NC Handyman Services London reaches target ROAS and grows the team within six months of launching Google Ads

Sarah has been a great help with my marketing. She’s professional, responsive, and has given me some really useful advice to improve my business and attract more customers. Highly recommend her!” Nico, Owner

The Client

Local London Business | SME | Handyman & Decorating Services

NC Handyman Services London is a West London handyman business based in Shepherd's Bush, offering painting and decorating, plumbing, and general home repairs. The business had recently invested in a new website and was ready to grow - with a clear goal of bringing on additional employees to expand capacity.

The Challenge

NC Handyman came to Sarah-Jayne Creative in June 2025 looking for a Google Ads partner. The business had never run paid search before, and had a small budget to work with — meaning every pound needed to work hard from day one. The priority was to prove the channel could deliver a return before scaling investment further.

Our Approach

• Focused the campaign on painting and decorating first — identified as the service with the strongest margins and profitability, making it the most efficient place to start with a limited budget.

• Built a tight campaign structure from the outset, backed by thorough keyword research and strong ad creative, to make sure the small initial spend was as targeted and efficient as possible.

• Recommended updates to the client's new website to improve on-site conversion, so that traffic driven by the ads had the best possible chance of converting into enquiries.

• Monitored performance closely and increased budget in step with proven conversions, scaling investment as the campaign demonstrated results rather than before.

Refining the Targeting

By March 2026 the campaign had scaled to its strongest month yet - 40 conversions at a cost per conversion of £12.92, on the back of steady month-on-month growth since launch. With a solid volume base established, we carried out a thorough clean-up of the account: 46 negative keywords were added across four lists to filter out irrelevant searches (brand names, out-of-area enquiries, and services outside what NC Handyman offers), as is common after large changes (not usually recommended but due to google switching up how it handles keywords, we needed an overhaul), performance dipped while Google's algorithm recalibrated to the new signals. Cost per conversion briefly climbed as high as £41 in the fortnight that followed, before gradually easing back through the rest of April. We expected this: a clean-up removes wasted spend, but it also resets some of the learnings the campaign had built up, and it takes a few weeks for performance to find its new, more efficient footing.

Cutting Budget, Not Results

With the account clean and performance stabilising, budget was reduced in two deliberate stages to concentrate spend on the most efficient traffic the clean-up had surfaced, rather than assume more spend was still needed to hit the same numbers.

It paid off.

By June, conversion rate had climbed to 21.82% - nearly double the 12.7% average of the growth phase, and cost per conversion had fallen to £10.54, one of the most efficient months of the entire campaign. July held the gains, with a 21.85% conversion rate and £9.68 cost per conversion, showing it wasn't a one-off. Measured against the Aug 2025 - Mar 2026 average, June and July delivered a 72% higher conversion rate and 20% lower cost per conversion, on 16% less monthly spend.

The Results

Enquiries began coming in within the first month of launch - a strong result for a small budget, and one we put down to the strength of the underlying campaign set-up, targeting and ad creative rather than spend alone.

Across the full campaign to date, Painting & Decorating alone has generated 275 conversions. Within six months of getting started, NC Handyman Services hit the goal that mattered most: bringing on a new employee to support the growing business.