In plumbing marketing, lead quality matters more than lead volume. A campaign that generates calls that lead to booked jobs is better than a flood of calls with low-intent inquiries. Chasing volume can create wasted spend when the leads you’re receiving aren’t of quality.
Our team doesn’t optimize for the most leads—we optimize for the right leads. Doing so protects our clients’ budgets and their time.
Identifying the Problem: Low-Intent Search Traffic
One of our plumbing clients runs a drain cleaning campaign designed to show up for potential customers actively searching for a drain cleaning service. Initially, it made sense to use a phrase match keyword for “drain cleaning,” as the goal was to capture searchers who could likely convert into customers. Phrase match allows additional words to come before or after the term “drain cleaning.”
Over time, however, as we worked to expand into a new service location while maintaining the same budget, we had to become more conservative about who we were showing up for.
During one of our routine search term checks, we noticed a pattern. Many of the search terms triggering ads were related to DIYers trying to figure out how to handle their drain cleaning issues themselves.
Because the keyword was set to phrase match, “drain cleaning” was showing up alongside additional terms that signaled users were looking for do-it-yourself solutions rather than professional services. For instance, searches like “shower drain is clogged” and “drain odor eliminator” were triggering our ads—clearly not our target customer. These searchers were likely looking for products to buy or DIY advice, not professional plumbing services. As a result, ad spend was being allocated to traffic with low intent, which led to a low conversion rate overall for the campaign.
The Adjustment: Prioritizing Cleaner Intent
To address this issue, we paused the phrase match version of the keyword and moved forward with it as an exact match, which is more restrictive, only triggering when someone searches for the exact phrase “drain cleaning” with no additional words.
This prevented “drain cleaning” from showing up alongside unrelated or DIY-focused phrases that we did not want to target.
By making this change, search intent became more precise and no longer tied to the DIY drain cleaning searches we were seeing.
Performance Improvements After 60 Days
Here are the improvements we saw in the drain cleaning campaign 60 days after pausing “drain cleaning” as a phrase match keyword:
- 128.57% improvement in conversion rate, bringing it to 28.57% (originally 12.50%), meaning more searchers were taking action on our ads.
- 50.77% reduction in cost per conversion, bringing it to $158.73 (originally $322.40).
- 170.53% improvement in CTR (click-through rate), increasing it to 7.61% (originally 2.81%). This means a higher percentage of people who saw our ad found it relevant enough to click, indicating better targeting.
Why This Matters
These improvements made a significant difference when it came to stretching the budget. With the savings created by eliminating low-intent traffic, we were able to venture into a new service area and generate qualified leads by having sufficient budget to compete in those auctions. The 50% reduction in cost per conversion meant we could now afford roughly twice as many conversions with the same budget.
This momentum eventually led the client to add more budget in order to capitalize on the traction we were seeing in the new service area.
The Bigger Takeaway
This case shows why we, as digital strategists, prioritize lead quality over lead volume. By eliminating low-intent traffic, we improved performance across every key metric while also expanding reach – proof that smarter targeting beats broader targeting every time.
If you’re questioning whether your current campaigns are attracting the right leads, a quick review of search intent and lead quality can often surface easy wins.
