Google Ads for emergency locksmith services at Acuario: cost per contact down to a fraction

Cerrajeria Acuario handles emergency locksmith calls in the northern area of Buenos Aires. Its typical customer is not researching: they are locked out and they search and call in the same minute.

In an emergency service advertising does not create demand, it intercepts it, so the entire job is being present in that search and not spending on the ones that are not urgent.

Before deciding where to invest, we had to know what the account was actually counting, and that is where the real problem showed up.

• Every contact counted twice: the site's WhatsApp plugin and the tag container both fired an event on the same click, and both signals came in as a primary conversion.
• Forms never measured: the native trigger does not work with forms submitted over AJAX, so tracking had never recorded a single submission.
• Data sent to the wrong place: one tag was sending to a misspelled measurement ID.

With those numbers, any budget decision is made on data that does not describe the business.

We fixed measurement first and only then touched the investment: on duplicated data you cannot decide which segment deserves budget.

The audit was the project's first deliverable, not an appendix.

Measurement correction

• Consolidation of a single signal per contact, eliminating the double count.
• Custom detector of the real form submission through the data layer, recovering tracking that had never worked.
• Attribution windows shortened from ninety to thirty days.
• The orphaned conversion action was demoted rather than deleted, to keep its history visible.

Investment concentrated where it responds

• Structure segmented by customer type: individuals with emergencies, offices and shops, and building associations.
• Pause of the segment whose cost per contact was eighteen times worse than the main one.
• Nine search terms accumulating spend without a single contact removed, and budget reallocated to emergencies.

Ads that use what the account already had

• Activation of extensions that existed but were unlinked: call, callouts for twenty four hour service, on site service and free quotes, and sitelinks.
• Removal of the link pointing to a page with zero conversion.
• Rewriting of responsive headlines, with the originals preserved so the change could be reverted.

Architecture and technology

• Google Ads with a structure segmented by customer type and active extensions.
• Tag container and data layer, with a custom form submission detector.
• Every change verified by re reading the API after applying it, not assumed applied.

Learn more about SEM campaign management.

Cost per contact dropped to a fraction of the original and held steady, now with clean measurement behind it.

Starting point

• Cost per contact of 44,220 pesos in the first month.
• Two monthly conversions, on measurement that was double counting.
• Form tracking with not a single submission recorded.

Results

• Cost per contact of 2,576 pesos, held below 3,100 with corrected measurement.
• 107 monthly conversions.
• Cost per click down 53%, from 1,361 to 644 pesos.
• 353 accumulated contacts on 1,316 clicks and 42,409 impressions.

Strategic impact

• The account is concentrated on the only segment that responds, and that holds without daily oversight.
• With one signal per contact, every later decision rests on a number that describes the business.