Case study · Landscaping & hardscape
A landscaping company that stopped buying leads for crews that were already booked.
Hardscape, softscape, maintenance and commercial snow each run on their own calendar. The account treated them as one business, so spend followed whatever was cheapest to click instead of whatever the crews could take on.
The situation
Four businesses, four calendars, one budget.
Landscaping is not one business. Spring and summer belong to hardscape and patio work, where one job can be worth tens of thousands. Softscape and maintenance run steadily at a smaller ticket. Commercial snow shows up in a burst you either capture before the first storm or lose for the season.
When all of that shares one budget, Google spends toward the cheapest conversion, not the most valuable one. And when the hardscape crews are booked solid, every hardscape lead you keep paying for is a lead you cannot serve.
Booked out some months, starving others?
We will show you how to match your ad spend to your crews in a 15 minute call.
The numbers
Same lead volume, a lot less money.
Local Service Ads: cost per lead by month
What each Local Service Ads lead cost, April to September 2026.
Local Service Ads: spend vs leads, quarter over quarter
We cut the budget by more than half. Leads went up.
What we changed
Spend follows the crews, not the clicks.
Split the account by service line
Hardscaping, patios and pavers, softscapes and commercial snow each got their own campaign, budget and reporting, so the owner can see what each line produced.
Matched spend to crew capacity
When hardscape booked out for the summer, we cut that budget by about 90% on purpose and let softscape and maintenance carry the spend.
Rebalanced Local Service Ads
We cut Local Service Ads spend by more than half and it still produced more leads than the quarter before, at less than half the cost per lead.
Staged winter before winter
Commercial snow was built and running in September, ahead of the season, instead of being scrambled together after the first forecast.
Want a quarter like this one?
We will tell you what we would cut and where the money should go instead.
Where the money went
Quarter over quarter.
| Apr to Jun | Jul to Sep | |
|---|---|---|
| Total ad spend | $14,166 | $13,020 |
| Tracked leads, all channels | 274 | 263 |
| Local Service Ads spend | $4,082 | $1,880 |
| Local Service Ads leads | 122 | 128 |
| Cost per Local Service Ads lead | $33.46 | $14.69 |
263 tracked calls, forms and Local Service Ads leads in one quarter, on $1,146 less total spend. The money went where the crews had room, not where clicks were cheap.
Why this matters if your work moves with the calendar
If you sell several services out of one account, your budget is following the cheap jobs because they are easiest to win. Splitting by service line is what lets you decide which season each dollar belongs to.
The best month for ads is not always the busiest month for leads. If you are booked out, we will tell you to spend less, and we will have the next season ready before it arrives.
Client name withheld for confidentiality. Figures pulled from the live Google Ads account on October 1, 2026. Tracked leads means phone calls, form submissions and Local Service Ads leads. Button taps and map direction requests are not counted. Photos are representative of the industry, not this client's job sites.
Is your budget following your crews or your clicks?
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