The Bad 2 Badass Growth System™ has four stages: Expose, Rebuild, Align, Dominate. Most remodeling business owners want to skip straight to Stage 2 and start building (or rebuilding) their ad campaigns. That’s how a lot of money gets spent fixing things that weren’t actually broken while the real bottleneck stays untouched.
Stage 1 (Expose) is the audit. Before any campaign work, you map what’s actually happening in the account, where the money is leaking, and what one or two changes would produce the biggest lift. The audit takes about 90 minutes if you know where to look.
This post is the playbook so you can run it on your own account this weekend. Even if you eventually hire someone to run your ads, the audit will give you the language to ask better questions and the data to spot bad agencies inside the first 30 days.
Five steps. 90 minutes. Open your Google Ads account before you start reading.
Step 1: Verify Your Conversion Tracking Is Actually Tracking (15 min)
Before you look at a single performance number, verify that the system tracking those numbers is working. If conversion tracking is broken, every “insight” you’d otherwise gather is fiction.
In Google Ads, go to Tools → Conversions.
Check three things:
- Status column. Every conversion action you actually use should say “Recording conversions.” If anything says “No recent conversions,” “Inactive,” or “Tag not detected,” you have a tracking failure. Fix this before doing anything else with the account.
- Click “Conversion source” for each action. Form submissions should be tracked via Google Tag Manager firing on the thank-you page. Phone calls should be tracked via call tracking (CallRail, Google forwarding numbers, or similar). If you see a single conversion action that’s tracking everything as “Page view of /thank-you,” your data is corrupt.
- Last conversion date. If a conversion action hasn’t recorded anything in the last 14 days but your campaign has been spending, the tag is broken or the campaign isn’t generating leads. Either way, you need to know.
Most remodelers who think they have a “Google Ads problem” actually have a tracking problem. Read why call tracking is non-negotiable for remodeling businesses for the full breakdown of how to set this up correctly.
Time spent: 15 minutes. Output: a yes/no on whether your tracking is reliable.
Step 2: Audit Your Search Terms Report for Waste (20 min)
Go to Search terms under any active Search campaign. Set the date range to the last 90 days.
Sort by Cost (highest first).
You’re looking for two patterns:
Pattern A: High spend, zero conversions. A search term that has cost you $200+ in the last 90 days and produced exactly zero conversions is wasted spend. Add it as a negative keyword immediately.
Pattern B: Low intent terms eating budget. Look for terms with words like “DIY,” “ideas,” “cost,” “cheap,” “free,” “estimate,” “average price,” or homeowner research phrasing (“how to,” “what is,” “should I”). These are people early in research, not buyers. Add the obvious ones as negative keywords.
Most remodeling Google Ads accounts I audit have between 30 and 60 percent of total spend going to search terms that should have been excluded months ago. Read how to lower cost per lead on Google Ads for remodeling for the systematic approach to negative keyword discipline.
Time spent: 20 minutes. Output: a list of 10-30 negative keywords to add today.
Step 3: Inspect Your Account Structure (15 min)
A clean Google Ads account has campaigns and ad groups organized by intent and theme. A messy account has everything thrown into one campaign and the algorithm picking winners and losers blindly.
Check your account structure for these red flags:
- One campaign with multiple service types. Kitchen, bath, addition, and whole-home remodels all in one Search campaign. Each service has different keywords, different competition, and different conversion rates. They need their own campaigns.
- Ad groups with more than 10-15 keywords. When too many keywords are jammed into one ad group, your ads can’t be tightly relevant to what people searched. Quality Score drops. Cost per click rises.
- Broad match without negatives. Broad match keywords without rigorous negative keyword discipline turn into a money fire. Either use phrase match / exact match, or commit to weekly negative keyword maintenance.
- No location targeting at the campaign level. If your campaigns are set to “United States” instead of your specific service area, you’re paying for clicks from people 2,000 miles away.
Most remodelers reading this will discover their account has at least two of these structural problems. When that happens, you’re looking at a full rebuild, not a tactical tweak. The audit at least tells you what scope of work you’re dealing with.
Time spent: 15 minutes. Output: a clear picture of whether your account needs minor fixes or a full restructure.
Step 4: Test the Conversion Path End-to-End (20 min)
This is the step almost no one runs. Go through your own ad funnel as if you were a homeowner.
- Open an incognito browser window.
- Search for one of your top keywords (e.g., “kitchen remodeler in your city”).
- Click your ad. Time how long the landing page takes to load.
- Read the headline. Does it match the search? Does it speak to the homeowner’s problem?
- Look for proof. Reviews? Project photos? “Featured on” badges? Or is it generic stock imagery?
- Find the call-to-action. Is it obvious? Is the form short? Is there a phone number visible above the fold?
- Submit the form (use a real email and your own phone number for testing).
- Time how long until you get an automated reply. Is there a thank-you page that sets expectations?
- Time how long until a human contacts you back. (This is your team, not the marketing system, but the audit needs to surface it.)
Most remodelers fail at step 4 (the headline is generic), step 5 (no proof above the fold), step 8 (no auto-reply at all), or step 9 (the lead sits for 4+ hours before anyone calls back). Each of those leaks compounds. Read what a remodeling landing page that converts actually looks like for the structure to fix the front-end issues.
Time spent: 20 minutes. Output: a punch list of specific landing page and follow-up problems to fix.
Step 5: Check Your GBP and LSA Coverage (20 min)
Google Search Ads is one channel. The audit isn’t complete until you check the other two.
Google Business Profile audit:
- Search “kitchen remodeler in your city” while signed out of your Google account. Is your business profile showing in the local pack (the map section above organic results)? If not, your GBP isn’t optimized.
- Open your GBP. Categories filled in? Services listed individually with descriptions? Photos updated in the last 90 days? Posts published in the last 30 days? Q&A populated with answers from you (not random users)?
- How many reviews? What’s the average rating? When was the last one? When did you last respond to a review?
Most remodelers have a GBP that exists. Very few have one that’s optimized to actually generate leads. The compounding effect of consistent GBP work over 6-12 months is enormous and free. Read how to get more Google reviews for your remodeling business for the systematic review-generation approach.
Local Services Ads (LSAs) audit:
- Are you running LSAs at all? If no, that’s a huge gap. Read the complete guide to Local Services Ads for remodeling contractors for the setup.
- If yes, are you Google Guaranteed (the badge)? If you don’t have the badge, your placement is worse and lead cost is higher.
- What’s your LSA lead cost vs your Search Ads cost per booked consultation? Most remodelers don’t run this comparison and don’t know which channel is actually winning.
Time spent: 20 minutes. Output: a clear picture of your full local search presence and the gaps.
What to Do With the Results
After 90 minutes, you’ll have:
- A yes/no on tracking integrity
- A list of negative keywords to add today
- A picture of whether your account structure is workable or needs a rebuild
- A punch list of landing page and follow-up problems
- A clear view of your GBP and LSA gaps
That’s Stage 1 of the Bad 2 Badass Growth System™. You’ve Exposed the Bullshit. The next stages (Rebuild, Align, Dominate) depend on what the audit surfaces.
Most remodelers won’t run this audit on their own. The ones who do learn more about their marketing in 90 minutes than they have in a year of monthly reports from agencies.
If you want me to run the audit for you instead, book a free 30-minute Lead Flow Audit at bad2badass.com. I’ll go through the same five steps on your account and deliver a written breakdown of what I found. Same audit. Different person doing the looking. No pitch unless you ask.
Either way, run the audit before spending another dollar on ads. The leaks you find will pay for the time it takes to find them.