Published May 2026 · Reporting window: full-year 2024 vs. 2025
How a manufacturer of industrial and commercial equipment went from 4.55x to 7.18x return on ad spend in 12 months — on a smaller budget.
Paid Ad Spend
Revenue from Paid Media
Return on Ad Spend
Cost Per Customer
Our client manufactures and sells industrial and commercial equipment direct and through a dealer network across North America. Deals range from single-unit online orders to multi-unit specifications for large facilities, with an average deal size of approximately $11,000 from paid search leads.
Going into 2025 they needed to grow pipeline on a tighter budget, not a larger one.
Three constraints shaped the work:
The thesis going into 2025 was not “spend more.” It was: segment harder, cut what isn’t converting, and let the channels that do convert do more with less.
The 2024 account ran two broad campaigns that mixed every type of buyer into one bucket. In 2025 we rebuilt into separate campaigns by what the buyer was actually looking for: branded searches, product-specific queries tiered by deal size and application, commercial applications, and competitor terms.
Each campaign got cost-per-acquisition targets based on what that deal type is actually worth. Higher-value industrial inquiries could support a higher acquisition cost; smaller commercial orders could not. Running them together meant both were being managed to the wrong number.
Paid search only works when the landing page matches what the buyer was looking for. We worked with the client to consolidate thin, off-topic content and build product-specific and application-specific pages so paid traffic had dedicated destinations instead of landing on the homepage.
We tested problem-solution framing versus spec-first framing, form placement, and lead offers on the higher-volume campaigns to find what converted best at each deal tier.
Paid social was being held accountable for closing deals it was never designed to close. We repositioned it as an awareness channel for the full buying committee, with lead offers sized to the length of the sales cycle rather than trying to close on the ad.
Meta spend fell 18% in line with the overall budget reduction. Cost per lead fell 43%. Close rate on paid social leads rose 52%. The channel was not broken. It was being measured the wrong way.
None of the above works if new landing pages, ad variants, and offers take weeks to get approved. A key part of 2025 was getting the client’s internal workflow from gated to fast. From Q4 2024 onward the team could test and ship in days rather than weeks. The efficiency gains below are partly downstream of that change.
Source: HubSpot CRM and ad platform reports (Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta Ads), full-year 2024 and 2025, pulled April 2026. Revenue is closed-won, paid-influenced, excluding Offline Sources on both years for a comparable baseline.
Full-year results
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid Ad Spend | $369,804 | $291,583 | -21.2% |
| Revenue from Paid Media | $1,681,551 | $2,094,207 | +24.5% |
| Leads from Paid Media | 3,965 | 4,997 | +26.0% |
| Deals Closed | 140 | 202 | +44.3% |
| Return on Ad Spend | 4.55x | 7.18x | +57.9% |
| Cost Per Lead | $93 | $58 | -37.4% |
| Cost Per Customer | $2,641 | $1,443 | -45.4% |
Spend went down across every channel
| Channel | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads (Search) | $191,467 | $141,062 | -26.3% |
| Microsoft Ads (Search) | $64,214 | $56,944 | -11.3% |
| Meta Ads (Social) | $114,123 | $93,577 | -18.0% |
| Total | $369,804 | $291,583 | -21.2% |
Revenue by source
| Source | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid Search | $664,231 | $869,614 | +30.9% |
| Paid Social | $94,317 | $125,504 | +33.1% |
| Organic Search | $16,673 | $636,710 | +3,718% |
| Direct | $791,209 | $423,895 | -46.4% |
| Organic Social | $10,721 | $5,488 | -48.8% |
| Other | $104,400 | $31,400 | -69.9% |
| Referrals | $0 | $1,596 | n/a |
| Total (ex-Offline) | $1,681,551 | $2,094,207 | +24.5% |
The Organic Search and Direct lines require context. See Disclosures below before drawing conclusions from them.
Unit economics by channel: Paid Search cost per lead fell from $205 to $146 (-29%). Paid Social cost per lead fell from $129 to $73 (-43%). Paid Search close rate improved from 4.56% to 5.70% (+25%). Paid Social close rate improved from 1.24% to 1.88% (+52%).
Return on ad spend is useful but it’s not how finance measures return. Applying the client’s approximate 40% blended gross margin to paid-influenced revenue:
2024: roughly $672,000 in gross profit on $370,000 in paid spend. $1.82 back for every $1 spent.
2025: roughly $838,000 in gross profit on $292,000 in paid spend. $2.87 back for every $1 spent.
A 57.9% improvement in gross-profit return on ad spend, year over year. Same client, same tracking, better account.
Even after stripping revenue down to gross profit, and before any overhead allocation, every $1 of paid spend returned nearly $3 in gross profit in 2025.
Overclaiming is how agencies get fired. A few disclosures on the numbers:
Andre Rosdahl led paid search strategy and account direction. Senior partners ran paid social on Meta and SEO and organic. No account managers. No junior buyers running campaigns from templates. The people who designed the 2025 restructure are the same people in the account every week.
If you’re running $250,000 or more in paid media, selling industrial or commercial products with a longer sales cycle, and your reports look fine but your sales team isn’t feeling it — we’d be glad to take a look. We pull your account, show you what we’d change, share the math, and if it’s there, we start. If it isn’t, you keep the audit.
Or email Andre directly: [email protected]