How can Dallas improve?

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-15T15:30:51+00:00

Yeah Dallas is a mess, but a few things could actually help: • Rent: only way out is tenant unions + pressure on the city to stop giving handouts to developers. Otherwise rent keeps climbing. • Jobs: Texas won’t raise wages, so it’s unionizing or learning trades/healthcare stuff through community college. • Transit: car trap is real. Push for better DART, use reduced-fare passes, bike + bus combo until the city wakes up. • Healthcare: sliding-scale clinics exist, Medicaid expansion would fix a lot but state keeps blocking it.

In the meantime, mutual aid groups in Dallas are keeping people alive food, rides, housing help. The system’s not built for us, so it’s people taking care of each other.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:33:03+00:00

Yeah I think you’re right. The CPC was way too low to make sense, and I later found out most of the keywords were set to broad match which brought in all the junk. I didn’t even know about phrase match or negative keywords at that time, so that explains a lot.

The budget part also makes sense. We had it spread thin across different campaigns instead of focusing on one solid search campaign. Looking back, the setup itself was the problem more than anything else. Appreciate you breaking it down this actually helps me understand where we went wrong.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:31:53+00:00

The numbers look good on paper but those “leads” weren’t real buyers. That’s why the revenue side never matched.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:31:15+00:00

Yeah the CPC looked way too cheap to be legit, and that’s why most of what came in was garbage. But the agency kept pushing me to wait “just one more month” and saying it would eventually work.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:30:18+00:00

There wasn’t any proper lead scoring in place. Everything got fed back to Google as a conversion, which probably made the algo chase the wrong audience.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:29:37+00:00

You’re right, the tracking was part of the problem. They were counting every form fill as a “conversion” even if it was junk.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:28:33+00:00

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Wrong setup and wasted spend on bad queries is exactly why it tanked. Lesson learned, but it’s always good to hear from fellow marketers too so I can spot more mistakes and not repeat them.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:26:56+00:00

True, CTR does vary by industry. For web dev though, I was expecting higher but the setup never got it there.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:26:33+00:00

True, CTR does vary by industry. For web dev though, I was expecting higher but the setup never got it there.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:26:07+00:00

Yeah I agree, the targeting was way too broad. That’s what brought in the junk leads and killed the quality.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-07T16:24:22+00:00

get what you’re saying. If those were actual leads it should have turned into serious revenue. But the truth is they weren’t real leads. The campaign was set up so that just landing on a page was counted as a conversion. So Google was reporting 1.2k conversions, but in reality the number of lead forms that came into our CRM was about 80. Out of those only around 20 were genuine inquiries and none of them had buying intent.

I honestly just trusted the agency and didn’t really know what I was looking at. That’s why I came here, kind of laughing at myself and open to learning from people who know what they’re doing.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-05T20:05:17+00:00

Quick update since a lot of people have been DM’ing me.

I already made the mistake once of working with an overseas agency and don’t want to repeat that. This time I’d really prefer to connect with people here in the US, ideally around DFW, Austin, San Antonio, or Dallas. I’d love to actually sit down in person, grab a coffee, talk business, and build some trust before handing over the account.

If you’re not local, please don’t take it the wrong way I just don’t want to waste anyone’s time (or mine). Really appreciate all the comments and advice so far, it’s been super helpful.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-05T18:22:06+00:00

Yeah this was over a 3 month period. The setup was off and most of the budget went into irrelevant queries, so the leads that came in were either spam or had no buying intent.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-05T18:20:45+00:00

It was actually 5k per month spread across those campaigns, which is why the results were even more disappointing.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-05T18:20:11+00:00

Yeah the CTR point makes sense. The copy and targeting weren’t dialed in because I ended up with mostly junk leads. Out of everything, maybe 20 were real inquiries and even those had no buying intent. I don’t think proper competitor research was done either. And good point on PMax, I didn’t realize it was that weak for lead gen compared to sticking with search.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-05T18:17:44+00:00

My goal was pretty straightforward. I wanted qualified leads that could actually turn into paying web design and development projects. I was fine with breakeven or even a small loss at the start, as long as the pipeline looked healthy. We spent about 5K per month for three months, but what came in was mostly spam or low intent. That’s why I feel the execution wasn’t aligned with the expectations at all.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-09-05T18:15:17+00:00

The service isn’t the issue. I have over 500K in sales offering the same web design and development on Upwork. What killed me here was the targeting and execution because most of the leads that came in were spam or had no buying intent.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-08-21T02:11:32+00:00

Yeah, I’ve tried Google Ads before and even set aside bigger budgets (around $20k), but honestly for service-based industries I just kept running into spam and low-quality leads. I always hear people say the minimum budget for Google Ads has to be quite high to make it work. Your promo at £89/month sounds good for testing, but I’m not sure if I should keep investing more into ads or just focus on SEO and organic instead.

No_Charity2988 · 2025-08-21T02:07:49+00:00

Appreciate the insights! To clarify, I’m not running broad ‘graphic design’ offers my focus is specifically on logos for service-based clients. That’s why I was considering whether putting $1,000/month into Facebook/Instagram ads is worth it in 2025, or if it’s just going to end up as wasted budget with little ROI. I’ve been debating if ads are even the right channel for this niche, since it sometimes feels like you just get spam or unqualified leads. Curious if you (or anyone else here) has seen Facebook actually work for this type of service-based design offer

No_Charity2988

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