Case study · Website · Google Ads · Automation
Half the cost per lead, on half the budget.
A dumpster rental company in Los Angeles. I built their new website, took over their Google Ads and automated the busywork in between.
The situation
Almost every new customer comes from Google.
The company rents small bins and roll-off dumpsters across Los Angeles. Someone needs a bin, searches for one, and calls the first company that looks right.
Another specialist was running the account, spending around $11,000 a month across two main campaigns: small 3-yard bins that fit on a driveway, and large roll-off bins for building sites. I took it over in late summer 2026 and have worked on it about five hours a week since.
One term, in plain English
A cost per lead is the ad money spent, divided by the number of people who actually got in touch. Spend $1,000, get 20 calls, and each lead cost $50. It's the number that decides whether advertising makes money or quietly loses it.
What I did
Three parts, one system.
The website convinces, the ads bring the right people, and the automation makes sure nothing falls through the cracks.
The website
Built to get calls
- Instant price calculator by zone
- Live dumpster availability
- 15 local pages, one for each city served
- Copy matched to the ad keywords
The ads
Every dollar on purpose
- Took over a running account
- Cut searches that spend and never convert
- Fraudulent enquiries blocked
- ~1,300 changes in 30 days, all logged
The automation
Runs on its own
- Price calculator sends people straight to booking
- Availability updates itself
- Every incoming call matched to the customer's record instantly
- Account watched daily by my own monitoring tools
Result one · Small bins
Same number of calls, for 55% less money.
June is the fair comparison: the previous specialist was still running the account, so it's like for like on the same campaign.
The same screen in the client's account, with only the date range changed. “Conversions” is Google's word for leads.
Result two · Roll-off bins
Twice the leads, each one a third cheaper.
The bigger campaign, compared with the same weeks last year. Autumn is a harder, more expensive season for this business, so comparing like weeks with like weeks is the only honest way to read it.
The dates match exactly, year to year, so the change can't be explained away as a better season.
Result three · Website & automation
Open 24/7, found on Google, wired to the team.
The ads bring the visit. The website and automations turn that visit into a booking, without waiting for someone to pick up the phone.
What the numbers don't show
Money that never got wasted.
Some of the most valuable work never shows up as an improvement in a report, because the loss never happened. Three examples from these two months.
Google's automation deleted the nine best keywords
On 4 October, Google's own “auto-apply recommendations” feature removed nine exact-match keywords, including the two searches the business depends on most. Nobody was told. The share of visitors who got in touch halved almost immediately.
I found it in the account's change log, restored every keyword and switched the automation off so it can't happen again.
A campaign quietly started advertising on YouTube
One of Google's automated campaign types began making its own video ads and showing them on YouTube. In four days: 40,414 views, 679 clicks, and not one enquiry. Meanwhile the same campaign's search ads were doing real work.
I paused the campaign on 20 October. The YouTube spending stopped the same day.
| Shown on | Views | Clicks | Cost | Leads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 40,414 | 679 | $169.01 | 0 |
| Google Search | 732 | 40 | $511.08 | 7 |
| Discover | 502 | 17 | $16.89 | 1 |
| Maps | 326 | 2 | $41.20 | 0 |
Fraudulent enquiries blocked at the source
The owner's own call records showed one group of searches producing fraudulent enquiries and nothing else: real clicks, real cost, never a real job. I identified the pattern behind them, blocked it across every campaign, then checked the block against a year of search data to be certain it wasn't also turning away genuine customers.
The work behind it
Not one clever decision. About 1,300 small ones.
In 30 days the account recorded around 1,300 individual changes: keywords added and removed, budgets adjusted, bids retuned, wasteful searches blocked, new ads written and tested.
Every change is timestamped and reversible, so the client can see exactly what was done and when.
How I work
You don't have to take my word for anything.
Against its own history
I check the account against itself, same campaign, same weeks, not against one good month.
Plain about what didn't work
When something I tried didn't work, I say so plainly.
Every change written down
A written record of every change and the reasoning behind it, so you can follow your account without relying on me.
Figures are taken from the client's own Google Ads account. “Leads” are Google's recorded conversions: phone calls and online orders. The client is anonymised at their request.
Your turn
Every business is different. So let's look at yours.
Your market, budget and starting point aren't this client's. In a free 30-minute check, I look at your website, ads and numbers, and tell you what I'd fix first.