Case study · Builders · UK
Builder Case Study UK: +120% Leads
How a building firm with 2 site teams in London grew project enquiries 120% and cut cost per lead 42% in 6 months with Content, SEO and Web Development.
Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market.
Builders · UK
Building
A building firm with 2 site teams based in London, serving the wider London area and focused on house extensions and loft conversions. Before working with us, 58% of enquiries came through Checkatrade and similar paid platforms, where the same lead often went to three or four competitors. The goal was more exclusive project enquiries, a lower cost per contract and a pipeline the owner controls.
Results After 6 Months
Leads per month
+120%
Cost per lead
-42%
Marketing-sourced revenue
+189%
Return on marketing spend
13.0x
The challenge
Where the business was stuck
- Builders are often booked months ahead, then face gaps with little control over the next pipeline.
- Buyers are nervous about choosing a builder and rely heavily on reviews and portfolios.
- Small-job enquiries take up estimating time without turning into profitable projects.
- Peak season (enquiries peak in january and spring as homeowners plan projects, often with planning timelines of several months) was not being planned for, so budget ran out when demand was highest.
The approach
Three services, one goal
We focused on Content Marketing, SEO and Website Development, the three channels with the best cost per contract for building firms in London. Every call, form and chat was tracked to a booked outcome from week one, so every decision was based on revenue, not clicks.
What we did
The technical work behind the numbers, service by service.
Service 1
Content Marketing
- Built a content plan of 22 articles around cost, comparison and how-to questions for house extensions and loft conversions.
- Produced 27 short videos from real jobs and repurposed them for the website, Google Business Profile, YouTube and social.
- Created a downloadable buyer guide as a lead magnet, capturing 130 email leads a month for follow-up.
- Linked every article to the matching service page and quote form, so readers move from research to enquiry.
Service 2
SEO
- Technical audit and fixes: 76 crawl errors removed, mobile Largest Contentful Paint cut from 5.7s to 2.1s and indexing issues resolved.
- Built 15 dedicated service pages for high-value work such as house extensions and loft conversions, each targeting one search intent.
- Added LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage schema and rebuilt internal linking between services, locations and guides.
- Earned 26 links from local news, suppliers, associations and community sites instead of low-quality link packages.
Service 3
Website Development
- Designed and built a new 59-page website on a fast, lightweight stack, replacing an outdated template site.
- Structured the site around services, locations and projects, with a filterable project gallery of 30 completed jobs.
- Hit a mobile Lighthouse performance score of 92 with compressed images, no page builder bloat and a load time of 2.1s.
- Set up 301 redirects for every old URL so no rankings were lost in the move, and connected GA4, Search Console and call tracking.
The numbers
Before and after
| Metric | Before | Month 6 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project enquiries per month | 10 | 22 | +120% |
| Cost per lead | £373 | £215 | -42% |
| Cost per contract | £6,192 | £2,712 | -56% |
| Lead-to-job rate | 6% | 8% | +2 pts |
| Website conversion rate | 2.3% | 5.4% | +132% |
| Marketing-sourced revenue / month | £27k | £80k | +189% |
| Share of leads from paid directories | 58% | 22% | -36 pts |
| Organic visits to guides / month | 151 | 2,496 | new channel |
| Organic sessions / month | 1,429 | 4,446 | +211% |
| Mobile page load time | 5.7s | 2.1s | -63% |
Lead growth
Project enquiries per month
Marketing-sourced revenue went from £27k to £80k a month, measured from booked build contracts in the CRM.
Optimisations That Moved The Numbers
- 01
The top 8 articles now rank on page one and send readers to quote forms at a 29% higher rate than other traffic.
- 02
The buyer guide lead magnet added 130 nurture leads a month, with 11% converting within 90 days.
- 03
Consolidating 12 overlapping pages that competed for the same keyword doubled the surviving page's clicks.
- 04
The new site's conversion rate is 3.1x the old site's, on the same traffic.
The 6-month timeline
From tracking to scale.
Weeks 1 to 2
Audit, tracking and baseline
Call tracking, conversion tracking, CRM connection and a full audit covering Content, SEO and Web Development.
Weeks 3 to 6
Build and launch
Content, SEO and Web Development live for house extensions and loft conversions.
Months 2 to 4
Optimise
Weekly search term, call and landing page reviews. Budget and effort moved to the jobs that close.
Months 5 to 6
Scale
Expansion into Birmingham and nearby areas, plus new services with proven demand.
Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market. Your results depend on your market, budget, capacity and follow-up. We share realistic forecasts in your free audit.
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