Case study · Client Nº 001

22 charged leads in April. 51 in July.

Updated July 31, 2026 · Patch-It-Now, drywall repair, Kansas City metro

This is my dad's drywall company. I'm telling you that up front because it's the reason I have something no agency will show you: full access to every dashboard, and permission to publish the slow months next to the good ones. Between April and July 2026 his Local Services Ads went from 22 charged leads at $46.66 each to 51 charged leads at $40.02 — while the website added 29 quote requests in July and the Business Profile kept ringing. Every claim below sits on a dated screenshot from Google's own reporting.

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W.O. Nº 260731JULY 2026 TOTALS

51
charged LSA leads — July 2026: 29
website quote requests — July 2026: 120
GBP calls — Feb–Jul 2026

Where it started

The Local Services Ads account wasn't new — it launched January 16, 2026 and produced 4 leads that first month. By spring it was stalling: decent weeks, then dead ones, and the ads went dark for the back half of April. One technician on the trucks. Dad's words, not a dashboard: "we were maybe a third booked."

I got home mid-May. What happened next has timestamps, because Google logs everything.

What I built, dated

May 15 — I moved home and took over the marketing.
May 16 — first Tag Manager container version in twenty-one months. The container had sat untouched since August 12, 2024.
May 20 — second container version: tracking for the new landing pages.
May 31 — the website quote form went live. It had never existed before; website leads were officially zero because there was nothing to submit.
June 10–11 — the SEO rebuild deployed: new service pages, a metadata pass across the site, redirect cleanup.

Google Tag Manager version history for patchitnow.com: version 8 live, published May 20, 2026; version 7 May 16, 2026; the previous version dated August 12, 2024 — The attribution timestamp nobody can fake: Google Tag Manager's own version history. Nothing from August 2024 until May 16, 2026 — the day after I came home. (Account email blurred.)

Local Services Ads, month by month

These are charged leads — what Google actually billed for, after its automated credits. Spend went up because volume went up; the point is the cost per lead went downwhile it did.

Month (2026)	Charged leads	Lead spend	Cost per charged lead
April	22	$1,026.57	$46.66
May	31	$1,286.39	$41.50
June	44	$1,617.81	$36.77
July (to the 30th)	51	$2,041.03	$40.02

Google Local Services Ads report for April 1–30, 2026: $1,026.57 lead spend, 22 charged leads, cost per lead $46.66, with a visible flatline late in the month — Before — April 2026: 22 charged leads at $46.66. You can see the ads going dark toward the end of the month.

Google Local Services Ads report for July 1–30, 2026: $2,041.03 lead spend, 51 charged leads, cost per lead $40.02, 3,700 impressions, 92.78% top impression rate — After — July 2026: 51 charged leads at $40.02, with a 92.78% top-of-page impression rate. Same dashboard, ninety days later.

Daily charged-leads chart for January 1 through July 30, 2026 showing sparse activity in winter and dense daily leads in June and July — The whole year on one chart — 200 charged leads, January 1 to July 30, 2026. The density change starting in June isn't subtle.

The website and the Business Profile

The quote form went live May 31. June: 21 requests. July: 29 — about one a day, with the paid-search campaigns switched off entirely. The Google Business Profile added 120 calls from February through July, about 21 a month across May–July.

Microsoft Clarity smart events for the last 30 days showing 29 Request quote sessions and 25 Submit form sessions — Independent referee: Microsoft Clarity's event tracking sees the same July story the form inbox does — 29 quote requests.

120 calls straight from the Business Profile, Feb–Jul 2026. This channel was alive before I started — the job was to keep it fed while everything else scaled.

Search, before and after

Organic clicks ran about 50 a month from January through April. May through July averaged about 94 — with the May climb starting before the June deploy, because the early trust fixes were already landing. And the part that matters for your wallet: organic sessions grew to 5.79 a day from 2.22 while paid search sessions fell from 304 to 27, because we turned the ads off.

Google Search Console 16-month performance chart: 892 total clicks and 98.6 thousand impressions, with a visible ramp beginning May 2026 — Sixteen months of Search Console, weekly view: 892 clicks, 98.6K impressions. Find May 2026 on the axis — you won't need help.

GA4 sessions by channel, January 1 to May 14, 2026: 1,049 sessions, Direct 423, Paid Search 304, Organic Search 298 — Before (Jan 1–May 14): paid search propping up traffic — 304 sessions bought.

GA4 sessions by channel, May 15 to July 30, 2026: 782 sessions, Organic Search 446, Direct 282, Paid Search 27 — After (May 15–Jul 30): organic carries it — 446 sessions, paid down to 27. More traffic per day, zero ad budget.

Where it stands today

Search "drywall repair lees summit" and the map pack answers with Patch-It-Now at the top — 5.0 stars, 89 reviews — above national franchise competition. Dad's answer when I ask about the schedule, for the record: "booked out about three weeks." Two techs on the trucks now. That last part is his report, not a dashboard — the booking calendar isn't public data, and I only publish what I can screenshot.

Google local pack for the search drywall repair lees summit on July 30, 2026, with Patch-It-Now ranked first at 5.0 stars and 89 reviews, above Mr. Handyman and BIRD Construction — July 30, 2026: home-turf map pack, position one, above a 471-review national franchise. (Review snippet lines blurred.)

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The honest caveats

Every case study you've ever read hid something. Here's what a skeptic should know about this one:

— The LSA account existed before me. It launched in January 2026 and produced 4 leads that month. My work was restoring and scaling a stalling channel — fixing the dead zones, the bidding, the profile — not inventing it.
— Part of the tracked-lead jump is better tracking. The conversion event barely existed before mid-May, so I don't use analytics events as growth proof. The growth evidence is the form inbox, Google's own charged-lead billing, and Search Console clicks — systems I can't inflate.
— May's organic climb started before the June deploy.The early-May trust and metadata fixes were already working. Rankings ramp; they don't jump on deploy day, and I won't pretend otherwise.
— Spend rose with volume. July's budget was bigger than April's. The win is that leads grew faster than spend — the cost per charged lead fell from $46.66 to $40.02 — not "same budget, triple the leads."
— Drywall has no Local Services Ads category. This account runs under Google's Handyman category with only the two drywall job types switched on — 2 of 14. That workaround is half the reason this case study exists.