Case Study: Kathmandu Home Services Google Ads
90-day CPA cut on a plumbing + electrical Search account. Client name withheld. Not the same URL as the 2024 local-SEO home-services object.
Narrative: CPA reduction case.
Evidence object
| Client | Withheld. Home services (plumbing + electrical), Kathmandu. Account had run 14 months with a previous agency. |
|---|---|
| Industry | Home services |
| Location | Kathmandu, Nepal |
| Problem | Single broad-match campaign to the homepage. No negatives. Jobs/DIY/competitor queries ~35% of spend. Plumbing CPA hidden at 2× electrical in the aggregate. |
| Starting point | Spend NPR 85,000/month; 18 conversions (calls + forms); CPA NPR 4,722; 580 clicks; CVR 3.1%; Quality Score avg 4.2. |
| Strategy | Stop waste first (negatives), then split campaigns by service with dedicated landing pages, then manual CPC before Target CPA. |
| Implementation | Month 1: 180+ negatives; three campaigns (Emergency plumbing 45% of budget, general plumbing 20%, electrical 35%). Month 2: click-to-call, WhatsApp, NPR price ranges, reviews, LCP 4.2s → 1.8s; Target CPA NPR 3,200 only on Emergency after 45 conversions. Month 3: weekly search-term mining; pause high-CPA groups; offline conversion import for jobs completed. |
| Timeline | 90 days |
| Organic traffic | Not the primary lever (paid Search). |
| Leads / CPA | Conversions 18 → 28/month (+56%). CPA NPR 4,722 → 2,571 (−42%). Spend NPR 85,000 → 72,000 (−15%). CVR 3.1% → 5.8%. |
| Revenue context | Avg job value published as NPR 4,500 plumbing / NPR 6,200 electrical. At NPR 2,571 CPA the account was profitable on first-visit jobs (previously breakeven at best). Company P&L not published. |
| Keywords | Wasted query spend ~35% → ~8%. Month-3 CPAs: Emergency plumbing NPR 2,100 (14 conv.); general NPR 3,400 (6); electrical NPR 2,950 (8). |
| Arjan’s role | Lead strategist: audit, negative-keyword mining, campaign split, landing-page brief, bidding rules, 90-day report. |
| Team | Gurkha Technology PPC + landing-page implementation. |
| Evidence | Google Ads Search Terms, conversion import, GA4. MCC/account screenshots not published. Learnings also record what was missing: earlier offline conversions and call-recording review. |