The challenge
Cotswold Kitchen Company designs and installs bespoke kitchens across Gloucestershire and the wider Cotswolds area. Based near Cirencester, the business had built its reputation largely through word of mouth and local reputation, but owner Emma Bridgwater wanted to grow the client base more predictably.
The business had tried Google Ads twice before. On both occasions the campaigns had been set up by general digital marketing agencies with no specialism in home improvement. Both times the results were disappointing: clicks from people clearly researching flat-pack kitchens and budget suppliers, very few actual showroom appointments, and no real understanding of whether the spend was generating any return at all.
"Our average kitchen project is between £15,000 and £40,000. The people who buy from us are not the same people searching for IKEA kitchens. Previous agencies never really understood that distinction and it showed in the leads we were getting."
What we did
The core challenge for a premium kitchen business is targeting buyers in the right part of the market. Kitchen searches generate enormous volumes of clicks, but the vast majority come from buyers who are early in their research, price-sensitive, or simply browsing for ideas. Reaching the right audience requires precise keyword selection and equally precise disqualification of the wrong traffic.
We built the account around intent signals that correlate with higher-value buyers:
- Keyword focus on terms indicating bespoke or fitted kitchen intent, such as "bespoke kitchen design Gloucestershire", "fitted kitchen Cirencester" and "kitchen designer Cotswolds", rather than high-volume generic terms
- Comprehensive negative list blocking searches for flat-pack, self-assembly, cheap, budget, IKEA, B&Q, Wren, Next, Howdens and related terms that indicate a buyer profile outside the business's target market
- Showroom-focused landing page built to convey the quality of the work, include real project photography descriptions and make it easy to book a design consultation
- Refined geographic targeting concentrated on Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, the areas from which the business already drew its client base
- Ad copy written to qualify the audience, referencing bespoke design and free design consultations rather than competing on price
- Google Display used to run retargeting ads to people who had visited the website but not enquired, using imagery of completed kitchen projects
The results
Over the first four months:
- Showroom appointments booked via Google Ads up 89%
- Cost per showroom appointment £94, against an average project value of over £20,000
- 3 projects directly attributed to Google Ads enquiries in the first quarter, with a combined value of £67,000
- Return on ad spend in the first quarter: approximately 28x
"We went from a trickle of enquiries to having the diary full. The quality of the leads is excellent — people who have seen our work and know roughly what they want to spend."
Emma Bridgwater, Owner, Cotswold Kitchen Company
What we learned
For high-value home improvement businesses, negative keywords do more work than positive ones. The search volumes for premium bespoke kitchen terms are relatively low, but the conversion value is enormous. Spending time identifying and excluding the wrong buyers — rather than just chasing traffic volume — is what makes the economics work at this end of the market.
Retargeting also played a meaningful role. Bespoke kitchen buyers do not usually enquire on their first visit to a website. They browse, compare and come back. Keeping the Cotswold Kitchen Company visible during that consideration period, using their own project work as the creative, materially improved the conversion rate from website visitor to showroom appointment.