Chicago, Illinois
CHI12:00 PM
An audit found $48K+ in spend going to irrelevant search terms. We rebuilt the account around intent: $286K in spend returned about $1.4M in attributed revenue in year one, the company's first documented ROI-positive year with paid search.
The problem
EMPIST, a managed IT and cybersecurity firm, was running paid search campaigns using broad-match keywords. An account audit traced more than $48,000 of ad spend to search terms that had nothing to do with buying IT services. With broad match keywords, situations like this are common.
Leads existed, EMPIST just needed to connect a click to a closed deal.
What we did
Higher-intent keywords, a tighter ad structure and dedicated landing pages for each campaign. Conversion tracking was fixed so lead source attribution improved.
Google Ads, CallRail, HubSpot, wired together, so everyone could follow one lead from ad click to form or phone call to opportunity to revenue.
205 calls tracked in 2024 tracked to Google Ads.
Cross-platform reporting built using Agency Analytics tracked SEO, ads, customers, and overall marketing progress.
Three deals, traced click to close
A compliance officer clicked a non-brand IT search ad on Nov 3, 2023 and filled out a form. The campaign was paused a week later. In December 2024 OEM signed a $1.26M managed-services deal, one of nine so far.
Found EMPIST through organic search on Dec 1, 2023, came back twice through brand search ads, and signed a managed-services deal on Feb 14, 2024.
Searched "it company" on July 15, 2024 and clicked an EMPIST ad. A 15-user MSP contract closed about two weeks later.
Paid search · the numbers
Ninety-nine contacts came in from paid search. Fourteen qualified as marketing leads, three were handed to sales, and six became customers, several of them signing more than one contract: twelve deals in all.
$286,081 in ad spend against $1.46M in closed, attributed revenue. Counting deals still open at the end of the period, the figure rises to $1.9M. Roughly five dollars back for every one spent.
Each square is one tracked call. Five turned into deals; one, from the "IT Companies Near Me" campaign, closed at $21,000. Two more from the same period remain open at a combined $30,000 a month.
The results
Ninety-nine contacts, 14 marketing-qualified leads, 6 new customers and 12 deals from $286K in spend, with roughly $1.4M in attributed revenue. The account had never been able to show that before.
The momentum held. In the first quarter of 2026, marketing produced 21 of the company's 39 sales-qualified leads and beat the prior year's SQL volume every month.