Elopements Inc: one consolidated Google Ads campaign cut the cost of an inquiry by about 90%
Thirteen campaigns split by city and match type were replaced by one broad-match campaign on Smart Bidding with verified conversion tracking. The cost of a tracked inquiry fell from $205 to $21.74; clicks got cheaper by two thirds and inquiries per month more than tripled on a third of the spend.
What they were dealing with.
Elopements Inc is our own wedding company — the account where every paid-media rule on this site was learned before it was sold. In March 2026 the account ran thirteen campaigns: one per city (Nashville, Gatlinburg, Charleston, Savannah, Sedona) with phrase and exact match, a competitor campaign and a brand campaign. Google Ads reported $8,404 spent that month for 3,307 clicks at $2.54 a click and 41 tracked conversions — $205 per inquiry. Each small campaign starved the others of the data Smart Bidding needs, and the per-city split meant the same searcher was bid on five times over.
What we built.
On 2 April 2026 the split was retired for one campaign, built the way every account we run is built now:
- One consolidated search campaign for the whole service area, broad match on Maximize Conversions, so the bidding sees every search and every conversion in one place.
- Conversion tracking verified end to end — inquiry forms and calls counted as conversions from the site, with the tag and the thank-you pages checked before a dollar was spent against them.
- The landing pages as the ad's second half — package pages with the price range, the process and the inquiry form at the top, fast on a phone, rebuilt on the same edge hosting the rest of our sites use.
- Search-terms review, not keyword lists — negatives added from what people actually typed, the campaign left alone otherwise. Auto-apply recommendations kept off.
- Meta for awareness, Google for the search — the same jobs the two platforms do on every account: Meta to be known, Google to be chosen.
What happened next.
Read from the Google Ads account on 21 September 2026. A conversion is a tracked inquiry — a form or a call — as the account counts it.
- March 2026, the split: $8,404 spent · 3,307 clicks · $2.54 a click · 41 conversions · $205 per conversion.
- 1 July – 20 September 2026, the one campaign: $6,609 spent · 8,396 clicks · $0.79 a click · 20% click-through rate · 304 conversions · $21.74 per conversion.
- August 2026: 141 conversions on $3,041 — more than three times March's inquiries on about a third of March's spend.
- 1–20 September 2026: 105 conversions at $19.88 each, the lowest yet.
The lesson is the rule we now apply to every account: one consolidated broad-match campaign with verified tracking, never a per-city split with phrase and exact match. The Paid Media module and the Google Ads capability describe how it is run.
See more builds.
Let's build something worth visiting.
Tell us about the business you run. A proposal comes back in one business day.