CASE STUDY · GOOGLE ADS
iPlayology: approximately the same monthly lead volume with 42% less ad spend
iPlayology is an indoor playground and party venue, and HighLead has run its Google Ads account for 12 months. Average cost per lead fell from $36 to $21 while monthly lead volume remained approximately 83 to 86 leads.
Same lead volume. 42% less ad spend.
42% less
Average monthly ad spend, $3,038 to $1,767
$36 to $21
Average cost per lead
83 to 86
Average leads per month across both periods
The situation
An indoor playground and party venue has to be found by people deciding where to take their children this weekend, or where to hold the next celebration. That decision gets made close to the moment of searching, which is the demand paid search exists to catch.
Google Ads was already running before HighLead, and it was working. Across the 6 months before the engagement the account averaged $3,038 in monthly spend and 86 tracked leads a month, which works out to $36 for every inquiry the tracking captured. Nothing in those numbers says the channel was broken.
That made this a different brief from the usual one. The account did not need rescuing, and the lead count did not need multiplying. The question was whether the same monthly volume of inquiries could be bought for materially less, and whether an account tuned that way would hold over a full year rather than for a month or 2.
What we did
This engagement is Google Ads and nothing else. No CRM, no AI, no text messaging, no review platform and no booking software was installed as part of the work reported on this page.
Campaign strategy
The account was planned against an efficiency target rather than a volume one: cost per lead coming down while the lead count stayed where it was.
Account and campaign structure
Campaigns and ad groups rebuilt around what a parent actually types when they are choosing a venue, separated tightly enough that the ad and the page match the search.
Keyword and search-term work
Search terms reviewed continuously, with negative keyword lists added to every week, so spend stops going to searches that were never going to make contact.
Ad copy
Ads written against the specific search rather than 1 general message stretched across the account.
Landing-page alignment
The page a click lands on treated as part of the campaign, so what the ad offers is what the visitor finds.
Conversion tracking
Forms, calls and chats tracked and verified, so the account optimizes toward inquiries rather than toward clicks.
Bid and budget management
Bids and daily spend managed against what each campaign returns, with money moved off the parts of the account paying more per inquiry.
Ongoing optimization and reporting
Weekly work on search terms, bids, spend allocation, ad copy and audiences, reported with cost per lead beside the lead count.
The results
The table shows both periods as reported in the Google Ads account. Every figure is a monthly average, because the 2 periods are not the same length.
| Google Ads | 6 months before HighLead (monthly averages) | 12 months with HighLead (monthly averages) |
|---|---|---|
| Average monthly ad spend | $3,038 | $1,767 |
| Average leads per month | 86 | 83 |
| Average cost per lead | $36 | $21 |
What that works out to
- 42% less ad spend
- Approximately the same monthly lead volume, 83 to 86 leads
- Average cost per lead fell from $36 to $21
How to read this comparison. The 2 periods are different lengths: 6 months before the engagement against 12 months of it. That is why every figure in the table is an average per month rather than a total, and why no combined spend and no combined lead count appears on this page. Lead volume did not go up. It moved from 86 a month to 83 a month, which is why the claim is approximately the same volume rather than the same or more. What is being reported is efficiency. The account bought a comparable number of inquiries each month for 42% less spend, and held that across 12 months rather than 1 good stretch.
How to read these numbers
Where the figures come from
- Spend, lead and cost-per-lead figures come from platform reporting inside the client's own Google Ads account.
- Both periods are stated on the table. The period before HighLead covers 6 months. The period with HighLead covers 12 months.
- Every figure is an average per month across its own period, not a total.
- Cost per lead is reported as it appears in the account for each period.
What a lead means here
- Leads are tracked lead actions, meaning forms, calls and chats, with automated junk actions excluded.
- A tracked lead action is somebody making contact. It is an inquiry, not a transaction.
What is not being claimed
- Not customers, not booked parties, not visits, not revenue. These counts are inquiries recorded in the ad account, and they say nothing about what the venue calendar looked like.
- Not a fuller calendar. No attendance, occupancy or booking figure appears here, because none has been validated for this account.
- Not a volume increase. Average monthly leads moved from 86 to 83, and the table shows it.
- Not a total. No combined spend, no combined lead count and no annual saving figure is presented, because the periods are different lengths.
- Not a projection. This is 1 company's account over 2 stated periods, in 1 category, with its own market and its own pricing.
- Not a guarantee of any outcome.
- Not an endorsement, certification or Partner status from Google.
- No claim about anything that happened after the inquiry arrived. This engagement is Google Ads, so no CRM, response-time, follow-up, chat or booking system is being credited here.
What this looks like for your business
The right starting point depends on the constraint, not on the category.
If the constraint is opportunities, meaning not enough inquiries are arriving, or they cost so much that paid search is hard to keep funding, that is HighLead Growth, and the work above is what it looks like inside a paid search account.
If the inquiries already arrive and get lost, meaning calls go unanswered on a weekend, inquiries sit without a second touch and nobody can see where an opportunity stands, cheaper leads will not fix that. That is HighLead System, and this case study is not the proof for it.
Explore HighLead SystemIf the problem spans both, plus analytics, integrations, AI and the operational work joining them together, that is HighLead Supercharge. It is the escalation rather than the default, and it is not where this account started.
Explore HighLead SuperchargeNot sure which of those describes you? The category pages cover how different businesses lose the work and which path tends to fit.
See who HighLead works withMore results
Every case study we publish carries the comparison period, the metric definition and the qualifications on the same page as the figure.
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