Google Ads Case Study - From Scattered Spend to Results
Google Ads Case Study — Starford Agency
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Case Study · Google Ads & Performance Marketing

Construction & Engineering —
From Scattered Spend to High-Intent Acquisition

Google Ads restructure case study — Starford Agency

A complete Google Ads restructure for a construction and engineering company — rebuilding four campaigns from the ground up, implementing a DSA exclusion strategy, and taking campaign scores from inconsistent to 85–100% across all groups.

Google Ads Campaign Restructure DSA Strategy Geo Targeting Confidential
Client
Confidential
Industry
Construction
Platform
Google Ads
Campaigns
4 restructured
85–100%
Campaign score across all groups
<20%
Bounce rate post-restructure
4
Campaigns fully restructured
DSA
Exclusion strategy implemented
The Challenge
Budget going in, results not coming out

The company was running Google Ads and spending a meaningful budget — but the results were inconsistent and hard to explain. Some weeks produced strong leads, others produced nothing. Campaign scores were low, bounce rates were high, and there was no clear picture of what was actually working.

The problem wasn't the budget. It was the architecture underneath. Four campaigns had been built without a coherent strategy, DSA campaigns were cannibalising paid search traffic, and geo targeting was too broad to capture genuinely high-intent local searches.

No campaign architecture
Four campaigns running simultaneously with overlapping targeting, conflicting bidding strategies, and no clear separation of intent levels — making optimisation almost impossible.
DSA cannibalisation
Dynamic Search Ads were triggering for keywords already covered by exact and phrase match campaigns — splitting budget across duplicate traffic and inflating costs without adding reach.
Geo targeting too broad
Ads were showing to users far outside the company's serviceable area — generating clicks from people who would never become customers, wasting budget on guaranteed non-conversions.
High bounce rate
Visitors were arriving from ads and leaving immediately — indicating a disconnect between what the ad promised and what the landing page delivered. Poor quality score was compounding costs.
The Campaign Architecture
Four campaigns, four distinct jobs

The restructure started by giving each campaign a single, clear purpose — and eliminating all overlap between them.

Campaign 01
Core Services — Exact Match
High-intent, specific service searches. Tight match types, premium bids, highest priority budget allocation.
Campaign 02
Consultation & Discovery
Broader informational queries from prospects earlier in the decision process. Lower bids, educational ad copy.
Campaign 03
DSA — Excluded Keywords
Dynamic Search Ads rebuilt with comprehensive exclusion lists covering all terms already targeted in campaigns 01 and 02 — eliminating cannibalisation entirely.
Campaign 04
Geo-Targeted Local
Hyper-local campaign targeting the specific regions the company actually services — with location-specific ad copy and landing pages aligned to local intent.
Key Optimisations
What changed under the hood
DSA Exclusions
Comprehensive exclusion list across all DSA campaigns
Every term covered by exact and phrase match campaigns was added as a DSA exclusion — ensuring DSA only captured genuinely incremental traffic rather than competing with higher-priority campaigns for the same searches.
Geo Strategy
Radius and location targeting rebuilt from scratch
Targeting rebuilt around the company's actual service radius with bid adjustments for highest-value locations. Locations outside serviceable range excluded entirely — immediately reducing wasted spend.
Ad Quality
Ad copy and landing page alignment
Ad copy rewritten to match landing page content precisely — improving Quality Scores, reducing CPCs, and aligning visitor expectations with what they find after clicking.
Bidding
Bidding strategy aligned to campaign intent level
Each campaign assigned a bidding strategy appropriate to its intent level and funnel position — maximising efficiency rather than applying one strategy across all four campaigns.
The Results
Consistent, high-quality acquisition

The restructured account delivered campaign scores of 85–100% across all four campaigns — up from inconsistent, low scores that were suppressing ad delivery and inflating costs. Bounce rate dropped below 20%, indicating that visitors arriving from ads were now genuinely interested in the services on offer.

85–100%
Campaign score all groups
<20%
Bounce rate post-launch
0%
DSA cannibalisation
What This Project Covered
Full scope
Google Ads audit 4-campaign restructure DSA exclusion strategy Geo targeting rebuild Ad copy rewrite Bidding strategy Quality Score optimisation Landing page alignment Ongoing campaign management
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