(Hospitality, Local Brick & Mortar)
Client Name & Type:
Hogie Joe’s Sports Grill, a local sports bar and restaurant serving Thomson, Georgia and the surrounding 5-county area.
Role & Ownership:
Full website rebuild and end-to-end Google Ads ownership: account audit, campaign architecture, asset strategy, geographic targeting, and ongoing performance management.
Opportunity:
Ad spend was being consumed by inauthentic national YouTube targeting. 90% of the total budget reaching audiences with zero intent to visit a local restaurant. The account was missing its own CPA target by 14x with no corrective action in place. A full diagnostic, site rebuild, and campaign restructure were needed to align the budget with the actual customer base.
Strategy & Execution:
- Rebuilt the website to create a high-converting landing experience before restructuring the campaigns.
- Eliminated YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Discover spend entirely: reclaiming $525/month in wasted budget.
- Replaced national targeting with a strict 5-county geographic radius around the physical location.
- Built a new Performance Max campaign from scratch with 19+ curated assets per group, optimized for store visits, directions, and phone call leads.
- Restructured the original PMax campaign — stripping wasted reach while preserving the underlying Search signal — reducing cost by 90%.
- Architected a three-campaign system with distinct roles and zero internal budget competition.
PMax-1 · Full campaign lifetime · $581 total spend
National targeting. AI-generated video ads. 81,748 interactions. 19 total conversions. Actual CPA: $30.61 against a $2.10 target — missing its own goal by 14x with no intervention in sight.
The highest-intent local channel for any restaurant — where someone opens Google Maps and searches “food near me” right now — was receiving less than two dollars of the total budget.
On April 19th the account showed cost up 85.9% week over week while conversions were down 39.82% — simultaneously. More money in, fewer customers out, with the monthly forecast on a trajectory toward $760 in spend.
New website — built before touching the campaigns
The landing experience had to be rebuilt first. Sending high-intent local traffic to a broken destination produces nothing regardless of how well the campaigns perform. The site and the ad strategy were designed as a single system — each one making the other work harder.
YouTube eliminated — $525/month reclaimed overnight
YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Discover were zeroed out entirely. National targeting was replaced with a strict 5-county radius around Thomson, GA. What had been consuming 90% of the total account budget became $0.00 in a single structural change.
PMax-2 built from zero — architected for foot traffic
A new Performance Max campaign built from scratch with 19+ curated creative assets per group, optimized specifically for store visits, get directions, phone call leads, and direct contact — actual signals that a customer is about to walk through the door. Maps went from 0.31% to 23.75% of budget share. Conv. rate hit 25.55% immediately.
PMax-1 restructured — waste stripped, signal preserved
Rather than shutting down the original campaign, wasted reach was cut by 94.77% and redirected toward Search and Maps on a Target CPA strategy. Conv. rate improved from 0.02% to 3.96% — and cost dropped 90% — proving the underlying intent signal was real, just catastrophically misdirected.
Three-campaign system — distinct roles, zero overlap
Smart Campaign owns brand awareness and click volume at $0.49 avg CPC. PMax-2 drives local intent and foot-traffic conversion. Restructured PMax-1 captures residual Search volume on a tight CPA target. No internal bidding competition. No budget cannibalization. Every dollar assigned a specific job.
Maps is where someone opens Google on their phone and searches for somewhere to eat right now. For a local restaurant, it is the highest-intent real estate in digital advertising.
Confirmed in the real world
The conversion surge coincided with a measurable spike in 5-star Google reviews — confirming the restructured account was reaching people who were actually walking through the door, not passive viewers in another state. When the targeting is right, the real world notices. Fewer impressions. More diners. Better reviews. That is what a properly built local ad strategy produces.
