The first client.
Still with us.
Six years later.

The challenge

No digital presence. No tracking. No campaigns. The owner had heard Google Ads could work but had been burned by a previous freelancer who spent $2k and generated nothing. Trust was low and the budget was $3k/month — every dollar had to prove itself.

This wasn't a growth play. It was a survival test for whether paid media could work for a local services business at all.

What we did

• Built the first Google Ads campaign from scratch — keyword research, ad copy, landing page, and call tracking all in the first two weeks.
• Set up call tracking and form attribution so every lead had a source, a cost, and a close rate tied to it.
• Scaled methodically from $3k/month to $18k/month over 18 months, expanding only when ROI held at each increment.
• Expanded into local SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, and review generation as the foundation solidified.

The outcome

Six years in, the business has grown 6× from where it started. Google Ads ROAS has held above 5× for four consecutive years. The owner has expanded to three locations and credits the ad program as the single biggest growth lever in the business.

This is the engagement that proved the Active Agency model: start small, measure everything, scale what works, and never stop optimizing. Every client we've taken on since has been built on what we learned here.