How I Cut Spend in Half and Doubled Signups for a Real Estate Law Firm
A real estate law firm was burning budget on broad-match keywords with broken conversion tracking. I rebuilt the account around intent, fixed the data, and cut spend in half while doubling qualified signups inside 90 days.
01 The numbers
- 50% Ad Spend Reduction
- 2x Monthly Qualified Signups
- 60%+ lower Cost per Qualified Lead
- 90 days Timeline to Result
02 The breakdown
The Setup
When this firm came to me, the account looked like most small-business Google Ads setups I see. One Search campaign. Broad-match keywords pulled straight from the Google rep’s recommendations. Conversion tracking firing on every form submit, including spam and bot traffic.
They were spending in the high five figures per month and getting leads. They had no idea which leads were qualified and which were noise.
What Was Broken
Three things, in priority order:
- Tracking was wrong. Form submits were counting as conversions regardless of source, lead quality, or whether the form was actually completed. The “cost per lead” they were optimizing toward was fiction.
- Intent was muddy. Broad match was pulling in queries for unrelated legal issues, real estate agents shopping for marketing services, and DIY-contract researchers.
- Ad copy was generic. “Real Estate Lawyer Near You” headlines competing against four other firms saying the same thing.
What I Did
Fixed tracking first. Clean conversion actions tied to qualified phone calls via WhatConverts and form submits with required-field validation. Imported the new conversions, let the old ones decay out.
Rebuilt around case type. Split the single campaign into ad groups by case type, purchase disputes, contract reviews, title issues, and so on. Each ad group got phrase and exact match keywords. Broad got killed except in one isolated testing campaign.
Wrote ad copy that filtered. Headlines spoke directly to the case types the firm wanted more of and away from the ones they didn’t. Cheaper clicks, better leads, less wasted spend.
Built the negative list. 300+ negatives from the first 30 days of search terms, with weekly review automated via a custom search-terms review process.
The Result
After 90 days:
- Monthly ad spend was cut in half, a 50% reduction
- Signed cases increased by 40 to 100 percent month over month
- Lead quality improved measurably per the firm’s intake team
- Cost per signed case dropped by over 60 percent
The Takeaway
Most legal accounts I audit have the same three problems: dirty tracking, broad intent, and generic copy. You don’t need to spend more to grow. You need to spend on the right queries with copy that filters in the right people.
If this account had stayed on autopilot for another year, the firm would have burned another $32,000 on the wrong traffic. Catching it early was the whole game.
Want this kind of rebuild on your account? Book a strategy call.
03 More work
Other accounts, same approach.
1.9x lift blended roas
An online retailer with strong organic demand was running a single Performance Max campaign trying to do everything at once. I rebuilt the structure around brand isolation, smart feed segmentation, and clean server-side tracking, and turned a flat account into a predictable growth engine.
Read the breakdown→2.4x lift shopping roas
Vanity Resource had Shopping running but was getting buried by competitors with better feed data. I cleaned up the product feed, structured the campaigns by priority, and turned Shopping from a cost center into the brand's most efficient acquisition channel.
Read the breakdown→Ready to talk
Want this kind of breakdown on your account?
Thirty minutes on the phone. One clear set of next steps. Same person on the call as on the work.