Dropped $2,400 on a Google Ads agency in Denver that just burned my budget on broad match keywords
I run a small landscaping company in Aurora and hired this agency back in January because I was too busy with snow removal to deal with ads myself. They promised me a 5x return and said they had a "proven system" for home services. Six weeks in I checked the dashboard and saw they had my whole $2,400 budget going to broad match terms like "yard work" and "outdoor help" which brought in nothing but tire kickers and people looking for free quotes. When I asked why every click was costing me $14 when my old campaigns ran at $3, the account manager said "broad match lets the algorithm learn" and that I needed to trust the process. I fired them, pulled my data, and rebuilt the campaign myself with exact match keywords and negative lists. First week back on my own I booked 11 estimate calls for $340 total spend. If you are hiring an agency, ask to see the actual search terms report before you sign anything, because some of these places just set it and forget it with your money. Anyone got a good way to check an agency's real results before handing over the credit card?