Case study · 60-day engagement

From $76 cost per lead to $24 in 9 weeks.

An Atlanta appliance repair shop with 9 techs was getting plenty of calls. About 60% of them were Whirlpool warranty inquiries paying flat-rate fees that barely covered the truck roll. The owner was working harder for less margin every quarter. He thought the problem was Atlanta's competitive market. The actual problem: his ads were converting on the wrong intent.

The challenge

"My calendar is full but my margin is empty."

The owner came in through our free audit. The bot scored the website at 64 and flagged "warranty-call dilution" as the top revenue issue. He was running good ads. The customers calling were just not the customers he wanted.

We pulled the data. The damage:

  • 62% of his Google Ads conversions were warranty-related calls. Whirlpool, GE, LG warranty work pays $80-110 per visit. Direct-to-consumer same-day repairs pay $280-450.
  • His landing page led with "Authorized servicer for major brands." Magnet for warranty calls. The high-margin direct-pay customer wanted "fast, expert, today" — not "authorized."
  • No same-day messaging anywhere on the site. Same-day capacity was his actual differentiator — 8 of his 9 techs could be dispatched within 4 hours. Nobody knew this from his marketing.
  • LSA was set up but targeting all categories equally. "Refrigerator repair," "dryer repair," "oven repair" all got the same bid. Refrigerators were his highest-margin work — they should have been bid 60% higher.

The fix was to make the marketing match the highest-margin job, not the most-frequent one.

The plan

Four priorities for a margin rebuild.

Priority 1: Same-day messaging blitz (week 1)

Rewrote the homepage hero to lead with "Same-day appliance repair in Atlanta. We dispatch within 4 hours." Removed all "authorized servicer" language from the front page. Added a real-time dispatch calendar showing the next 3 available windows. Direct-pay calls jumped 60% in week 2.

Priority 2: Brand-specific landing pages (week 2-3)

Built 6 brand-specific pages: /sub-zero-repair, /viking-repair, /thermador-repair, /miele-repair, /wolf-repair, /jenn-air-repair. These are the high-end brands where customers pay full price. Each page had brand-specific common-issue copy ("Sub-Zero ice maker not working"), tech credentials, and a same-day CTA. Ranked page-1 within 5 weeks for most variations. Conversion rate on these pages averaged 9.2%.

Priority 3: LSA bid restructure by appliance type (week 2)

Set bids by margin: refrigerator and built-in fridge 60% above baseline (highest job ticket), dishwasher and oven at baseline, washer/dryer at -25% (commodity work). Same-day filter forced ON for all categories. LSA conversion-to-job ratio doubled.

Priority 4: Warranty-call dampening

Did not cut warranty work entirely (still good fill work). But re-routed warranty intake to a separate phone tree that booked them only on slow days. Direct-pay calls always got priority dispatch. Margin per truck roll went up 35% across the fleet.

AI tools we used

The internal stack that did the heavy lifting.

We do not pretend the work happens by hand. Three of our internal tools are the reason this engagement moved as fast as it did. Each of them replaces what used to be days of human time.

Tool 01Internal search-term scoring

Custom AI we built that grades every search term on commercial intent, urgency, and local match in under a second. Replaces a half-day human audit.

Tool 02Negative keyword expander

Takes one bad search term and proposes the related variants we should also negate before they show up. Found 87 negatives nobody had thought of.

Tool 03Conversion tracking validator

Crawls the site and fires every conversion event in a sandbox so you can see what is actually being recorded vs what should be. Caught the duplicate form fire in 4 minutes.

The execution

Week-by-week timeline.

WeekWhat we shippedWhat moved
Week 1Homepage rewrite, same-day hero, real-time dispatch calendar liveDirect-pay calls up 60% week 2
Week 2First 3 brand pages live (Sub-Zero, Viking, Thermador), LSA bids restructuredBrand pages converting at 8.4% baseline
Week 3Final 3 brand pages live, warranty intake re-routedMargin-per-truck-roll up 22%
Week 5Brand pages ranking page-1 for "Sub-Zero repair Atlanta" + 12 other variantsOrganic high-margin leads start flowing
Week 7Same-day booking rate at 76% of all jobs (up from 22%)Direct-pay revenue up 180%
Week 9Final reviewCPL at $24 stable, retainer continues

The numbers

What changed in the data.

-68%
Cost per lead
+240%
Same-day bookings
+35%
Margin per truck roll

The mix that produced the new economics:

Direct-pay average ticket: $340 vs warranty average ticket: $95. The same number of calls — but the new mix produced 240% more revenue per truck-roll. The retainer paid for itself in the first 4 days every month.

I had a full schedule and was losing money. Mark looked at the work mix and pointed out that 60% of my work was warranty calls paying half what direct work paid. Same calendar, different customers. My margin doubled and I never raised a price.

Appliance repair owner·Atlanta, GA · 9 techs, 7 trucks

Keep reading

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