The Client
SD Homecare is an independent home care provider operating across South London and Surrey. With a team of 45 carers and a growing client base, they needed a consistent stream of both care enquiries and carer recruitment leads to fuel their expansion plans.
The Challenge
When they came to us, SD Homecare was spending £1,800/month on Google Ads with underwhelming results. Their primary issues were:
- High CPCs — Averaging £4.20 per click across all keywords, driving up cost per lead
- Broad match abuse — Campaigns targeting overly broad keywords and appearing for irrelevant searches
- No negative keyword list — Budget being burned on searches like "care home jobs" and "free care assessment"
- Generic ad copy — One set of ads for all campaign themes with no service-specific messaging
- Homepage destination — All traffic sent to the homepage, which had no clear conversion path for enquiries
The result was 6–8 enquiries per month at an average cost of £225 per lead — well above what made commercial sense for the business.
Our Approach
1. Account Audit and Keyword Analysis
We started with a full account audit, reviewing 6 months of search term reports. This revealed that 34% of spend was going to irrelevant queries with zero conversion intent. We documented these and built the foundation of a negative keyword list.
2. Campaign Restructure
We rebuilt the account from scratch, separating campaigns by service type:
- Personal care at home
- Dementia care at home
- Live-in care
- Respite care
- Companionship and domestic support
Each campaign had its own themed ad groups, bespoke ad copy and a dedicated landing page — ensuring message match between what the searcher wanted and what the landing page delivered.
3. Negative Keyword Strategy
We added 120+ negative keywords covering: job-related searches, care home searches (vs domiciliary), geographic areas outside their service area, and informational searches with no commercial intent. This single action reduced wasted spend by approximately 28% in the first month.
4. Ad Copy Rewrite
We rewrote all responsive search ads with care-specific messaging — addressing the emotional concerns of families searching for care (trust, reliability, CQC registration, local presence) rather than generic "best homecare" claims.
5. Landing Page Build
We built five dedicated landing pages — one per campaign theme. Each page had: a service-specific headline, matching search intent to the service page, a simple 3-field enquiry form, trust signals (CQC rating, years in business, testimonials) and call tracking.
6. Conversion Tracking
We set up call tracking for phone enquiries (the majority of care enquiries are phone calls) and form submission tracking in Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads. For the first time, SD Homecare could see exactly which keywords and ads were generating real enquiries.
The Results
Within 60 days of the restructure going live:
- Cost per lead dropped from £225 to £135 — a 40% reduction
- Monthly enquiry volume grew from 6–8 to 16–18 per month with the same budget
- Wasted spend dropped from 34% to under 8% of total budget
- Average CPC dropped from £4.20 to £2.80 through Quality Score improvements
- ROAS (accounting for average client LTV) reached 3.8×
SD Homecare subsequently increased their budget by 40% to scale the successful campaigns. They now generate 25–30 care enquiries per month from Google Ads alone.
What SD Homecare Said
"Before InSync, we were spending money on Google Ads with no real idea what was working. Within two months they'd completely turned it around — we're now getting more enquiries than ever, at a cost that makes commercial sense. The transparency and communication has been exceptional."
