The full arcs: see, decide, build.
Since 2011 we have taken on a dozen or so clients a year, on purpose. Long engagements produce many findings, so each story below is one complete arc from one real engagement, not one client, and new arcs are added as engagements mature.
You don't have a lead problem. You have an intake problem.
The founder walked in certain she needed more leads and more people. The truth was that her most expensive people were giving the service away for free, before anyone paid.
A campaign she almost cut on a gut feeling turned out to be roughly a 9X return, so it stayed on, and signed case volume grew. Personal-injury law firmThe clicks kept coming. The real cases did not.
The firm walked in certain it needed more leads. What the data showed was a budget quietly draining into clicks that were never going to become clients.
One later read showed roughly three-quarters of a million dollars in fake clicks stopped year-to-date, and one period spent about 61% less. Personal-injury law firmYou don't have an expensive-ads problem
The founding attorney walked in sure the problem was expensive ads. It turned out to be three quieter problems wearing one mask: a hidden leak, a rented website, and a channel judged by the wrong number.
In one week, 53% of the paid clicks were competitors clicking to burn the budget. Stopping that saved about $8.2k that week, and about $23,000 in a later month. Mobile cash-pay house-call practiceYour ads look like they are working. The numbers are fake.
The founder walked in sure she had a marketing problem. The first thing we found was that her best number was a lie the account had been telling her.
Once the tracking was honest, conversion rate went from about 1.95% to 6.25%, click-through roughly doubled, and the full run booked 247 appointments, about 10 over the 237 forecast, and about $80K in collected first-visit revenue. Neuropathy-treatment practiceWe are pouring money in and it is not working
They walked in sure they had a marketing problem. What they had was a scoreboard that hid what was working and a business that could not move without them in the room.
Cost per purchase fell from about $115 at launch to about $24 in testing, at a 2.3 return on spend, with a 66% reorder rate on the consumable. Jaw-pain home-treatment device companyThe truest thing we could say was the one thing the ad platform would punish
The founder believed the fix was better ads. The real ceiling was that his most honest claim was the one the platform was built to catch, and a funnel that leaked long after the click.
Refund rate fell from about 6% to under 1.5%, with about 150 units sold in six to seven weeks. Specialty practiceHe thought he needed more patients. He needed ten doctors.
He walked in certain he needed more patients and a better website, and his own records showed the cases he wanted were already being referred, just to other people.
Every referrer ranked by the cases they send and the dollars they produce, reengaged senders, and a $90,000 case within about three weeks of ads launching Nerve-support supplement brandWe had to sell without being able to say what it does
The founders believed a bolder claim would fix weak sales. The real fix was rebuilding the funnel so every claim was defensible where it stood, with a newsletter carrying the education the ads never could, and it flipped every order from a loss into a profit.
Orders flipped from losing money on every ~$30–40 sale to a profitable ~$82 average order, on a compliant rebuild. Performance-apparel brandThe dashboard said the marketing was fine. It was never set up.
The founder walked in sure the ads were the problem. The truth was that nothing had ever been measuring what the ads did.
Return on the marketing budget rose from a lifetime ~0.81 on the search platform and ~$0.80 per dollar at the start to a later-season aggregate of about ~$2.30 per dollar on the search platform and ~$3.28 on the social platform. In the founder's own words: we more than doubled. Sheet-music product companyA better product almost nobody could find or buy
The founder walked in sure the fix was a better video. The real fix was that nothing could be measured, and the message had never been cut down to one word.
When the full process was live, the landing page turned roughly one in four visitors into buyers, and paid performance ran just above the return-on-ad-spend floor set before launch. Family-run B2B training companyGreat numbers, no way to trust them, and a salesperson losing deals
They walked in sure the fix was more leads. The dashboard that told them so was counting the wrong thing, and the sales call was quoting price before the buyer was sold.
Mid-engagement, cost per deal roughly halved month over month (about $320 to $160) and the scheduled-meeting rate rose about 300 percent, once the tracking was honest. Personal-injury law firmCases, not leads: scaling a firm to 80-90 signed a month
The firm wanted volume from an account bleeding waste. What it got was a machine: roughly $100k a month in, 80 to 90 signed cases out, month after month, until the partners sold the practice.
Roughly $100k a month in search spend produced 80 to 90 signed cases a month, at about $1,100 to $1,250 per signed case, sustained for more than a year. Chronic-condition telehealth companyThe marketing hit cloud nine. The business still didn't grow.
They'd already paid for one launch that produced a healthy click-through rate and no patients. The second engine worked. The hard part was what it revealed.
The rebuilt engine delivered about 870 leads at under $17 each at roughly half the planned spend, later hundreds of qualified leads a month at best-in-class cost, and one honest diagnosis: the constraint wasn't marketing anymore. It was sales.