How Shlomie's Locksmith Business Generated $85,512 in Revenue From $14,249 in Bing Ads Spend

The Client

Shlomie has been running his locksmith business for over a decade, serving residential and commercial customers across his metro area. He handles everything from emergency lockouts and rekeying to high-security lock installations and car key replacement. Like most owner-operators in the trades, Shlomie was good at the work but had grown tired of relying on referrals and lead-generation directories that charged per lead with no guarantee of quality.

He came to Seller Splash with a straightforward ask: stop paying for leads he couldn't close and start owning his own pipeline. His existing Google Ads account was running, but costs per click had crept up and competitors were bidding aggressively on every high-intent term. He wanted to know whether Bing Ads could fill the gap.

The Challenge

The locksmith space on Microsoft Advertising is genuinely underrated. Most local operators never test it, which means less auction competition and lower CPCs compared to Google, but it also means the platform requires more deliberate setup because the audience skews slightly older and the volume per keyword is lower. You cannot simply copy a Google Ads campaign structure and expect the same results.

Shlomie's specific challenges when he started with us:

• No Microsoft Advertising account or conversion tracking in place
• A website that had never been tested for conversion rate on Bing traffic, which tends to arrive on desktop at higher rates than Google mobile traffic
• A service area spanning several ZIP codes with very different demand levels and average job values
• A tight initial budget, so every dollar had to be pointed at keywords that signaled immediate buying intent
• No call tracking, so there was no way to tie phone bookings back to specific ads or keywords

Our Approach

Setting the foundation right

Before touching keyword lists or bid strategies, we built the measurement layer. We installed Microsoft's UET tag across the site, set up conversion goals for both form submissions and phone call clicks, and connected call tracking numbers at the campaign level so we could attribute inbound calls to the exact ad and keyword that drove them. This single step is what made the 600.11% ROAS figure possible to actually verify rather than estimate.

We also ran a quick audit of his landing page and made a handful of targeted changes: tighter headline copy for desktop users, a click-to-call button positioned above the fold on mobile, and trust signals (license number, years in business, service guarantee) placed where visitors were most likely to scan before making a decision on an emergency call.

Campaign architecture

We split the account into three focused campaigns rather than one broad catch-all:

The first campaign covered emergency and lockout keywords. These terms carry the highest urgency and the highest willingness to pay. Phrases like "locked out of house," "emergency locksmith near me," and "car lockout service" went into tightly themed ad groups with dedicated ad copy that leaned into speed and availability. We used location bid adjustments to push budget toward the ZIP codes where Shlomie's response time was fastest, which gave him a real competitive edge in the ad copy itself.

The second campaign targeted residential and commercial service terms with a longer decision cycle: rekeying, lock installation, master key systems, and access control. These keywords convert at a slightly lower rate but bring in larger average job values, so we managed them with a target CPA bid strategy once we had enough conversion data to let the algorithm work.

The third campaign focused on car key and automotive locksmith terms. This segment has its own intent profile, and separating it allowed us to control spend and messaging independently.

Audience layering and scheduling

Bing Ads allows layering LinkedIn profile data onto search campaigns, which is something Google does not offer. For Shlomie's commercial and business locksmith ad groups, we overlaid job function and company size audiences to adjust bids upward when someone searching "commercial locksmith" or "office rekeying" also matched a facilities, operations, or office management role. This lifted the quality of commercial leads without changing the keyword set.

We also built out a dayparting schedule based on real call data. Emergency calls spike in the early morning and again between 6 PM and 10 PM. We raised bids during those windows and reduced spend in the late-night hours where call volume dropped but cost remained.

Negative keyword discipline

Locksmith queries pull in a surprising amount of irrelevant traffic: people searching for locksmith careers, locksmith training courses, locksmith tools for sale, and DIY lock-picking tutorials. We built a shared negative keyword list from day one and expanded it weekly through search term reports. Keeping irrelevant traffic out of the funnel was one of the biggest levers for efficiency in the first two months.

The Results

The campaign ran from the week of October 26, 2025 through the week of May 10, 2026 -- seven months of continuous optimization.

Metric	Result
Total Ad Spend	$14,249.44
Total Revenue	$85,512.56
Total Conversions	228
Return on Ad Spend	600.11%
Average Revenue Per Conversion	$375.05
Cost Per Conversion	$62.50

The trajectory over the campaign period tells its own story. The first six to eight weeks were spent building conversion data and tightening negative keyword lists. By the time we hit the week of February 1, 2026, the campaigns had hit their stride, and the revenue line shows the peak performance period that followed. The stability in the later weeks, running from March through May 2026, reflects a mature account running on strong bid strategies with predictable cost per booking.

A 600.11% ROAS in the locksmith vertical is a real result. The average job value in this space sits between $150 and $500 depending on service type, which means strong ROAS requires consistent conversion volume alongside healthy average order values. Shlomie's 228 booked jobs at an average of $375 per job is what produced those numbers.

What Made the Difference

A few things separated this engagement from a basic "set it and forget it" approach.

First, the measurement infrastructure. A lot of local service accounts on Bing track form fills but miss phone calls, which is where the majority of locksmith bookings happen. By tracking both and attributing calls back to keywords, we could optimize toward actual revenue rather than form submissions that never turned into jobs.

Second, the competitive dynamic on Bing. Shlomie's market on Google was saturated with well-funded competitors and national directories. On Microsoft Advertising, the auction was thinner, CPCs were lower, and quality score was easier to build with tightly themed ad groups and a good landing page experience. The lower entry cost let the budget work harder from month one.

Third, consistent optimization cadence. We reviewed search term reports weekly, adjusted geographic bid modifiers monthly, and tested ad copy throughout the campaign. There was no point where the account was left to run without active management.

What Shlomie Said

"I was skeptical about Bing because I'd never really used it. Seller Splash walked me through the whole setup and showed me the numbers every step of the way. By month three I was getting calls I could actually afford and close. The results speak for themselves."
-- Shlomie, Owner

Key Takeaways

Bing Ads is a legitimate growth channel for local service businesses, particularly in competitive verticals where Google CPCs have gotten expensive. The keys to making it work are proper conversion tracking from day one, a campaign structure built around intent signals rather than broad reach, and the discipline to keep irrelevant traffic out of the funnel.

For Shlomie, the platform delivered 228 booked jobs and $85,512 in revenue on a $14,249 investment. That is a result worth taking seriously.

If you run a local service business and want to know whether Bing Ads makes sense for your market, get in touch with the Seller Splash team and we can show you what the numbers might look like for your area.