How Alpha Restoration Booked $41,725 in Sold Jobs in 28 Days, With 88% of It Costing Nothing in Ads
Moving a Colorado restoration contractor from chasing mold leads to winning emergency water jobs, and reporting results in dollars closed instead of leads counted.
Key Outcomes (October 1–28, 2026)
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Revenue from October leads | $41,725 from 12 sold jobs (avg. $3,477) |
| Revenue with no ad cost (organic, AI search, referral) | $36,561 from 9 jobs (88% of total) |
| Google Local Services Ads return | 4.8x ($5,164 in sold jobs on $1,065.61 spend) |
| Cost per charged LSA lead | $355.20 per charged lead (down 14% from $414.21 in September) |
| Keywords on Google page 1 | 145, up from 102 (+43) vs. prior 28 days |
| Keywords in top 3 | 22, up from 18 |
| Open bids and inspections still to close | 10 |
Source: Restoration Inbound October report for Alpha Restoration, period 10/01–10/28/2026, updated 10/29/2026. Revenue is sold-job value reported by Alpha Restoration and matched to each lead’s source.
Overview
Alpha Restoration is a water damage, sewage cleanup and mold remediation contractor serving the Denver metro and Northern Colorado. Owner-operator Jesse Gaytan runs the business hands-on. The company advertises a 60–90 minute emergency dispatch, more than 1,000 completed jobs, and IICRC WRT and AMRT certifications.
Our team has managed Alpha’s website, SEO, Google Local Services Ads (LSA) and lead tracking since 2024, with a standing weekly call between Jesse and account manager Mason. That cadence matters to this story. Most of the strategy below came out of those calls, in Jesse’s own words.
“I’ve been working with a marketing company since 2019 … I’ve worked with at least four different companies. And you guys have been with me the longest and by far have been my favorite to work with.”
Jesse Gaytan, Owner, Alpha Restoration (July 2026)
The Challenge
By mid-2026, Alpha had a strong position in a market that was getting harder to profit from. Mold remediation had been the account’s anchor, and it worked. Jesse put it plainly on a July call: “You guys have helped us corner this mold market. We have a great share of it.”
But mold buyers shop on price. They research, collect several bids and negotiate. Emergency water and sewage jobs behave differently: the homeowner needs someone now, and the first credible company to show up usually wins.
“Those water jobs sell themselves … It’s a lot easier to sell a job when the ceiling’s raining, as opposed to, ‘Hey, I got mold. I know I got mold. What’s your price?'”
Jesse Gaytan (July 2026)
Jesse gave the team hard operating numbers: a close rate of about 56%, roughly four jobs a week, and an average job value near $4,000. His goal was six jobs a week and a higher ticket. “If we could get to six jobs a week, we’re going to feel a significant difference in our revenue.”
Two things stood in the way:
- Paid leads were getting expensive. LSA cost per lead had climbed toward $400, and much of that spend was buying mold inquiries that converted worse.
- Lead counts didn’t show business impact. A month with fewer leads could be a great month if the right jobs closed, and the reporting didn’t show that.
The Process
The weekly call was the working session. Each week Mason and Jesse went through the leads one at a time (source, whether it was qualified, whether it sold, and for how much) alongside Search Console rankings, LSA spend and website changes. On July 2, 2026 that review produced the account’s biggest decision: shift the whole acquisition strategy from mold to emergency water and sewage work.
Jesse framed the trade-off himself in September:
“Maybe I’ll get less leads, but I’ll get more qualified leads. So, in return, I’m not spending as much money … sending my guys out and putting resources.”
Jesse Gaytan (September 2026)
The Solution
1. Redirecting paid spend to emergency water work
Mason turned off mold targeting in Local Services Ads and focused the account on water-damage and emergency job types. The budget was then set at $625 a week. By late July, Jesse reported that about $2,300 of ad spend had produced “just under 8K” in booked work.
2. Rebuilding the website around emergency intent
The site already ranked well for informational searches. As Mason put it, “Your whole website does a really good job of just having information, which is why Google respects you so highly. But … when it comes to getting the phone to ring, we need to do a bit more on the call to action side.” The team added water-damage FAQ content and schema, emergency-focused page titles and calls to action, a commercial water-damage page, and local neighborhood pages across the Denver metro. They also moved the copy away from “free estimate” wording, which Jesse found attracted price-shoppers.
3. Building authority with links
Starting in October, the team added a steady backlink program of two to three links a month. October alone brought five new links from sites with an average Domain Rating of 56.
4. Showing up in AI search
Alpha’s location and service pages were structured so AI assistants could cite them. Jesse noticed it early (“I’ve shown up on Chat GPT a couple times”), and by October ChatGPT was a real lead source, producing two sold jobs worth $7,270.
5. Reporting revenue, not just leads
The monthly report now ties each sold job to its lead source, separates charged from uncharged LSA leads, and lists every open bid. Mason’s view is that reviewing revenue with the client keeps the conversation on real business impact and builds trust. It also showed when a quiet month was actually a good one. In September Jesse summed it up: “We didn’t get a lot of leads this month, but we closed a lot … We didn’t get a lot, but we got quality.”
The Results
October 2026 was the clearest proof yet. In the first 28 days, leads from the month turned into $41,725 in sold jobs across 12 jobs, with 10 more bids and inspections still open.
| Lead Source | Jobs | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Yelp | 3 | $16,991 |
| ChatGPT | 2 | $7,270 |
| Referral | 1 | $7,000 |
| Google search and Business Profile | 3 | $5,300 |
| Google Local Services Ads | 3 | $5,164 |
| Total | 12 | $41,725 |
- Paid spend paid back almost 5x. $1,065.61 in LSA spend produced $5,164 in sold jobs. Cost per charged lead fell 14% month over month, to $355.20.
- Most of the revenue had no ad cost. $36,561 (88%) came from organic, AI-search and referral sources.
- Rankings kept climbing. Page-1 keywords rose from 102 to 145 in a month, and 161 local searches showed Alpha on page 1. Notable gains:
- Water damage restoration in Berthoud: position 41 → 5.5
- Mold remediation in Broomfield: 39 → 4
- Flood restoration in Lakewood: 23.8 → 4.7
- Lakewood water damage restoration: 42 → 10
- Emergency water damage restoration in Denver: 46.6 → 16.9
- AI search became a real channel. Two ChatGPT-referred customers became sold jobs worth $7,270.
“$13,240 in organic in a two-week period. Very nice.”
Mason, Account Manager, adding up September’s organic jobs on the call (October 2026)
Conclusion
Alpha Restoration didn’t need more leads. It needed the right ones, and a way to see which ones those were. Pointing paid spend at emergency water work, rebuilding the site around calls instead of research, and reporting sold revenue by source turned the industry’s slow late-summer and fall season into a $41,725 month, with most of it costing nothing in ads.
The next gains are already identified: route every lead through tracked numbers (11 October leads worth about $15,000 never reached the CRM), fix voicemail capacity so emergency callers don’t hang up, and keep building authority for the high-value Denver emergency terms.
“I really want to scale this thing. I think we’re in a good place now … We got a really good team.”
Jesse Gaytan (June 2026)
Want the same kind of reporting and call flow for your restoration company? Contact Restoration Inbound and we’ll scope it around your market.