Chamblee Fence Company (Georgia, USA)—recognized as the BEST FENCE COMPANY in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. This family-owned and operated company has been serving customers since 1959 and has won the Consumers Choice Award for 11 consecutive years. From the lumber yard to your front yard, they are committed to excellence.
Marketing Link began working with Chamblee Fence Company in December 2023.
The main tasks were to regain access to marketing services from previous marketers and to streamline advertising campaigns.
We started by auditing the Google Ads account. We only gained access to Google Ads and not Google Analytics.
Audit
We made the 18-page audit of the Google Ads campaigns with detailed steps for improving Ads.
Before working with us, Chamblee Fence Company averaged the following conversions:
- 34 calls per month from Google Ads
- A total of 183 leads per month from all channels, including calls, forms, and MySalesman quotes.
Impressed by our audit, Chamblee Fence decided to start working with us on PPC (pay-per-click advertising) less than a week after our initial contact and also began discussions about managing their SEO.
We developed a weekly plan for managing Google Ads, creating campaigns, and fixing analytics issues.
The first task was to sort out access to analytics, CallRail, WP Engine, and other systems.
Analytics
Normally, we don’t request hosting access, but in this case, the previous marketer had changed the passwords on WP Engine. Fortunately, the CEO’s email was listed as the administrator everywhere, so we were able to reset the passwords and remove unnecessary users.
CallRail wasn’t set up correctly:
- Only two out of five numbers were used.
- Phone number swapping was implemented on only a few pages designated for Google Ads traffic, yet 40% of the pages receiving Google Ads traffic did not have the phone numbers changed as required.
We created a separate spreadsheet for comparing real numbers with data from GA4, also created GA4 from scratch because we couldn’t restore the original one.
We set up:
- Dynamic CallRail call tracking.
- Fixed on all pages phone changing issues.
- Tracking goals for website form submissions.
- Tracking goals for click on emails.
- Tracking goals for clicks on My Salesman button (a platform popular among fence companies, but with limited tracking capabilities, so we assume that 5 clicks on the quote page equals 1 requested quote and set the value at 0.2).
We also provided a checklist of services that the client should verify access to, including:
- Domain registrar access
- Hosting access
- WordPress admin panel access
- FTP access
- Database access
- CloudFlare access (if used)
- CDN access (if used)
Both the Digital Marketing department and the client should have access to:
- Google Analytics
- Google Ads
- Google Tag Manager
- Google My Business
- Optionally, WordPress admin panel access
PPC
When we started, there were:
- 5 active search campaigns (text-based).
- 1 active video campaign on YouTube.
- 1 active Performance Max campaign.
In the first month, we added 9 new search campaigns in SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups) for cheaper CPC (Cost Per Click) in this competitive market, bringing the total to 16 campaigns.
The previous contractor had not actively managed the account. The Google Ads history showed only a few monthly budget adjustments, usage of only broad keywords, outdated extended ads, and a lack of ad extensions.
Results of the first month of work
In the first month, we successfully completed:
- Added additional keywords in exact and phrase to current active groups.
- Created additional ads with 12 headlines and four descriptions each and made new campaigns.
- Added negative brand name keywords to non-brand name campaigns.
- Added as negative competitors brands name keywords all campaigns.
- Created a separate search ads campaign for competitor’s keywords.
- Launched a search brand name campaign.
- Launched GDN (Display) remarketing.
- Set up separate search campaigns in the SKAG strategy for a lower CPC.
- Provided the most important services for optimizing advertising campaigns, including weekly optimization.
- Changed URLs in “types” campaigns from homepage to special pages (wood pages—chambleefence.com/wood-fences/, vinyl—chambleefence.com/vinyl-fences/).
- Removed GDN placements from search campaigns.
- Changed non-main goals like add to cart to secondary goals.
- Added audiences to Video.
- Changed old 2023 Year in Headlines to new one.
- Worked with Google Recommendations (doing good, denying bad).
- Added signals to PMax.
- Excluded underperforming placements from display/video.
- Worked with search terms (adding “bad” to negative keywords and “good” keywords from
- Made a report and plan for a new period.
In the first month, we achieved 54 conversions. The tracking wasn’t fully operational the entire month, so there were actually more leads in MySalesman. We also adjusted settings in CallRail from one phone number tracking all visitors to five numbers on more pages.
The average CPL (Cost Per Lead) was reduced to $125.48 from $191.
The comment from the Senior PPC Specialist
Previously, the average client’s Ads budget was $6,000 per month across the whole state of Georgia. With us, the client narrowed their focus to the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, despite many excluded areas, and increased the budget to $10,000 monthly.
Adapting to Google’s algorithms and the existing settings took us two months to achieve this because we aimed to continuously improve the Cost Per Lead (CPL). Simply scaling the budget usually reduces efficiency, so we incrementally scaled our efforts.
We started with the ‘Atlanta Fence Company’ campaign, followed by the ‘Steel Fences’ campaign, and then moved on to localized campaigns like ‘Fencing nearby,’ ‘near me,’ ‘in my area,’ ‘close to me,’ and ‘local.’ After achieving more than 10 conversions per campaign, we shifted to a ‘Maximum Conversion’ strategy and manually adjusted the Cost Per Click (CPC) in manual bid campaigns.
Also, Google did not use the entire $10,000 budget because:
- We achieved the maximum percentage of impressions.
- We maintained a low bid rate.
- We implemented restrictions in our bid strategy.
- We set precise match types in some campaigns to avoid irrelevant queries.
- We resolved conflicts with other campaigns over duplicate search terms.
At the fourth month reached 168 conversions from Google, and the CPL reduced to $60.59.
Not all areas in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area are relevant for targeting fence contracting, so we created precise radius location settings.
Registered Google Local Ads (Google Guarantee), which is a great leads channel for service businesses like: Fence Company or Home Improvement companies, or similar.
Achievements in Google Ads
- CPL decreased by 68.58%
- Quantity of leads scaled for 5 times (budget scaled +60%).
SEO
Before starting, we analyzed their competitors’ website organic traffic:
- bravofencecompany.com (8,397 visitors per month).
- alliedfence.com (639 visitors per month).
- superiorfenceandrail.com (44,484 visitors per month).
- apexfencecompany.com (373 visitors per month).
In comparison, Chamblee Fence has 1,919 visitors per month. We also reviewed their quantity of press releases:
We began with an optimal SEO package, which included eight human-written blog posts and eight press releases each month. Our decision to avoid AI-generated content was validated when Google announced in April 2024 that it would only rank human-written content.
Given that not all areas of the Atlanta Metropolitan Area are equally relevant for fence contracting, we created several Local SEO city pages for the most pertinent locations.
Our on-page optimization efforts included:
- Fixing the favicon.
- Fixing meta: 30 missing description errors, 6 duplicate title errors, 1 multiple H1 tag error, 18 missing H1 errors, 547 pages with 404 errors.
- Checking 5,413 external links.
- Developing new meta tag templates for presets and static pages.
- Providing recommendations for images larger than 100kb.
- Adding alternative text to images.
- Enhancing the page speed of main pages.
- Correcting microdata markup.
- Conducting Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and fixing non-functioning buttons.
For some WordPress template errors, such as:
Invited a developer to assist. Most changes were made by our internal team of SEO experts.
We started to see the results of these SEO efforts by the fourth month:
Comparing January to April 2023 with January to April 2024, we achieved a 65% increase in traffic year-over-year.
Our team systematically scans for issues and continuously seeks ways to improve.
We plan to continue scaling up to reach 5,000 visitors from organic sources monthly. After achieving this milestone, we’ll upgrade to a more aggressive package that includes 25 press releases per month.
Results
5 times
Google Ads leads increased
by 65%
SEO traffic YoY increased
