Case study · Google Ads rebuild · early result

Junk removal ads that were buying dump searches. 11 leads at $89 in nine days.

A family-run junk removal company on Florida's Gulf Coast, Bradenton to Sarasota, was running its own Search campaigns. We rebuilt them and went live on 12 October 2026. This is the first nine days, published early and labelled as early, with exactly how every lead was counted.

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Search campaigns only, Local Services Ads excluded Early result: 12 to 20 October 2026

The first nine days, 12 to 20 October 2026

11 leads on $980 of ad spend, $89 each

Blue Grid Media rebuilt the Google Ads account of a junk removal company in the Bradenton and Sarasota area of Florida, and in the first nine days the new Search campaigns produced 11 leads on $979.56, $89 a lead, against a published minimum job of $165.

11leads

6 landing page forms, 4 different callers from the ad and 1 website call.

$89cost per lead

$979.56 divided by 11.

103clicks

$9.51 a click on average, 2,030 impressions.

$165smallest job on the price list

So one booked minimum job covers almost two leads.

How a lead is counted: a submitted landing page form, a person calling from the ad's call button (one lead per caller, however many times they call), or a website call that call tracking attributes to Google Ads. Website calls after 17 October were not included in this pull, so 11 is a floor. Local Services Ads run in the same account, are not managed by us, and are left out of every figure.

Where it started

Three quarters of the search budget was going to people looking for the dump

The company had built three Search campaigns in-house. From 10 September to 9 October they spent $2,580.23 and the ads drew 45 phone calls, 11 of them a minute or longer. Forms were not being tracked at all.

What the money was buyingDump searches

When we read the search terms, roughly three quarters of the visible spend had gone to searches for the dump, the landfill, county trash pickup and waste management companies. One phrase keyword, "disposal services", had spent $629 on 123 clicks by itself. Those are people looking for somewhere to take their own junk, not somebody to take it for them.

What it buys nowHire searches

Keywords written as somebody hiring a crew: junk removal, furniture and appliance pickup, cleanouts, yard debris, shed removal, trash outs. A shared list of 170 negative phrases keeps out the dump, recycling centres, dumpster rental, donation pickup, scrap, jobs and towns outside the service area.

Why there is no before and after cost per lead: the old setup did not record forms, and a minute-long call is a different measure from the lead count above. At $235 per call of a minute or more it was not working, but the two numbers are not the same yardstick, so we do not set them side by side.

What we changed

Seven changes, all before the first click

None of this needed a bigger budget. It needed the account to stop paying for searches that could never book.

Two campaigns split by job, not by town

One for junk removal (core terms, towns, furniture and appliances, yard debris and sheds) and one for cleanouts (house, estate and garage, plus property managers and commercial). Cleanouts are bigger jobs, so they get their own budget instead of fighting pickup searches for it.

Manual bids per ad group

Every ad group has its own maximum cost per click, set from Keyword Planner bids for the area. Nothing was handed to automated bidding with almost no conversion history to learn from.

170 negative phrases in one shared list

Municipal and dump searches, dumpster rental, donation pickup, scrap buyers, job seekers, information searches, a national franchise's brand name, and the towns outside the service area.

Location set to people in the area

Ads show to people physically in the service area, not to anybody who once searched for it.

A landing page per job type, with the price list on it

Junk removal, furniture and appliances, cleanouts, property managers, and later trash removal. Each one shows the company's own published price ladder, from the $165 minimum to $900 for a full load, and a short form that takes a photo of the pile.

Tracking that counts people, not taps

Forms count when the thank-you page loads, calls from the ad go through call tracking, and repeat calls from the same person are counted once.

A trash removal ad group once the owner confirmed the service

Three-word searches such as weekly trash service and trash out services, added on 15 October. It produced a caller the next morning.

By campaign

Where the 11 leads came from

Forms are assigned to the campaign whose landing page they were sent from.

Campaign	Spend	Clicks	Leads	Cost per lead
Junk removal	$609.11	64	7	$87
Cleanouts	$370.45	39	4	$93
Total	$979.56	103	11	$89

The cleanout leads included a property manager asking for a trash out, the kind of account that can repeat every time a unit turns over.

The honest part

What nine days cannot tell you

This is an early result

Nine days and 11 leads is enough to see that the account is buying the right searches. It is not enough to call a cost per lead settled, and the number will move. We will update this page with the first full 30 days.

We do not yet know how many of these leads became booked jobs, or what they paid. Booked jobs are not tracked in the ad account, so this page publishes no revenue figure and no return on ad spend.

The arithmetic that matters is simple, though. The company's smallest job is $165. If even one lead in three books at the minimum, the ads cost about $267 per job against $165 of revenue, and most jobs are bigger than the minimum.

Straight answers

Questions about this case study

Is junk removal easy to get leads for with Google Ads?

It can be cheap per lead, because clicks cost less than in most trades. The trap is that "junk", "disposal" and "trash" searches are full of people looking for the dump or county pickup. In this account about three quarters of the old spend went to those searches. Once they were filtered out, the rebuilt campaigns produced 11 leads at $89 in nine days.

How were the 11 leads counted?

Six submitted landing page forms, four different people who called from the ad (one lead per person, however many times they called), and one website call that call tracking attributed to Google Ads. Website calls after 17 October were not included, so 11 is a floor.

Are Local Services Ads included?

No. The company runs Local Services Ads in the same Google Ads account. We do not manage them, and every figure on this page is Search campaigns only.

Why publish after only nine days?

Because the owner agreed, and because the before picture is the useful part: most of the old budget was buying searches for the dump. The page says plainly that the number is early, and it will be updated with the first full 30 days.

What does Blue Grid Media charge to run junk removal ads?

$795 a month for Google Ads management on ad budgets from $2,500 a month, paid to Google directly, plus a $750 one-time setup that includes a landing page for each campaign. Month to month, no contract, and the ad account is in the owner's name.

Why is there no revenue or return on ad spend?

Booked jobs are not tracked in the ad account yet. The company publishes a price ladder starting at $165, so the page shows the arithmetic against that rather than inventing a close rate.

Is the client named?

No. The page publishes their ad spend, so the company is described by trade and area only.