Restructuring Google Ads to Balance Scale with Qualified Lead Quality

The challenge

As Australia and New Zealand's most recognised portable container provider, Royal Wolf's digital campaigns increasingly leaned into performance metrics like cost per lead and call volume. But by early 2024, it became clear these metrics weren't translating into qualified commercial opportunities. Instead, the business saw a surge in calls driven by residential clearance queries, lower-margin, one-off requests.

This presented a strategic risk: digital media was hitting volume goals, but underdelivering on the client's true business value, commercial hires. Without a pivot, campaigns faced rising media spend with limited return from its most profitable customer segment.

The analysis

ADMATIC's investigation of conversion path data and platform behaviour revealed a core issue: optimisation drift. Once call tracking was introduced, Google's algorithm prioritised call volume, unaware of the lead quality behind those calls. Our call analysis showed 74% of calls were driven by generic or clearance searches, clear signals of B2C traffic dominance.

This was compounded by outdated campaign structures and a lack of segmentation between high-value (hire) and low-value (clearance, storage) audiences. In effect, Google Adwords had no way of recognising or prioritising the leads that mattered most to the business.

The insight

Digital performance isn't just about more leads, it's about the right leads. By treating all conversions equally, the campaign was rewarding cheap, low-intent traffic at the expense of commercial opportunity. The insight was simple but critical: true business performance required redefining what success looked like, moving away from raw volume toward business-qualified outcomes.

The moment we reframed the KPI as "qualified B2B hire leads," rather than any lead, it unlocked a new direction for strategy, media mix, and optimisation goals.

The strategy

ADMATIC implemented a full Google Ads restructure, consolidating campaigns, introducing negative keyword strategies, and using first-party data to steer bidding toward B2B audiences. Phone call optimisation remained central, but was tightly refocused using new call-optimised Performance Max (PMAX) landing pages, designed to filter out residential and low-intent users.

In tandem, Microsoft Ads and Meta campaigns were updated to reflect location-specific demand. CRO enhancements were introduced across mobile and desktop, and campaign budgets were reallocated based on regions with higher hire conversion history.

ADMATIC's unified measurement framework ensured that offline conversions, not just digital clicks, were tracked and analysed, closing the loop between media investment and lead quality.

The outcome

The restructure yielded mixed but instructive outcomes. Clearance form submissions rose 67% year-on-year, reflecting strong resonance with B2C search behaviour. However, hire forms declined by 14%, confirming the algorithm's continued bias toward cheaper, lower-value leads.

Phone calls became the primary conversion channel, but analysis showed many originated from residential users. Despite improved landing page performance, the campaign highlighted the limitations of volume-based optimisation in complex B2B environments.

The project sharpened the performance of paid media where optimisation more closely aligned with commercial goals. Quantity without quality is not a success metric, especially in a high-stakes, enterprise-driven category like equipment and container hire.