Everything between the clickand the signed client.
Marketing tied to closed-won, not lead volume. For law firms, healthcare practices, home services, B2B services, and any business whose customer is worth more than the lead. One senior operator running the full lead-gen program: strategy, tracking, channels, landing pages, lead quality engineering. Smart Bidding tuned to revenue, not vanity metrics.
Most agencies report lead volume because lead volume is what they can count without integrating with your CRM. Smart Bidding treats every "conversion" the same. So when half your leads are junk, the algorithm goes and finds you more junk. The fix is upstream of the ads.
40-60%Of "leads" most accounts pay for are unqualified
< 30%Of accounts have call tracking wired into Ads
0%Of agencies report on closed-won, not just lead volume
10 yrsOn the keys of service-business ad accounts
Where the leads go
55% of paid leads disqualified before they hit the sales pipe. The fix is upstream of the ads.
02 The full program
Seven disciplines. One operator.
What an agency splits across four juniors and a project manager, I run as one program. The Lead Quality Engine is the unfair advantage that makes the rest of the program optimize against revenue.
Marketing strategy
A written program plan you can hand to your partners or the board: positioning, channel mix, growth thesis, KPI commitments tied to closed-won, not vanity metrics.
Google Ads program
Search-first. Match-type discipline, query mining, geo-targeting, smart-bidding strategy tied to qualified leads. A decade and $15M+ managed on these keys.
Meta Ads program
Lead-gen ads, on-platform forms, prospecting + retargeting split. Pixel + CAPI repair. Creative testing tuned to lead quality, not lead volume.
Lead Quality Engine
Call tracking + form scoring + CRM integration + offline conversion imports. The plumbing that makes Smart Bidding optimize for closed-won leads. Production exhibit below.
Landing page builds
Single-purpose landing pages for each campaign or service line. Built directly in Astro / Webflow / your existing stack. Conversion tracking pre-wired at launch.
Tracking + revenue attribution
GA4, GTM, server-side where it earns its keep, WhatConverts or similar for calls, offline conversion imports for closed-won. Written summary every Monday.
03 Honest comparison
Agency vs. in-house vs. one operator.
Discipline
Agency
In-house
With me
Strategy ownership
An account manager filters every decision
You write it between client work
I write the program. You sign off.
Google Ads management
A junior on five other accounts
Hire a specialist at $90K+
Run by the same operator on the call.
Meta Ads management
A different junior
A second specialist
Same operator. Same call.
Call tracking + scoring
Out of scope. They count form fills.
Bought, never wired in
WhatConverts (or similar) wired into Ads. Quality scored.
CRM + offline conversion imports
Nobody touches this
Your developer, when free
Built into the engagement. Closed-won feeds Smart Bidding.
Landing page builds
Charged extra. Six week timeline.
Your designer, queued behind the website
Built inside the engagement. One week per landing page.
Tracking + reporting
A screenshot deck on Fridays
Your developer, when free
GA4 + GTM + revenue reconciliation, written weekly.
Direct line to a senior
Routed through the account manager
Yourself, exhausted
Yes. Same person every call.
04 Three ways in
Pick the entry point. Most start with tracking.
Every account I take on starts with a 30-minute call. I will tell you which package fits. Pricing is directional. Actual quotes come on the call.
Tracking Sprint
One-time rebuild of your conversion tracking + lead quality plumbing. Call tracking, form scoring, CRM integration, offline conversion imports. Scope-bounded productized project. The foundation everything else compounds on.
from$2,500/ project
2 to 4 weeks
→Full audit of current tracking, call routing, and CRM flow
→WhatConverts or similar wired into Ads + GA4
→Form quality scoring rubric authored to your service lines
→Offline conversion import pipeline from your CRM
→Documentation so the next person can read the stack
Mid-tier retainer for service businesses spending $10K to $30K monthly on paid acquisition. The Tracking Sprint plus active management of Google Ads (and Meta Ads if it fits your audience). Smart Bidding tuned to closed-won, not lead volume.
from$4,500/ month
Ongoing · 3 month minimum
→Everything in Tracking Sprint
→Active Google Ads management
→Meta Ads where the audience fits
→Weekly written Monday summary
→Quarterly re-plan against the original 90-day plan
Fractional marketing lead retainer for service businesses with $30K to $100K monthly media spend. The full marketing program: strategy + channels + tracking + landing page builds + reporting. Half-time senior operator commitment. Scales up for multi-location and PI-firm-scale operations.
from$8,500/ month
Ongoing · 6 month minimum
→Everything in Lead Quality + Channels
→Landing page builds for each campaign / service line
→Marketing strategy authored quarterly
→The Content Engine available as an add-on, at a program rate
What separates a real lead-gen program from "we're spending more on Google Ads this month." Smart Bidding optimizes against the conversion signal you give it. The signal you give it determines what you get back.
01
Call tracking on every campaign
WhatConverts (or CallRail) installed with dynamic number insertion. Every paid call gets recorded, transcribed, and scored.
02
Form scoring rubric per service line
A junk-vs-qualified rubric authored to your specific service lines. The form submission counts as a conversion ONLY if it passes.
03
CRM integration end-to-end
Salesforce / HubSpot / Pipedrive / GoHighLevel. Wired to receive every lead with full UTM, gclid, fbclid, and call recording.
04
Offline conversion imports
When a lead closes (becomes a paying client), that win is imported back into Google Ads and Meta Ads via the Conversions API. Smart Bidding starts optimizing for closed-won.
05
Negative-keyword + audience exclusion loops
Junk-lead transcripts mine the queries that produced them. Those queries become negative keywords. Smart Bidding stops paying for them.
06
Revenue reconciliation, monthly
A written revenue-by-channel summary tied to actual closed-won, not lead volume. The number that goes to your partners or board.
The compounding effect
Run all six checkpoints for a quarter and you have a Smart Bidding signal that optimizes for actual revenue. Lead volume usually drops 20–30% in the first month (junk gets filtered) and qualified-lead volume rises 2–4× in the second month (the algorithm finds the right traffic). The CPL number on the agency dashboard goes up. The CAC number on your P&L goes down. The two are not the same.
Featured case study
Real estate law firm. 3.4× qualified leads.
Inherited a Google Ads account spending $14K/mo on lead-gen for a real estate practice. Lead volume looked fine on the agency dashboard. The partners said the leads were unusable. The 90-day rebuild: call tracking + form scoring + CRM integration + offline conversion imports. Smart Bidding stopped chasing junk queries within six weeks.
Do you only work with service businesses, or do you do ecom too?
I run both programs in equal measure. The /for-home-brands page is the parallel program for DTC home / furniture / decor Shopify brands. Same operator, different vertical playbook. Pick the page that matches your business.
What kinds of service businesses fit best?
Anything where the marketing converts to a call or a form fill, the close happens off-platform, and the average lead is worth at least $1,000 in lifetime value. Law firms (especially personal injury, family, real estate, business law), healthcare (dental, med spa, specialty practices), home services (HVAC, plumbing, roofing, remodel), professional services (accounting, financial advisory, consulting), and B2B services. If your average customer is worth less than $1,000 LTV, the math on paid acquisition rarely works regardless of who runs the account.
Why is "lead quality" the centerpiece instead of just running better ads?
Because Smart Bidding is now the bidding layer for both Google and Meta, and Smart Bidding optimizes against the conversion signal you give it. If you tell it 'every form fill is a conversion,' it will go find you the cheapest form fills. If you tell it 'every closed-won client at $X average value is the conversion,' it will go find you the closest fit to that. The technical work to make the second possible is the Lead Quality Engine. The agency default is the first.
Do you build the landing pages too, or do I need a separate web team?
I build them as part of the engagement, in your existing stack (or in Astro / Webflow if you want a fresh build). One landing page per campaign or service line. Conversion tracking wired in at launch, not retrofitted. See the /services page for the Storefronts & Landing Pages discipline detail.
How do you handle CRM integration?
Whatever CRM you use (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, GoHighLevel, Zoho, custom), I wire it to receive every lead with full attribution data attached. Then the closed-won pipeline event from your CRM gets imported back into Google Ads and Meta Ads as offline conversions. This loop is what makes Smart Bidding optimize for revenue, not lead count. If your CRM doesn't have an API or webhook surface, I'll tell you on the call and walk you through whether to migrate.
What does an engagement actually look like week to week?
The first 2-4 weeks are diagnostic + rebuild (tracking, call routing, CRM integration). After that, every Monday I send a written summary covering spend, leads (volume + quality), closed-won (with offline conversion attribution), top campaigns, what changed and why. Once a month I run a working session with you to plan the next 30 days. Once a quarter I re-plan against the original 90-day commitments. Slack open all week for ad-hoc.
What is the Lead Quality Audit (the freebie below)?
A 5-7 page PDF report: tracking-stack audit, call quality benchmark vs. industry, form-quality benchmark, top 3 leakage points in your current ad setup, and a sample call/form scoring rubric tuned to your service lines. Delivered within 72 hours. No call required. The CTA at the end is to book one if you want to walk through it.
07 Custom audit · 72-hour turnaround
Your account, audited for lead quality.
Not a templated download. A custom audit written for your specific account: tracking-stack health, call quality benchmark, form-quality benchmark, top three leakage points in your current setup, and a sample call/form scoring rubric authored to your service lines. Delivered as a PDF within 72 hours. No discovery call required to receive it.
→ Tracking-stack health check
→ Call quality benchmark vs. industry
→ Form-quality benchmark
→ Top 3 leakage points in current setup
→ Sample scoring rubric for your service lines
Ready to talk
Stop paying for leads that never close.
Thirty minutes on the phone. Bring the account, the CRM, the close rate. I will tell you where the lead-quality leak is and what to do about it.