on total investment. The return is $287,532 divided by $41,102; cost per quote request is $41,102 divided by 99, or $415
- 05Outside factors: waterproofing demand in the Northeast is seasonal and rises with spring rain; part of the second window's volume rides that season. Landing-page work and budget concentration happened in the same period, so the split between seasonal lift and account changes cannot be isolated from this data alone
- 06Exhibit: a redacted Google Ads screenshot covering the full Jan–Jul window, client name and account ID barred, metrics visible, is pending and will be attached before publication
What this proves, and what it does not
The revenue figure is the client's own reported total of booked work, not an independently audited number, and booked work is not the same as collected payment. This is one account, in one market, at one budget level, with an owner who answers his own phone. A contractor with slower follow-up, a different market, or a different average ticket should not expect the same arithmetic.
Results are specific to this client's market, service, budget, capacity, and timeframe and are not a guarantee of similar outcomes.
Client results page · Tier 2B, anonymized · waterproofing, northern New Jersey, owner-operated · Jan 1–Jul 31, 2026, matched windows Jan 1–Apr 15 and Apr 16–Jul 31 · Google Ads conversion tracking, calls and forms · booked revenue client-reported, written confirmation on file · home services, no compliance overlay · updated 2026-08-12
09 · If your agency reports clicks
If your reporting stops at clicks, you cannot tell whether your ads work
This contractor knows what a quote request costs him and what a job is worth. Most don't, because their agency reports clicks and calls it a day. We will map your ad spend to quote requests to booked work, and show you the same arithmetic on your own account.
45 minutes. No deck. No pitch. If we cannot find the money in your market, we say so on the call.