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Good Budget, Bad Results For The Staging Company
The Staging Company helps realtors, builders, and pro stagers sell homes faster through high-impact furniture rental and staging. Their promise is simple: make every listing show-ready, without the operational mess.
They had been running Google Ads for months. The budget was there, and clicks were also coming in. But the leads were inconsistent, hard to qualify, and often not ready to buy.
Before they spent any more on ads, they were looking for clarity. So they brought us(OneMetric) in to rebuild the funnel from the ground up and bring some clarity with results.
Why the Pipeline Stayed Quiet
Campaign structure collapsed everything into one track
The Google Ads account was set up so that all audiences; realtors, builders, and professional stagers were grouped into a single campaign. They were all seeing the same keywords, the same ad copy, and the same landing page, regardless of their specific needs or priorities.
This meant the messaging never felt tailored to any audience. Without separate targeting or segmentation, the campaign couldn’t adjust based on intent or behavior. As a result, when performance began to drop, there was no way to pinpoint which audience, keyword group, or ad variation was responsible.
The impact was felt on both sides of the revenue team: sales received a steady flow of leads they couldn’t qualify, and marketing couldn’t explain where or why things were going wrong.
No negative keywords meant money burned on junk
There was no negative keyword list in place, so Google displayed ads for unrelated searches such as “free staging tips” and “cheap DIY furniture hacks.” These searches attracted users who were never going to become customers, yet their clicks still cost money.
The problem was two-fold: the daily ad budget was being drained by people outside the target market, and many of these irrelevant visitors still filled out forms. This left sales teams with the time-consuming task of sorting through a high volume of low-quality leads just to find the few that might be worth pursuing.
Conversions were being tracked, but not trusted
In the existing setup, all user actions were treated as conversions whether it was clicking a button, submitting a generic inquiry, or requesting a full consultation. This lack of distinction meant that minor interactions and high-value actions carried the same weight in reporting.
While the dashboard displayed strong conversion numbers, most of these actions didn’t result in meaningful conversations or sales. This created a misleading picture of performance, making it harder to make informed decisions on where to improve.
No retargeting meant lost leads stayed lost
If someone visited the landing page, showed interest, but didn’t fill out a form, there was no plan to re-engage them. No retargeting campaigns were running, and there was no follow-up sequence to maintain their interest.
As a result, even qualified prospects who had shown intent were leaving without a reminder or a second chance to engage. Without retargeting, many high-potential leads simply disappeared after their first visit.
What We Fixed to Turn the Funnel Around
Splitting campaigns to match how buyers actually think
This meant every audience now saw messaging written specifically for them. It also allowed us to track performance and spending by audience type, making it easier to see exactly which group was driving results.
The changes eliminated keyword overlap and removed the “one-size-fits-all” problem. Each campaign had a specific role, a clearly defined audience, and cleaner performance data.
Rewrote the ads and landing pages to focus on value
We also revised the landing pages so that the tone, design, and messaging aligned closely with the ads. This meant that when someone clicked, they found exactly what they were expecting, reinforcing trust and improving the likelihood of conversion.
This consistency not only increased the conversion rate but also improved the quality of leads coming through.
Retargeting to bring back high-fit visitors
Negative keywords to stop wasting budget
We built and applied a negative keyword list to block these types of searches. This immediately cut off low-quality traffic and reduced spam form submissions, ensuring the ad spend was directed toward qualified prospects.
Conversion tracking to reflect what actually matters
Results Once the System Started Doing Its Job
The changes didn’t just clean up the campaigns. They changed how the team thought about paid traffic. And the numbers tell the full story:
7.5× more qualified leads
More leads came in, but more importantly, the right leads came in. Campaigns spoke to specific buyers, and form submissions reflected that.
Sales started seeing leads they actually wanted to talk to and they closed faster.
67% drop in cost to acquire a customer
By cutting out irrelevant clicks and junk traffic, the same budget started going further.
The sales team wasn’t wasting time on leads that didn’t fit. Fewer dead ends meant fewer wasted hours and a lot less money spent to win each deal.
6× return on ad spend
Once the algorithm had real conversion signals, performance lifted on its own. There was no budget change, but there were more customers because of the better structure.
Google Ads attribution grew from 7% to 44% of total revenue
Before the fix, Google Ads barely showed up in revenue reporting. Afterwards, it became a top contributor.
If you're also spending on paid ads but still not seeing qualified leads or real pipeline, maybe it’s not the traffic but the system behind it.
