Arizona Agency Automates LSA Lead Dispute Process, Earns $18K in Refunds

Case Study

• Agency: 5 Fold Marketing
• Client: Home Services
• Software: WhatConverts

“Lead Intelligence is definitely working, and we're starting to use it a lot more. I would say within 60 days all of our clients are going to be on it. And we're going to use that as a major gauge of the quality of the leads.”

The Challenge:

5 Fold Marketing, an Arizona-based agency, uses ROI-based marketing to achieve impressive results for its clients—144% conversion rate boost, 300% increase in revenue, 42% more website conversions. One client, the largest HVAC company in their region, grew from $3 million in revenue to $27 million in the 13 years they’ve worked together.

But this story isn’t about that.

Instead, it’s about how skilled hands can creatively use the right tools and insights to adjust to industry changes.

For example, Google local service ads (LSAs) have exploded in popularity over the past 3 years, tripling in search volume. This ad type lets service providers request refunds for unqualified leads. And agencies that have developed expertise with LSAs (like 5 Fold) can offer their clients a serious competitive advantage.

The challenge with one client, however, was that finding unqualified leads to dispute was especially time-consuming since they generated hundreds of phone call leads every month.

In order to minimize wasted time, maximize LSA returns, and keep their clients happy, 5 Fold Marketing needed to:

1. Find an efficient way to identify low-quality leads
2. Consider a variety of qualification factors (call duration, spotted keywords, customer journey)
3. Generate additional insights to offer their clients even more value

The Approach:

“What we do is filter the lead data—maybe there's like 400, 500 phone calls. And we simply can’t afford to listen to every one of those. So what we end up doing is we use that Lead Score from the transcripts to determine the ones that are most likely spam or bad calls, only listen to those, and then we go and dispute those for an LSA refund.”

5 Fold Marketing was already using WhatConverts for marketing attribution and lead tracking. That said, they could also solve their LSA challenges using a combination of Lead Scoring and Lead Intelligence.

With Lead Scoring, 5 Fold Marketing could assign point values to leads based on specific criteria.

For instance:

• Call duration was longer than 60 seconds = +30 points
• Call duration was shorter than 30 seconds = -30 points
• Lead mentioned keywords like “schedule”, “appointment”, or “quote” in their call recording/transcription = +50 points
• Call came from zip code outside of service area = -40 points
• Lead visited a specific service page = +15 points

Lower scores would mean less qualified leads and higher ones would mean more qualified.

Now, Lead Scoring is possible to do manually. However, the real benefits come when it’s combined with Lead Intelligence.

Learn More About Lead Scoring + Lead Intelligence

With Lead Intelligence, 5 Fold could set up rules to automate this scoring process almost entirely. So rather than scoring all their leads themselves, 5 Fold could instead let Lead Intelligence score every lead according to the criteria they set.

Then, they could filter by low lead scores and review only the calls with the highest likelihood of being accepted for a refund.

In the end, Lead Scoring combined with Lead Intelligence would mean the agency could go from listening to hundreds of calls per month to listening to only a handful.

The Result:

“It’s even been helpful with customer service, too, because we can see the amount of volume of leads coming in, the Lead Score being very high, and the quote value being very good. But then the revenue is down. Okay, there's something wrong within the sales process, and you can quickly identify that.”

As a result of 5 Fold Marketing’s approach, the agency was able to automate much of the process for finding low-quality leads using Lead Intelligence and Lead Scoring.

In 2023 alone, they earned back $18,000 in disputed leads refunds from Google for a single LSA account. Plus, automation removed much of this process’s expense, driving the ROI of this channel even higher.

Finally, 5 Fold Marketing discovered additional insights from the data this approach generated. For example, they could compare Lead Scores for various channels to close rates from the client’s sales team. If scores were high but close rates were low, they could then identify areas where the sales team could improve.

Ultimately, the agency was able to automate time-intensive processes, offer clients more value, and gain a competitive edge in a constantly changing industry.

Results Highlights

• Earned $18,000+ back in disputed leads refunds for one LSA account
• Automatically picked out disputable leads from thousands of calls w/ Lead Intelligence
• Used Lead Scoring to identify customer service/sales problems in just a few clicks

Want grow your ROI from channels like local service ads? Start your free 14-day trial of WhatConverts today!