The problem
What was going wrong
Ad spend was consistent, but the client could not see which hours of the day or days of the week produced the best quality leads, so budget and schedules were set by guesswork.
What we did
The fix
- 1
Capture attribution on every lead type
- Forms, chats, texts and calls all tracked
- A custom cookie storing the landing page and referring domain
- Hidden fields filling attribution on forms, chats and call logs
- First click used as the CRM lead source
- 2
Assign lead source automatically
Call tracking (with a tool like CallTrackingMetrics) appends UTM and source data, and the CRM stores it the moment a lead is created.
- 3
Keep the click IDs for offline conversions
UTM parameters and GCLID, GBRAID and WBRAID stored on the lead, so qualified and closed leads are uploaded back to the ad platforms automatically.
- 4
Optimize the ad schedule by day and hour
Leads grouped into 3- or 6-hour blocks (or by call center shift), cost per lead mapped to each block, and budget moved into the best windows.
- 5
Watch it on a dashboard
Lead source, cost per lead by day and hour, and conversion rate by channel, with alerts for leads missing attribution.
The result
By shifting budget toward the best-performing times, specifically Mondays and Tuesdays, the client cut its cost per qualified lead by 30%. Ad scheduling and budgets across Google and Bing Ads are now set by data instead of guesses.