C&A Land Surveying — Coconut Digital

The Situation

The data to do this had been in the account the whole time. It just needed someone to use it.

This Sydney land surveying business had been running Google Ads for years. And they'd done something most businesses never bother with — they were already tracking the actual value of quoted leads and closed sales. Not just counting conversions, but knowing what each one was worth in dollars.

That's the hard part. Most agencies never set it up.

The problem was that none of that data was being used. The account was optimising for CPA — cost per acquisition — which treats every conversion as equally valuable regardless of what it's actually worth. A vague enquiry from someone browsing counted the same as a serious quote request for a large development survey. Google had access to strong value signals and nobody had told it to act on them.

On top of that: an outdated campaign structure, broad match keywords pulling in irrelevant searches, and budget spread across PMax and Video campaigns that weren't generating real demand. The cost per sale had been creeping up for two months before they came to us.

They started with a paid audit. Liked what they found. Asked us to take over.

"The data to do this had been in the account the whole time. It just needed someone to use it."

What the Audit Found

Good data. Being ignored.

The value data was there. Nobody was acting on it. The account was already tracking quoted lead values and sales values — a level of setup most businesses never reach. But optimising for CPA meant Google was ignoring all of it, treating a vague phone call the same as a serious multi-thousand dollar survey enquiry.

Campaign structure built for a different era Single Keyword Ad Groups — a method that made sense when exact match meant exact. It doesn't anymore. The same search terms were triggering multiple keywords across different campaigns, making it impossible to optimise clearly or read performance cleanly.

Broad match running unsupervised Irrelevant searches eating budget daily — "draftsman permit", "land development", "one who measures land". Over A$4,000 spent on "surveyor" and "surveyors" alone, for zero return.

Budget spread across channels that couldn't perform PMax appeared to be converting mostly on branded searches — people who already knew the business, counted as new demand. Video had generated zero sales. Both absorbing budget that Search, the only channel actually working, could have used.

What We Changed

Started using the data they already had.

TRACKING FIRST

Switched to value-based bidding We switched from CPA optimisation to value-based bidding — so Google could finally act on the quoted lead and sales value data sitting unused in the account. We also added value weighting to form submissions earlier in the funnel, giving Google value signals before a quote was even sent.

CAMPAIGNS

Campaigns rebuilt around intent Intent-based groupings replaced the Single Keyword Ad Group structure. Fewer campaigns, cleaner data, no more keywords competing for the same searches.

CHANNELS

Broad match removed. PMax and Video paused. Broad match gone entirely. PMax paused — it was cannibalising branded traffic and calling it new demand. Video paused — nobody books a land surveyor after a YouTube ad. All budget moved into Search.

BIDDING

Bids adjusted by location, age, and device Location targeting revealed significant differences across Sydney — some areas returning close to 7x ROAS, others spending for no return. Bids adjusted to reflect what the data showed, not what Google recommended.

Three Months Later

The account didn't just get cheaper. It got better at finding the right enquiries.

They were generating more total quoted value — more serious enquiries, more of them — while spending a third less to get there. The 67% improvement in quoted lead ROAS is the number that matters most, because it reflects the quality shift: Google stopped optimising for easy actions and started optimising for enquiries worth responding to.

The data to do this had been in the account the whole time. It just needed someone to use it.

67% Higher quoted ROAS

41% CPA decrease

33% Less ad spend

“

This business had already done the hard work most clients haven't — they knew what their leads were worth. What their previous agency had never done was let Google know too. One audit made that visible. Three months of management made it count.

Melissa Ros · Founder

More quoted value. Less spent getting it.

The data to do this had been in the account the whole time. It just needed someone to use it.

Good data. Being ignored.

Started using the data they already had.

The account didn't just get cheaper. It got better at finding the right enquiries.

Want an honest look at your account?