This client specialises in garden landscaping and tree surgery services. While they already had a paid search account in place, it wasn’t delivering the results they were hoping for. Performance was inconsistent, with clear peaks and troughs caused by seasonality — landscaping demand was heavily weighted toward the spring and early summer, while tree surgery saw steadier interest throughout the year, especially during stormy weather when emergency callouts increased.

For tree surgery, the most valuable leads typically came via phone — often in urgent situations where a fallen or hazardous tree needed immediate attention. Landscaping leads, on the other hand, varied widely in scope and value, ranging from small patio installations to full-scale garden transformations. Naturally, larger projects were preferred, as they made better use of the team’s specialist machinery and experience.

To bring structure and strategy to the account, we started by clearly dividing campaigns between landscaping and tree surgery. Each service was given its own budget and bidding strategy to better align with seasonality, team availability, and differing customer behaviour.

Within landscaping, we created segments to highlight higher-value services, allowing us to prioritise ad spend toward larger and more profitable projects. For tree surgery, we took a different route — introducing keyword segmentation to target emergency-related searches. Terms with high urgency like “emergency tree removal” or “dangerous tree fallen” were grouped and optimised separately, helping to capture those fast-moving, high-margin jobs.

We also enabled Google’s call tracking to measure inbound phone leads, which were particularly important for emergency tree work. While a full CRM system wasn’t within budget, we implemented a lightweight lead quality feedback loop. Through regular check-ins, we gathered data on booked jobs, common obstacles to conversion, and average deal values — all helping to refine and improve campaign performance over time.

This new structure gave the client the flexibility to adjust spend based on demand and availability, without sacrificing control or lead quality.

The first six months of this revamped strategy began in autumn — traditionally a quieter period for landscaping. As expected, landscaping leads dropped by 20%, but with the new focus on higher-value jobs, the quality of enquiries improved. This included an uptick in commercial enquiries, which tend to be more substantial in both scope and spend.

Tree surgery, however, picked up the slack — seeing an 80% increase in lead volume. This was driven by a combination of improved keyword targeting, seasonal weather conditions, and the introduction of call tracking, which gave us better insight into what was driving real results. With the new campaign structure focusing on urgent jobs, the tree surgery team’s lead-to-booking rate rose by 9%.

By embracing the natural seasonality of the business rather than fighting against it, the campaign became far more efficient. Overall, lead conversion rates improved by 20%, and booked jobs from paid search increased by 51% year-on-year.

• Restructured campaigns to better reflect service areas and business priorities

• Aligned strategy with seasonal trends and team availability

• Focused budget on higher-value opportunities to improve ROI

• Improved lead tracking and attribution with phone call monitoring

• Introduced simple lead quality feedback to guide ongoing optimisation

• Prioritised urgent, high-converting search intent for better conversion rates

• Shifted focus based on real-time performance, rather than fixed targets