Insurance Claims Handler
30 April 2026
A driveway installer in Sussex needed a reliable flow of enquiries from local homeowners ready to spend thousands of pounds on a new driveway. They came to us in early 2021 with no advertising presence. Five years on, the phone is still ringing.
Our client installs driveways, block paving, resin surfaces, dropped kerbs, and related services for homeowners across East and West Sussex. They came to us in early 2021 with no digital advertising presence and a straightforward goal: a steady stream of local homeowners asking for quotes. Five years on, that is exactly what we continue to deliver.
Five years later, they are still with us. That is not because they have nowhere else to go. There is no shortage of agencies offering to run Google Ads for local trade businesses. They stay because the phone keeps ringing, the enquiry forms keep filling up, and the work keeps coming in.
Every driveway job won through our advertising is worth thousands of pounds to their business. Over five years, the cumulative return on that investment runs well into six figures. The challenge of managing a Google Ads account for a local trades business over a long timeframe is keeping it sharp as the market shifts, click costs rise, and the platform itself changes underneath you. That is the work that has filled the last five years.
We built the account from scratch in early 2021 with no existing campaigns, no historical data, and no previous ads to learn from. Five years on, the same account is still generating a consistent flow of enquiries every single month, with cost per lead held at a level that makes every job won commercially substantial.
There is no shortage of people who will offer to run Google Ads for a local business. The difference between an account that generates quality enquiries at a low cost and one that burns through budget on irrelevant searches comes down to how it is built and how it is managed over time.
Block paving, resin driveways, dropped kerbs, and cleaning all attract different types of searchers at different price points. Grouping them into a single campaign would force generic ad copy and dilute performance. We advertise each service independently, so the ad someone sees is directly relevant to what they searched for. This improves the quality of every click and reduces wasted spend.
Every search that comes from outside the client’s service area is wasted money. We built a comprehensive geographic targeting structure covering East and West Sussex, with specific blocks on out-of-area searches. Every penny of the budget is spent reaching potential customers who can actually be served, not researchers or browsers from elsewhere in the country.
Google’s matching can be broad. Without careful management, ads for a driveway company can appear for DIY searches, inspiration browsing, job seekers, and people researching rather than ready to buy. We built and maintain a comprehensive negative keyword list, reviewed regularly, that keeps the budget focused on homeowners actively looking to enquire. The result is what comes through: relevant local searches from people ready to spend.
Clicks that do not become enquiries are wasted spend. Every ad we write references the specific service, the location, and the business’s strongest selling points. Google also rewards well-written, relevant ads with lower costs per click, directly reducing the cost of every lead we generate. The chain from search query to headline to landing page to form is what converts traffic into work won.
In the last 12 months alone, this account delivered 375 confirmed leads from local homeowners. That is more than one new enquiry every single day of the year, each one a homeowner ready to spend thousands of pounds on a new driveway. Not a burst of activity followed by silence, but a steady, reliable flow of new business, month after month.
The volume varies month to month as you would expect for an outdoor trades business. Spring and summer see the strongest demand. Autumn and winter are quieter but never silent. The account is managed to capture every spike when it arrives and to keep the pipeline ticking over in the slower months. Over five years, this client has been able to plan their team’s workload, manage the job pipeline, and grow with confidence, because the leads have never stopped arriving.
At an average cost of £27.35 per lead over the last 12 months, in a market where click costs have risen significantly across the trades sector since 2021, the return on investment remains substantial. Each lead is a job worth thousands of pounds. The maths is straightforward.
The best results in Google Ads are not the product of a clever setup. They are the product of sustained, attentive management over time. The account improves because someone is watching it, week in, week out, and making the right calls.
Service Campaigns Built
Across geotechnical, contamination, drainage, utility, and investigative services, each with its own ad copy and keyword set.
