Drywall & ceiling specialists in Gauteng. The account is generating leads — it is not yet trained to generate profitable ones. This strategy resets the direction: filter out low-margin work, attract commercial and large-scale projects, and teach Google what a good job actually looks like.
The SA drywall and gypsum board market is projected to grow from $54.2bn in 2025 to $82.7bn by 2032. Commercial construction, office refits, and warehouse development are the fastest-growing demand segments — exactly the work Master Brush wants more of.
Commercial suspended ceiling installation in Gauteng ranges from R300 to R1,500 per square metre. A commercial office or warehouse job at 200m² = R100k–R300k+ project value. These are the projects driving Master Brush's growth potential.
Gauteng's ceiling and drywall market is highly fragmented — general contractors bundle ceiling work at stripped margins. Buyers price-shop aggressively on smaller jobs. Specialists like Master Brush only win on larger, specification-driven projects where quality and expertise matter more than rate.
Commercial interior refits, warehouse fit-outs, and office partitioning projects are growing across Gauteng as businesses return to office and industrial space demand rises. These projects are specification-driven — buyers choose on expertise and finish quality, not price alone. They also upsell naturally: a suspended ceiling project in an office opens the door to bulkheads, drywall partitioning, interior design, and furniture. This is the pipeline Cherise wants to build.
Small repairs (geyser damage, patching, single room repairs) carry the lowest margins, attract the most price-sensitive buyers, and produce the highest friction per rand earned. They consume the same sales and site-visit resources as large projects but return a fraction of the revenue. The current Google Ads account is unknowingly optimising for more of this work because repair leads convert most easily — and Google keeps finding what converts.
Cherise tracked 633 leads over one year. At 22% acceptance rate and an average of ~52 leads/month, the issue is not volume — it is lead quality. The cost per accepted client is approximately R1,952. Her margins are currently running at 8-10% when the business needs 35% to be profitable. This is not a marketing spend problem. It is a targeting and qualification problem.
Based directly on what Cherise shared in the strategy meeting: her two ideal client profiles represent the work she wants more of, and the audience that will pay her margins. The current account is reaching neither of them consistently.
Audience 1 — Commercial Property & Office Decision-Maker (ICP Priority 1)⭐ From the Meeting — Cherise's Interior Design Upsell: When commercial office projects enter the pipeline, Cherise's interior designer on staff closes natural upsells — wallpaper, furniture, full interior design. This is a significant margin opportunity that only surfaces on the right type of commercial lead. Every correctly qualified commercial enquiry has the potential to be a multi-service project. The Google Ads strategy must feed this pipeline specifically.
All data below comes directly from the account audit (1 Jan – 1 Jun 2026). This is not a general market observation — it is the specific performance picture of Master Brush's existing Google Ads account. These numbers form the basis for every strategic recommendation.
The entire account runs through a single Search campaign ("Masterbrush Campaign November 2025") at R850/day. This means repairs, commercial projects, residential installs, and drywalling all train the same bidding algorithm together.
Broad match is absorbing the most spend but producing the weakest CPA. Exact and phrase match are significantly more efficient — and those are the terms most likely to carry genuine commercial intent.
Geographic performance varies significantly across the account. Centurion is the standout performer at R404 CPA — well below the account average of R597. Pretoria and Johannesburg South are also performing below average CPA, suggesting good geographic fit. Sandton and Randburg are above average CPA and need to be evaluated against actual quote value and accepted job rate — platform CPA alone doesn't tell the whole story when small repair leads cost less but earn less.
Of the visible search-term spend, R48,236 is flowing through 6,212 terms with no active management — no keywords added, no exclusions applied. A further R20,201 is being spent on lower-quality intent signals that the account is not filtering out. This is not a budget problem. It is a management problem.
The R597 reported CPA looks acceptable. It is not. The account counts all leads equally — a small ceiling repair that generates zero margin is recorded the same as a commercial fit-out worth R200,000. Cherise is spending approximately R1,952 per accepted client when factoring real job acceptance rates. At 8-10% markup, the business cannot sustain at current lead mix. The CPA target must be rebuilt around job value, not raw form submissions.
This is not a spend increase. It is a structural reset. The account is already generating enough volume — the problem is what it is optimising for. Three changes, applied in sequence, shift the account from generating cheap leads to generating profitable jobs.
Split the single campaign into three distinct learning environments with separate budgets, keywords, and conversion rules. Repairs, residential installs, and commercial projects must not share a bidding system.
The quote form asks only basic fields. Every low-margin enquiry passes through it unfiltered. Dedicated landing pages per campaign should qualify project type, size, timeline, and budget range before a lead is counted as a conversion.
Google's algorithm learns from what gets marked as a conversion. Currently, a form submit from a R2,000 repair is counted equally to a quote sent for a R150,000 commercial project. Change what gets rewarded.
Fewer total leads — but a fundamentally different lead profile. Enquiries arrive pre-qualified: project type selected, approximate scope provided, budget range indicated. Cherise's quoting time drops. Site visits go to real projects. The interior designer gets more commercial leads to upsell. Margin per accepted job climbs toward the 35% target.
Budget stays at current levels while the restructure beds in. The repair campaign keeps running — budget-capped — for cashflow continuity during the transition. Google needs 2–4 weeks to re-learn after structural changes. No performance improvements should be expected in the first two weeks post-rebuild.