One account, both sets of numbers.

What actually happened

Splitting a working account into per-city campaigns threw away the thing that made it work. Quality Score is earned per campaign and per keyword; a new campaign starts from nothing no matter how well its predecessor performed. Phrase and exact match then cut off the long tail the algorithm had been converting on, and dividing one budget across a dozen campaigns meant none of them could sustain impression share.

The cost per click went up roughly six-fold and conversions went to zero. Reverting to the consolidated structure restored both.

What we take from it

Small local accounts are usually over-segmented, not under-segmented. The instinct to control everything — separate campaigns per city, exact match only, tight negatives — starves the algorithm of the data it needs and fragments a budget that was never large enough to fragment. We now recommend consolidated broad match on accounts this size, and we can point at what happens when we do not.

Where this does and does not transfer

The structural lesson transfers to any small paid account, including a contractor's. The keywords, the sales cycle and the seasonality do not — an elopement is booked months ahead, a burst pipe is booked in ten minutes. We would not present this as evidence of what we will do for your trade, only of how we think about an account.