Case study
One national brand. Ten local lead markets.
The Good Feet Store had 10 retail locations across Australia and a paid-search programme that treated too much of that demand as though it behaved the same way everywhere. It didn't. Each store had a different catchment, different local competition, different lead volume and different capacity to turn enquiries into appointments.
The challenge
The Good Feet Store did not have one paid-search market. It had 10, competing for budget inside an account without enough regional targeting logic. At the same time, broad targeting was attracting traffic that did not convert consistently, cost per lead was too high to scale confidently, and lead volume moved enough from month to month to make store-level planning difficult.
At the national level, paid search looked inefficient. At the store level, it was difficult to see where additional budget could produce useful leads without making the whole account more expensive. The answer was not to push harder nationally. It was to make the unit of optimisation smaller.
A national account was hiding ten different local problems.
- 10 locations competing for one budget without regional targeting logic
- Broad targeting attracting traffic that did not convert consistently
- Cost per lead too high to scale spend confidently
- Lead volume too uneven for store-level planning
- Strong brand video assets not yet in use
The result
More than twice the leads, at a lower cost for each one.
The 133% was not one national average. It was built store by store. Once the underlying economics were healthier, more budget could be added without magnifying the inefficiency that had existed before.
- +133%
- Paid leads Published case study
- −35%
- Cost per lead Published case study
- +115%
- Conversion rate Published case study
- 630
- Paid leads in the peak month January 2023
The insight
The account did not need one better campaign. It needed ten better local ones.
Search behaviour, competition and store capacity changed from region to region. A lead in one catchment did not necessarily cost the same, convert the same or have the same value as a lead somewhere else.
So we stopped asking how Google Ads was performing nationally, and started asking where the next useful lead could be acquired efficiently, and which store could actually use it. That gave the programme a much clearer basis for allocating budget.
The strategy
Fix search efficiency locally. Then scale the wider media programme.
- Tighten the intent being bought.The existing programme was attracting too much low-intent traffic. We rebuilt search around the queries most closely associated with The Good Feet Store's offering, added stronger negative-query control and aligned bidding with lead value rather than click volume.
- Give every location its own economics.Each of the 10 stores received its own geo-targeted campaign and catchment boundaries. Budget, bids and performance could then be assessed against local competition, conversion behaviour and store capacity rather than one blended national average, so high-performing locations could take more investment without forcing the same decision onto markets behaving differently.
- Add awareness only after capture worked.The Good Feet Store already had strong video assets. Once search was operating efficiently, we extended the media mix into YouTube and BVOD to put the brand in front of relevant audiences earlier in the decision. Search remained the high-intent capture layer; the role of video was to build awareness around it.
The structure
One brand. Ten catchments. Ten sets of economics.
Before
1
National account, judged on one blended average
After
10
Store catchments, each with its own budget, bids and cost per lead
What we did
Search rebuild. Reduced low-intent query exposure, strengthened negative-keyword control, aligned bidding to lead generation and reviewed landing pages so paid traffic arrived somewhere appropriate to convert.
Regional campaign architecture. Split the programme across 10 store catchments, with local targeting, location-specific landing experiences and budget decisions informed by regional conversion performance and store capacity.
Budget allocation. Rebalanced investment around what each regional campaign was actually producing, rather than distributing spend as though every market behaved equally.
Video media. Added YouTube and BVOD using The Good Feet Store's existing video creative once the search programme had a stronger efficiency base.
The takeaway
National growth was built locally.
The Good Feet Store did not need more traffic pushed through one national advertising machine. It needed paid media capable of recognising that each store operated in a different local market. We tightened the intent being bought, gave each location its own campaign economics and let investment move according to what each catchment could actually produce. Only then was broader awareness media layered around it.
The lead engine scaled because the account stopped treating ten different markets like one.
More work
eCommerce JettProof Different buyer motivations required different paid-search experiences. Paid search & media 
eCommerce Hobbies Direct Product economics determined where paid investment deserved to scale. Search strategy & intelligence · Paid search & media · SEO & search performance · Data, measurement & insights