The situation
Jose Vargas started the company in 2006 as a one-man shop. By the time Yelp published its case study he was working from roughly 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and doing everything himself. He needed enough reliable revenue to hire staff and open a second location, and he needed it from customers who were ready to book.
What the business did
The company invested in Yelp Ads, which put the listing above and below organic results and on competitors’ pages. It turned on Request a Quote so shoppers could send a structured request in seconds, and it used Yelp’s Call to Action tool to show a customized first-time-customer offer. The budget isn’t disclosed. The owner ran the program with Yelp’s tools; the case doesn’t mention an agency.
What happened
Yelp’s write-up reports $645 in revenue per call from Yelp, a 45% conversion rate, a 444% increase in total monthly leads and more than 1,500 leads a year from the platform. The business describes three years of sustained 30% annual growth, and it hired employees and opened a second location. Two things to read with care: the baseline period for the 444% figure isn’t stated, and the case doesn’t say how the revenue-per-call figure was calculated.
Why it worked
Yelp is where a homeowner with a dead air conditioner goes to compare contractors, so the listing was in front of people at the moment of need, including on competitors’ pages. Request a Quote and the first-time offer turned that intent into calls and quote requests the business could count. Most important, the owner knew what a call was worth. Once you know that, an ad budget stops being an expense and becomes a purchase of revenue at a known price.
The same pattern on Google
A garage door company in Atlanta, working with an agency, reported that its Google Local Services Ads leads rose 113% and cost per lead fell 9% over a year (October 2024 to October 2025). The work included repairing the sync between its Google Business Profile and the LSA account, which had been broken for more than three months, clarifying services and service areas, and improving call handling. LSA ranking depends on responsiveness, verification and reviews as much as on the bid.
How we apply this at Position One
We run Google Local Services Ads, Google Ads and Yelp Ads for home services, medical and dental practices, auto shops and law firms, and we start with the three numbers this contractor tracked: what a lead costs, what a call is worth, and what share of calls become jobs. Call tracking and conversion tracking go in before the first dollar of ad spend, so the return is visible from the first month. We also fix the plumbing first (profile verification, service areas, response times, review flow), because on both Google and Yelp those signals move rank and cost as much as the bid does.