On paper, the inherited campaigns looked fine. Underneath: broad-match keywords bleeding into searches for realtor jobs, foreclosures, and mobile homes; no negative keyword lists; twelve campaigns cannibalizing each other; and every page view counted as a "conversion," inflated further by junk traffic from display and third-party networks.
$19,000 had gone out the door January through mid-April with no true lead attribution. The website had generated just 7 leads in the entire year to date.
I paused all spend on day one, audited every campaign, and rebuilt from scratch around "new home in [city]" searches, starting with one central campaign and scaling to three within the month.
The rebuilt system produced 12 qualified form-fill leads in its first 15 days at a $115 cost per lead, against 7 leads for the entire year prior. By day 30, with all three campaigns live, it had delivered 20 leads, an 11% ad CTR, and a 0.92% campaign conversion rate (1.3% in top ad groups), plus 12 call/email actions the old setup couldn't even see. That surge turned into $1M+ in gross profit within the first few months.
Monthly spend now tracks near $4,000, about $1,000 below the prior run rate, with the surplus earmarked to scale the four active campaigns.
Build attribution completely before launch, not alongside it. A full conversion-tracking audit of every form and event is now a non-negotiable pre-launch step. And when inherited campaigns "look good on paper," verify what's actually being counted as a conversion before trusting any of it.