Case Studies
Real results. Real numbers.
Not simulated projections or agency-inflated metrics. Here’s what the work actually produces.
Balanced Comfort Heating & Air
From one truck to $17M+ annual revenue, 4,000+ 5-star Google reviews, four Inc 5000 appearances, three Best Place to Work certifications, and a successful exit. This is the company Aaron Husak built before starting Sequoia GEO. Every strategy deployed for clients was tested here first.
Client case studies added as they’re completed. Results are anonymized by default.
$20K/Month. Three Agencies. 22 Booked Jobs.
An established commercial HVAC contractor in the Midwest had spent 18 months trying to break into residential HVAC and plumbing. They couldn’t keep one plumber busy. Three agencies were collecting checks and reporting green. Here’s what the audit found in 48 hours.
What the audit found
conversions
Google Ads: 22 actual booked jobs
The Google Ads agency reported 16,962 conversions. Reality: 22 booked jobs. Three of five conversion goals were misconfigured, page views and scroll events were counting as conversions. Every report showed green. The agency had no idea what a booked job actually cost because they were never connected to dispatch data. The client had no reason to question it because the numbers looked good on paper.
to Angi
Angi producing less than $2,000 in booked revenue
The Angi rep was collecting $7,783 per month. The actual jobs booked from those leads were producing less than $2,000 in revenue. Nobody had ever connected the Angi spend to dispatch data to calculate the real cost per booked job. The agency managing ads didn’t look at Angi. The Angi rep wasn’t going to flag it. The client assumed that if leads were coming in, something was working.
indexed
SEO company billing monthly while Google couldn’t see their site
265 pages, including their primary plumbing service pages, were not indexed by Google. The SEO company was producing monthly deliverables and billing on schedule. Nobody had checked Google Search Console to verify that the content they were creating was actually visible in search results. The residential plumbing pages they needed to rank were invisible. That’s why one plumber couldn’t stay busy: the demand existed, but Google literally could not find the pages targeting it.
The actual problem
This wasn’t a channel problem. It was a visibility problem. Three vendors each owned a piece and optimized it in isolation. None of them had access to dispatch data. None of them knew what a booked plumbing job actually cost. The client was spending $20,000 per month and had no way to answer the only question that matters: which dollar of marketing spend is producing revenue?
This is what a Full Picture Audit surfaces. Not a critique of the agencies, an honest accounting of what is working, what is wasting money, and what needs to be fixed before another dollar gets spent.
48-hour turnaround. No pitch deck. Just your numbers.
The Franchise Recommended the Firm. The Firm Sent Customers to the Wrong State.
A plumbing franchise location was running Google Ads through the marketing company the franchise recommended. One setting. One checkbox. Customers searching for a plumber in Oregon were landing on a page for a location in Texas.
What happened
“Optimize final URL” was enabled on a shared franchise domain
Google Ads has a setting that lets Google automatically choose the best landing page URL on your domain for each search. For a standalone business, that’s occasionally useful. For a franchise with dozens of locations sharing one domain, it’s a disaster. Google looked across the entire franchise site and decided that the Texas location’s water heater repair page was more relevant than the Oregon location’s page. So the Oregon franchisee paid for the click. The customer landed in Texas. Nobody booked. Nobody knew why.
Clicks were leaving the service area entirely
Beyond the URL issue: geo-targeting was set loosely enough that clicks were coming from outside the franchisee’s actual service area. Searchers from adjacent markets who Google thought were “interested in” the location were triggering ads. A confused customer who lands on the wrong state’s page and can’t figure out whether the company serves them does not call. They go to the next result.
The firm never checked where the clicks were actually going
This is a five-minute check in Google Ads. Pull the final URL report. Sort by destination. See where traffic is landing. The firm managing the account had a team and a process. The setting had been live since account launch. Nobody had run that report. The franchisee had no reason to know the question existed, let alone how to ask it.
Why this keeps happening
Franchise-recommended vendors have a conflict of interest. They serve the franchisor’s relationship, not the individual franchisee’s revenue. A big-name firm that manages accounts across hundreds of locations optimizes for efficiency at the portfolio level. The Oregon location is one line item. Nobody at that firm is asking why that specific location’s leads aren’t converting, because that’s not the contract.
Catching it requires someone looking at your account specifically, not the template, not the franchise standard, and asking where the clicks are actually going.
48-hour turnaround. No pitch deck. Just your numbers.
The Tech Gave Away the Job. The Marketing Agency Never Saw It.
This one wasn’t in an ad account or a search console. It was in an appointment note. That’s why most marketing agencies would never find it.
What the note said
“If the hydrojet doesn’t work, there’s no charge.”
That’s not how pricing works. The tech made a verbal commitment on the truck that the business never approved. The job got done. The customer got a free service. The tech moved on. Nobody flagged it until we were reviewing notes that week.
What it actually cost
A hydrojetting job runs $300 to $600 depending on the line length and condition. That job was paid for by the marketing budget that generated the lead, the CSR time that booked it, and the tech time that ran it. The revenue went to zero because of one sentence said on-site that nobody in the office ever heard.
You can generate 200 leads a month and still lose money if your techs are giving away work, your CSRs aren’t booking right, or your follow-up process is broken. The leak isn’t always in the ad account.
Why a marketing agency will never catch this
Your marketing agency doesn’t have access to your appointment notes. They don’t sit in dispatch. They don’t review job completions. They send you a leads report and call it a week. That’s not a criticism, it’s the scope of what they’re hired to do.
The difference between a marketing vendor and someone who thinks like an owner is whether they ever ask why revenue didn’t move when the lead numbers looked fine. An agency sends you a leads report. An owner asks what happened after the lead came in. Those are different questions. They produce different results.
No pitch deck. A real conversation about your numbers.
A Well-Known SEO Company Set Up LSA. Three Things Were Wrong From Day One.
A plumbing company came in wondering why their Local Services Ads weren’t producing leads. A large, reputable SEO firm had set up the account. Here’s what we found.
Three things wrong at setup
number
The phone number was wrong, calls dropped instantly
The phone number on the LSA profile was incorrect. Every call Google routed to that number dropped immediately. Google Guaranteed leads, the highest-intent calls a plumbing company can receive, were going to a line that disconnected on contact. The owner assumed the campaign just wasn’t working. The real answer was that it was working fine; the calls just weren’t landing anywhere. Nobody at the SEO firm had ever called the number to verify it connected.
area
The service area was configured incorrectly
The geographic service area set in the LSA profile did not match where the company actually operated. This affects which searches trigger the ad and how Google ranks the profile in the Local Services pack. Leads outside the real service area are harder to convert and harder to dispute. An incorrect service area also signals to Google that the business serves areas it doesn’t, which degrades match quality over time.
management
The owner had never been told lead management exists
Google Local Services Ads requires active lead management inside the LSA portal. Every lead that comes in needs to be marked, booked, archived, or disputed. When you dispute an invalid lead within 30 days, Google credits the charge. When you consistently mark leads as booked, Google’s algorithm improves your ranking. The owner had no idea this portal existed, let alone that it needed weekly attention. The SEO firm set up the account and moved on. Nobody explained that managing the leads is a core part of making the campaign work.
The reputation doesn’t run the account
The firm that set this up has a recognizable name. That name doesn’t check whether the phone number works. It doesn’t train the owner on the LSA portal. It gets the account live, moves to the next client, and sends a monthly report showing that the campaign is active. Active is not the same as working.
A five-minute call to verify the phone number would have caught this at setup. Thirty minutes of onboarding on lead management would have changed how the owner operated the account from day one. Neither happened.
Free LSA Management Guide
11 pages covering how to set up, manage, and dispute leads in your Google Local Services Ads account, the same process we use for every client.
Download the guide48-hour turnaround. No pitch deck. Just your numbers.
See the Work
Live audit: Daddario Roofing
A full marketing audit walkthrough, GBP, Google Ads, LSA, website, and tracking — the same process run for every new client.
Want results like these for your company?
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