Turning a 14 Location Electrician Franchise into a Scalable Local Performing Google Ads Machine

How a centralized Google Ads system increased tracked revenue by 19.7%, lifted qualified leads by 37.8%, and reduced CPL by 29.8% across 14 franchise locations, while spending less.

+19.7%
Tracked revenue
+37.8%
Qualified Leads
−29.8%
Cost Per Lead
4.74x
Revenue-to-Spend ratio

The Challenge

One Brand, Fourteen Different Businesses

From the outside, this business looked like one unified brand with centralized marketing. In reality, it operated like fourteen separate businesses, each with its own staffing, booking behavior, cancellation patterns, pricing realities, and local economics. That is what makes franchise acquisition so fragile in home services.

Performance was being judged largely through the Google Ads interface, but platform reporting could only show front-end activity. It could not reveal what actually got booked, what canceled, or what turned into revenue. As a result, performance conversations became fragmented. Some locations were growing well, while others were overwhelmed by poor-fit demand or operational leakage.
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The issue was not a lack of leads. It was a lack of clarity.

The Core Problem

Clean Dashboards, Messy Reality

Before the system was rebuilt, three issues made performance difficult to evaluate:

Inconsistent lead definitions

  • Without a shared definition of what counted as a lead, CPL discussions were happening without business context.

Incomplete attribution

  • Phone calls were difficult to tie back to spend with enough confidence to make strong decisions.

Blame fell on marketing

  • When bookings dropped or cancellations increased, the issue often defaulted back to “the ads,” even when the real problem was happening later in the operating chain.

This is the central tension in franchise marketing: the brand wants scale and predictability, but each location needs acquisition economics that work locally.

The Turning Point

Taking Full Operational Control

I began consulting in December 2024, but the real inflection point came roughly ten months later, when I took full operational control of the Google Ads accounts across the network. That shift allowed performance to be evaluated through business outcomes rather than platform abstraction, and it made it possible to redesign the acquisition system as a whole instead of patching issues location by location.

To isolate the impact of those changes, I compared ten full weeks immediately before takeover, from August 4, 2025 to October 6, 2025, against ten full weeks immediately after, from October 13, 2025 to December 15, 2025. This helped reduce seasonality noise and made the comparison cleaner.

WHAT CHANGED

Standardization Without Ignoring Local Reality

The goal was not to increase volume at any cost. It was to build a system that could scale across fourteen locations without flattening their differences.

Standardized account structure

  • Campaign structure, naming conventions, and conversion definitions were aligned so performance could be measured consistently across all locations.

Localized acquisition targets

  • Acquisition costs were tuned to downstream behavior and unit economics rather than forced into a single corporate benchmark.

Cleaner attribution

  • Google-Ads-only phone numbers were implemented in ads and dynamically on the website, creating a clearer line from spend to calls, bookings, cancellations, and revenue.

Qualified lead optimization

  • Optimization stopped at raw volume and focused on qualified leads so growth could scale without increasing poor-fit demand.

Measurement Approach

How Performance Was Measured

For this case study, Google Ads reporting was used as an optimization tool, not as the final source of truth. Success was measured through internal dashboards that tracked the full business chain: qualified lead → booking → cancellation → revenue. Only leads that were internally audited and marked as qualified were counted.
That distinction matters because it means the gains shown below reflect business outcomes, not just better-looking platform metrics.

THE IMPACT

What Changed in Ten Weeks

Once the new system was in place, the changes were immediate and measurable.
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Across the network, ad spend declined slightly from $402,936 to $390,112, yet tracked revenue increased from $1,544,257 to $1,848,877, a 19.7% lift. Revenue-to-spend efficiency improved from 3.83x to 4.74x, a 23.7% increase in return.
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The acquisition funnel also scaled in a healthier way. Qualified leads increased from 1,493 to 2,058, up 37.8%, while bookings rose from 1,301 to 1,738, up 33.6%.
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Just as importantly, this growth did not come with lower quality. Cancellation rates improved from 16.45% to 13.86%, which translated to roughly 44–45 fewer cancellations than would have been expected if earlier behavior had held. In a home services business, that is not just a marketing metric. It is operational relief.
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Efficiency improved across the board as well. Cost per qualified lead dropped from $270 to $190, while cost per booking fell from $310 to $224. This created more room for scale without requiring heavier budget pressure.

Performance Summary (14-Location Electrician Franchise)

10 weeks before vs 10 weeks after full takeover

Metric Before Takeover After Takeover Change
Ad Spend $402,936 $390,112 −3.2%
Tracked Revenue $1,544,257 $1,848,877 +19.7%
Revenue-to-Spend Ratio 3.83× 4.74× +23.7%
Qualified Leads 1,493 2,058 +37.8%
Bookings 1,301 1,738 +33.6%
Cost per Qualified Lead (CPL) $270 $190 −29.8%
Cost per Booking (CPB) $310 $224 −27.5%
Cancellation Rate (Weighted) 16.45% 13.86% −2.59 pp

Notes: Performance measured using internal dashboards (qualified lead → booking → cancellation → revenue). Google Ads UI used for optimization signals only.

Honest Tradeoff

Revenue Per Booking Declined

One result deserves explicit transparency: revenue per booking declined by approximately 10.4% during the post-takeover period. This was visible in internal reporting, but the exact cause could not be attributed to marketing alone. In a franchise system, revenue per booking is influenced by pricing, job mix, and sales execution, all of which vary from one location to another.

What matters is the overall business outcome. Even with a lower average ticket, the network still generated more tracked revenue on less spend, while improving efficiency and reducing cancellations. The gains outweighed the tradeoff.

VALIDATION

Why This Was Not a Fluke

To control for seasonality, the early holiday period was also reviewed year over year. Between early November and mid-December, tracked revenue increased by 27.7% year over year while spend declined by more than 21%. Revenue-to-spend efficiency improved by more than 60%, and cancellation rates fell materially.

Quarterly trends supported the same conclusion. From late 2024 through 2025, revenue-to-spend improved steadily while CPL, CPB, and cancellation rates all moved in the right direction. By mid-December 2025, the network was operating at a 4.6x revenue-to-spend ratio with healthier unit economics overall.

CONCLUSION

The Takeaway

This case study is not really about outperforming Google Ads. It is about building an acquisition system that respects the full operating chain: ad → qualified lead → answered call → booking → kept appointment → revenue. Marketing influences the front end of that chain, but operations determine what happens after the lead comes in.

Franchise growth works best when the system is standardized enough to scale, localized enough to remain profitable, and disciplined enough to move based on business reality instead of averages or platform metrics alone. In this case, the ten weeks after takeover delivered higher revenue, lower costs, stronger efficiency, and fewer cancellations across fourteen independent businesses.

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Results · Home services

How a 14-location electrician franchise cut cost per booked job from $300 to $224 on about the same spend

Usama Khan · Figures from the franchise’s own records

In the 10 weeks after I took over its Google Ads, a 14-location electrician franchise booked 1,738 jobs from the ads, up from 1,301 in the 10 weeks before. Ad spend stayed flat at about $390,000. Cost per booked job fell from $300 to $224, and tracked revenue rose 19.7%, from $1.54M to $1.85M.

Every figure here comes from the franchise’s own booking and revenue records, not from Google Ads. Two things went the other way, and both are on this page: revenue per booking fell about 10%, and three more locations were running ads after the takeover than before.

Want this checked on your own account? The Booked-Job Read is a free 30-minute review of your Google Ads and LSA with me. Get my Booked-Job Read

On this page

What did the 10 weeks look like?

10 weeks before vs 10 weeks after I took over (weeks starting Aug 4–Oct 6 vs Oct 13–Dec 15, 2025)
Measure10 weeks before10 weeks after
Cost per booked job$300$224
Booked jobs1,3011,738+33.6%
Ad spend$390,831$390,112−0.2%
Qualified leads1,3471,497+11.1%
Tracked revenue$1.54M$1.85M+19.7%
Tracked revenue per $1 of ad spend$3.95$4.74

Booked jobs rose faster than qualified leads. The franchise’s records count the two separately, so read each row against its own before number.

In the 10 weeks after, the locations running ads averaged roughly $13,000 a month each on Google Ads. Seven of the 13 spent under $15,000 a month.

What was the account like before?

From the outside it looked like one brand with one marketing plan. Inside, it ran like fourteen businesses. Each location had its own staff, its own booking habits and its own job values.

Performance was judged mostly inside Google Ads. Google Ads can show clicks and calls. It can’t show what got booked or what turned into revenue. Three things made the account hard to judge:

  • No shared definition of a lead. Cost-per-lead conversations happened without the business context behind them.
  • Calls were hard to tie to spend. Not with enough confidence to move budget on.
  • The ads took the blame by default. When bookings dropped, the answer was “the ads”, even when the drop happened after the phone rang.

When did I take over?

I started advising in December 2024, alongside the previous agency. In October 2025 I took full control of the Google Ads accounts across the network, and I still run them.

To isolate that change, this page compares the 10 full weeks right before the takeover (weeks starting Aug 4 to Oct 6, 2025) with the 10 full weeks right after (weeks starting Oct 13 to Dec 15, 2025). Back-to-back windows keep the season roughly the same.

What changed?

  • One account structure. Campaign structure, naming and conversion definitions were made the same across every location, so the locations could be compared.
  • A target per location. Each location got its own target, set from its own bookings and job values, not one number for the whole brand.
  • Cleaner call tracking. Google-Ads-only phone numbers went into the ads and onto the website, so a call could be traced from the click to the booking and the revenue.
  • Bidding on qualified leads. Google was pointed at leads the franchise marked as qualified, not at every call.

How was this measured?

Google Ads was used to steer the account, not to judge it. The franchise’s weekly records track the chain from qualified lead to booking to revenue, and only leads the franchise marked as qualified count.

Ten locations ran ads in the before weeks and 13 in the after weeks. Ad spend is from the same weekly records. Those records credit some jobs to ads that might have come anyway. None of this is a forecast for your business.

What got worse?

Revenue per booking fell about 10%, from about $1,187 to about $1,064. Pricing, job mix and how each office sells all move that number, and I can’t pin it on the ads alone. Tracked revenue still rose, because there were more bookings.

The after weeks had more locations running ads. Three locations that weren’t spending before were spending after. With the same 10 locations only, spend fell 6.8%, booked jobs rose 24.3%, and cost per booked job fell from $309 to $232. Qualified leads for those 10 rose 1.4%.

What would I take from this?

The chain runs from the ad to a qualified lead, an answered call, a booking, a kept appointment and revenue. The ads move the front of that chain. The office moves the rest. Judge the ads on the front, and show the office where the back drops.

A franchise needs one structure so the locations can be compared, and a target per location so each one stays profitable.

Questions owners ask about this

Is this one company or fourteen?

One franchise brand with 14 locations. Each location has its own Google Ads account.

Why not judge it in Google Ads?

Google Ads sees calls and forms. It doesn’t see which became booked jobs or what they paid. The franchise’s records do.

Did spend go down?

It stayed about the same: $390,831 before and $390,112 after. The gain came from booking more jobs on the same money.

Would this work for one location?

The method is the same. One location has fewer booked jobs for Google to learn from, so it takes longer. One electrical location from the same group went from $276 to $180 per booked job.

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