How Better Basements & Waterproofing Stopped Wasting Ad Spend and Built a Predictable Lead Engine

Better Basements & Waterproofing • Home Services — Basement & Foundation Waterproofing • Predoxa (AI + Human Expertise)

• 50%+ — Reduction in Wasted Ad Spend
• 3× — More Qualified Leads per Dollar
• 2× — Increase in Estimate Call Volume

Overview

Better Basements & Waterproofing is a licensed, results-driven home services company serving homeowners, property managers, and real estate professionals across the Pacific Northwest. Specializing in basement waterproofing and foundation repair, the company operates in a high-value service market where individual job values can range from several thousand dollars to over $20,000.

Because of the premium nature of the service, every marketing dollar must generate qualified estimate calls—not just clicks or website traffic. The business relied heavily on Google Ads to drive inbound leads across Portland, Eugene, and Vancouver, but despite continued ad spend, the account struggled to produce high-quality opportunities consistently.

When Better Basements partnered with Predoxa (AI + Human Expertise), the objective was not simply to increase traffic or launch more campaigns. The goal was to eliminate wasted spend, improve lead quality, and rebuild the advertising system around predictable, conversion-focused growth.

Challenges

Despite steady investment into Google Ads, the account had scaled without a unified performance strategy. Campaigns operated independently, budgets drifted toward low-intent traffic, and Google's algorithm lacked the conversion signals needed to consistently optimize toward booked estimate calls.

"We were spending the budget but the calls weren't matching up. There were too many campaigns pulling in different directions and we couldn't tell what was actually working." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership

As the account expanded, inefficiencies compounded. Spend increased, but the relationship between advertising costs and actual booked jobs became increasingly unclear.

• Fragmented Campaign Architecture — Campaign structures limited impression share and prevented Google from efficiently matching high-intent homeowner searches
• Weak Ad Relevance & Creative Performance — Ads lacked a structured testing framework, suppressing Quality Scores and increasing acquisition costs
• Misaligned Bidding Strategy — Campaigns optimized for clicks instead of booked estimate calls, creating low-quality lead flow
• Inefficient Budget Allocation — Shared budgets allowed underperforming campaigns to consume spend away from higher-performing segments
• Untapped Audience Intelligence — Performance Max campaigns lacked audience signals, forcing Google's AI to optimize without customer data
• Broad Geographic & Demographic Spend — Targeting was not refined using historical conversion data, spreading spend across low-value regions and audiences

For a business operating in a competitive, high-ticket service industry, these inefficiencies created a ceiling on growth and made scaling unpredictable.

Solution

When Predoxa conducted its audit, the focus was not on adding more campaigns or increasing overall spend—it was on fixing the structural inefficiencies preventing the account from performing efficiently. Using Predoxa's AI-driven analysis and human strategic expertise, the audit mapped campaign-level waste, bidding misalignment, audience gaps, and creative inefficiencies to identify exactly where budget was being lost.

"The audit made it obvious — we weren't losing to competitors, we were losing to our own account structure. Once Predoxa mapped it out, the path forward was clear." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership

Rather than rebuilding from scratch, Predoxa restructured the existing account into a more focused, conversion-driven system designed to give Google's algorithm stronger performance signals and clearer optimization paths.

Strategy

Predoxa implemented a structured, performance-focused system designed to maximize conversion quality, improve campaign efficiency, and scale estimate call volume without increasing overall ad spend.

Search Intent Architecture

Campaigns were rebuilt around tightly themed keyword structures aligned directly with homeowner intent. A comprehensive negative keyword system was introduced to eliminate low-intent and informational searches that previously consumed budget without producing qualified calls.

This ensured ad spend focused only on users actively searching for waterproofing and foundation repair solutions.

"The keyword cleanup changed how the campaigns felt almost immediately. We started showing up for the right searches and stopping for the wrong ones." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership

Conversion-Focused Bidding & Budget Allocation

The bidding strategy was shifted away from traffic-focused optimization and rebuilt around the actual business objective: booked estimate calls.

Shared budgets were replaced with dedicated, performance-based allocation models that directed more investment toward campaigns consistently producing qualified leads and high-value opportunities.

"Moving to conversion bidding felt like flipping a switch. The system started sending us the kind of calls we actually wanted instead of just any click." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership

Creative Rebuild & Performance Max Optimization

Ad creative was rebuilt to improve Quality Scores, strengthen ad relevance, and align messaging with the homeowner's core pain points. Key differentiators—including licensed service, permanent solutions, and a 10-year guarantee—were integrated directly into ad messaging to improve conversion intent.

At the same time, Performance Max campaigns were rebuilt using audience signals generated from prior converters and high-value homeowner profiles, transforming the campaign from a broad automated system into a precision-focused acquisition engine.

"We didn't realize how much value was sitting in our own customer data. Predoxa turned that into targeting signals and Performance Max started performing the way it always should have." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership

Results

The account restructuring produced measurable improvements across campaign efficiency, lead quality, and estimate call volume—without increasing total budget.

50%+ Reduction in Wasted Ad Spend

Structural cleanup, improved keyword targeting, and negative keyword coverage redirected budget away from low-intent clicks and toward the highest-converting homeowner searches.

3× More Qualified Leads per Dollar

Conversion-focused bidding strategies and stronger ad relevance significantly reduced cost-per-qualified-lead, improving the overall efficiency of the acquisition system.

2× Increase in Estimate Call Volume

With improved targeting, optimized bidding, and stronger audience signals, the business saw a substantial increase in high-intent estimate calls month over month.

Pipeline Growth Without Increasing Budget

Because job values ranged from $4,000 to over $20,000, even small improvements in lead quality and conversion efficiency compounded into meaningful revenue growth. The result was not simply more traffic—but a more profitable and predictable acquisition system.

"The opportunity wasn't hidden in a bigger budget — it was already in the account, blocked by structure. Predoxa found it, and now we have a system that actually converts the spend we were already making." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership

Looking Forward

With the structural inefficiencies removed, Better Basements is now positioned for scalable, predictable growth across the Pacific Northwest. Campaigns operate with stronger optimization signals, budgets flow toward what converts, and Google's algorithm now has the data foundation required to identify high-value homeowners consistently. Future growth will come from controlled scaling, creative iteration, and deeper audience refinement—not from patching inefficiencies inside the system.

"For a long time we thought we needed to spend more to get more. What Predoxa showed us was that we didn't have a budget problem — we had a structure problem. Once that was fixed, the calls came in consistently, the estimates started converting, and the business started working the way it should." — Better Basements & Waterproofing, Leadership