Case study · 90-day engagement
A Houston foundation repair contractor with 8 years in business and $4M annual revenue was being eaten alive by two national chains spending 6-figures monthly on Google Ads. He was paying $74 per lead. Half of those leads were tire-kickers wanting a phone quote. The owner thought he could not compete with national budgets. He could — by being more useful to the high-intent prospect.
The challenge
The owner came in through a Houston builder we know. The bot scored the website at 67 and flagged "no qualification step" as the conversion gap. Foundation repair is a high-anxiety purchase ($8,000-25,000 average ticket). Customers were not going to commit until they trusted the diagnostic.
We pulled the data:
The fix was a free inspection — same diagnostic the chains charge for, but the local relationship made it a real lead-gen tool, not an upsell trap.
The plan
Built /free-inspection with the offer front-and-center: "60-90 minute on-site inspection at no charge. Detailed report with photos, measurements, recommended repair priority, estimated cost range. Zero pressure, no obligation." The page included a 4-minute video of the owner walking through what an inspection looks like. 6.1% homepage conversion within 3 weeks.
Built a templated PDF report the owner could fill out in 20 minutes after each inspection: 12 photos, elevation measurements, soil moisture readings, repair priority (urgent/recommended/monitor), and estimated cost ranges per fix. Customers walked away with a real deliverable. 73% of inspection reports converted to a paid job within 90 days vs 22% on the old "we will email you a quote" flow.
Refreshed the LSA application with current TX state foundation contractor license + $2M general liability insurance cert. Background check cleared in week 5. LSA badge live week 7. GBP got 90 photos uploaded over 60 days: pier installs, slab repairs, before-and-after elevation shots, team-on-site, equipment. Hours updated to actual emergency hours.
Wrote 14 long-form articles targeting symptom-search intent: "Cracks above doors and windows — what they mean," "Bouncy floors in older Houston homes," "What pier and beam vs slab repair actually costs," etc. Customers who arrive via these articles are pre-qualified — they know they have a problem. Conversion to inspection request was 11.4% on these pages.
AI tools we used
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.
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.
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.
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 | What we shipped | What moved |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | /free-inspection page wireframe + video script approved | Page live by Friday |
| Week 2 | Inspection-report PDF template built, owner records walk-through video | First inspection booked day 4 |
| Week 3 | LSA application refreshed, missing docs uploaded | Application accepted, background check kicked off |
| Week 5 | 14-article symptom-search cluster live, GBP photos at 50 | First symptom-page leads start arriving organically |
| Week 7 | LSA badge live, "Google Screened" appears on results | First LSA inspection booked within 6 hours |
| Week 12 | Final review | Run rate stable at 41 inspections/mo |
The numbers
The free-inspection funnel changed the economics:
The 90-day engagement at $799/mo cost $2,397. Monthly revenue lift over baseline of $342k - $125k (prior baseline) = $217k/mo. The retainer pays for itself before lunch on the 1st of every month.
I had been told I needed to outspend the national chains. Mark told me I needed to be more useful. The free inspection was the unlock. Customers walked away with a 12-photo report I had personally written. They could not get that from the chains. They closed at 3× the rate.
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