Alpha Serrurier · Locksmith · Google Ads — Search · 2026
How a locksmith nearly doubled its ad calls on CA$225 a month
This is not a big-budget story. It is a small one that works: about CA$225 a month, spent only on the searches that end with someone dialling a locksmith, produced 87% more calls straight out of the ads.
+87%
calls from ad extensions
139 → 260, matched twelve months
The results, up top — every number is in the strip below
+87%
calls from ad extensions
139 → 260, matched twelve months
+14%
phone-number clicks
283 → 324 on the site
CA$2,697
total media spend
about CA$225 a month
+5%
spend increase
CA$2,566 → CA$2,697
12
matched months
no seasonal cherry-picking
01 — The challenge
A tiny budget in a category where every click is an emergency.
Alpha Serrurier sells, installs and services locks and security hardware for homes and businesses across Saint-Jérôme and the Laurentians. Locksmith demand splits into two very different halves: someone locked out of a car at midnight, and a property manager pricing a rekey for eleven doors. The first converts in seconds; the second compares for a week.
On roughly CA$225 of monthly spend there is no room to serve both badly. A single wasted click is a measurable share of the month, so the paid search question was never "how do we scale" — it was "which searches deserve the only money we have".
“At my budget I cannot afford to be everywhere. I need the phone to ring from the people who are actually locked out right now, and I need to stop paying for everyone who is just reading about locks.”
Illustrative quote — written by Web Tonic to put the results above in an owner’s words. It is not a statement provided by the client.
The account grew by subtraction. Spend rose five per cent; the calls it produced rose eighty-seven.
02 — Our approach
Buy the emergency, not the research.
We began with search terms, because on a small budget the negative list is the strategy. Queries were classified rather than skimmed — urgent negatives, expansion candidates, monitor-only — and the negatives went in at the tightest match type that would hold.
Then the call path itself. In this category the ad is the conversion: a locked-out customer taps the number in the ad and never sees the site. Call extensions and call assets were made the primary route rather than an afterthought, and scheduling was weighted towards the hours when lockouts actually happen.
Finally, honest counting. This account fires ad-extension calls, site number clicks, form fills and email clicks. Adding them together would roughly double the apparent result, so each figure on this page names its own action.
03 — What we did
Negatives first, call assets second, honest counting throughout.
Small budgets do not need clever bidding. They need to stop leaking.
Search term mining
Classified every query rather than skimming the top
Urgent negatives applied at the tightest workable match type freed budget without touching a bid — the only lever that matters when the monthly spend is CA$225.
Recreated Google Ads search terms view
Call-first ad structure
Made the phone number the conversion, not the click
Call extensions and call assets were promoted to the primary route, because a locked-out customer dials from the ad and never reaches the website.
Recreated Google Ads campaign table
Dayparting
Weighted spend towards the hours lockouts happen
Emergency demand is not evenly spread across the day. Spend was shifted towards the evening and overnight windows where the intent is highest.
Calls by hour
Measurement
Reported one action at a time
Ad-extension calls, site number clicks, forms and email clicks all fire here. Each number on this page names the single action it counts.
Conversion action breakdown
The stack we ran it on
Google Ads
Paid search
Google Ads Editor
Paid search
GA4
Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Tracking
CallRail
Call tracking
Google Search Console
Search
AgencyAnalytics
Reporting
Looker Studio
Dashboards
“Web Tonic did in six weeks what our last two agencies couldn't in a year — and for the first time we could see every dollar of it”
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