--- title: "Every location bought the same keywords against each other" description: "Internal auction competition inflated CPCs across the group. Marketing & margin audit: $39k/yr in wasted spend cut, evidenced in 5 days." url: https://marginfix.ai/cases/every-location-bought-the-same-keywords-against-each-other/ lastmod: 2026-10-12 --- Every location bought the same keywords against each other. [Request an audit →](/book/) Services · Dental group # Every location bought the same keywords against each other. This marketing & margin audit identified **$39k in wasted annual spend** in a Services business, evidenced, senior reviewed, and delivered in 5 days. $1–3M annual revenue Dental group Focus: Keyword overlap −$39k wasted spend cut / yr −26% internal CPC 5 days to findings Search cost per click across the clinics Before audit $2.40 → After fix $1.78 ## The business A multilocation dental group allowed each clinic to run its own search advertising independently, with no coordination between locations. Every practice managed its own campaigns and budget in isolation, which felt locally empowering, but meant nobody was looking at how the group’s many separate accounts interacted with one another in the same ad auctions. ## What triggered the audit Group level cost per click kept climbing with no obvious external cause such as new competitors or seasonal demand. Rising CPCs without an external explanation frequently trace back to bidders competing against themselves, so the audit checked the one internal cause nobody wanted to find: the group’s own clinics bidding against each other. ## What the audit found The clinics were, without realizing it, driving up their own costs. Because each location ran its own search campaigns independently and many served overlapping geographic areas, multiple clinics from the same group were bidding on the same keywords in the same auctions, competing directly against one another and inflating the cost per click for the entire group. Every practice thought it was simply buying local demand; collectively they were engaged in an internal auction war that raised prices for all of them and benefited only the ad platform. Because the accounts were managed in isolation with no central visibility, the self competition had gone undetected while CPCs crept up, quietly costing the group roughly $39k a year in avoidable, self inflicted bid inflation. ◉ How we produced this finding MarginFix pressure tested the keyword overlap finding the same way it does for every services client: isolate what the spend actually caused, strip out what it merely took credit for, and let a named senior auditor validate the read against real data before a single figure is presented. Data sources: Spend by channel, campaign, creative and audience, joined to conversion and revenue data, plus a geo holdout test built to isolate what keyword overlap genuinely caused rather than what it merely claimed. Key frameworks: Geo holdout incrementality testing, Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and attribution correction and inflation factor analysis, cross checked against Analytic Partners ROI Genome, Google Meridian and Meta Robyn. Human validation gate: Every incrementality read is rerun against your own data and signed off by a named senior auditor before it ships. No automated output ever leaves the building unreviewed. Verified against Time tracking / utilization Search term reports Project P&L CRM pipeline Invoiced revenue The wasted spend cut / yr was measured like for like over a matched period, reconciled to the billed and delivered project P&L, and signed off by a named senior auditor before publication. Client identity redacted to protect their commercial position. WORKING PAPER ████████ Dental group Representative Redacted Clinic Avg CPC North clinic $1.74 Central clinic $1.81 Overlapping metro terms $2.40 wasted spend cut / yr +$38,810 Recurring, recovered every year the fix holds, not a one off. Working paper: search cost per click across the clinics traced line by line and reconciled to the billed and delivered project P&L over a matched period. Line items representative and redacted; the recovered figure is the reconciled audit finding. ## What we changed ✓ Consolidated search into a geo partitioned account structure, so each clinic owns a distinct territory rather than overlapping with and bidding against its own sibling locations. ✓ Set group level negative keywords and controls to stop clinics competing with one another in the same auctions and inflating the price for everyone. ✓ Centralised search governance and visibility while deliberately leaving each clinic its own local budget and autonomy, so coordination didn’t come at the cost of local control. ✓ Established shared monitoring of group level cost per click, so any future self competition is caught and corrected before it inflates costs again. ## The result The outcomes were measured for three months after a 90 day implementation period. $39k a year recovered by stopping the group from bidding up its own keywords, an annual figure equal to 7× the $5,950 Audit + Sprint fee. For any multilocation operator, the cause is easy to miss and easy to fix: independent accounts meant clinics were quietly competing against each other in the same auctions. If your locations run search in isolation, rising CPCs may be self inflicted, benefiting only the ad platform. Nobody sees it without a group level view. A fixed fee audit consolidates and diagnoses it in days, so each site captures local demand without paying a premium to fight a sibling. From kickoff to signed off findings: 5 days. ![Portrait photograph of Leslie Martin](/assets/team/leslie-martin.jpg) Reviewed & signed off by: Leslie Martin Senior Auditor · MarginFix · 10+ years of auditing experience ✓ Anonymized to protect the client · senior reviewed findings · Published November 15, 2025 · Last reviewed October 12, 2026 ## What the client said SERVICES Approved Nov 2025 $39k a year of wasted spend cut in 5 days Search cost per click across the clinics: **$2.40 → $1.78** “Our cost per click climbed with no new competitor in sight. Leslie found the competitor was us: clinics bidding against each other on the same keywords in the same auctions. One geo partitioned account structure ended it.” **Operations Director · Services · Dental group** Written approval Under NDA 5 days to findings ![Portrait photograph of Leslie Martin](/assets/team/leslie-martin.jpg) **Leslie Martin** Senior Auditor · signed this audit off [Request an audit →](/book/) [Prefer to talk it through first? Talk to an auditor →](/book/call/) ## More Services findings [Retainers were priced below delivery cost, +$54k/yr](/cases/retainers-were-priced-below-delivery-cost/) [Fixed fee packages were scoped below the hours they consumed, +$52k/yr](/cases/fixed-fee-packages-were-scoped-below-the-hours-they-consumed/) [Job board spend was spread evenly regardless of fill rate, +$39k/yr](/cases/job-board-spend-was-spread-evenly-regardless-of-fill-rate/) [Travel and onboarding time was going unbilled, +$47k/yr](/cases/travel-and-onboarding-time-was-going-unbilled/) [Quoting ignored callback and warranty cost, +$44k/yr](/cases/quoting-ignored-callback-and-warranty-cost/) [Lead spend ignored close rate by source, +$47k/yr](/cases/lead-spend-ignored-close-rate-by-source/) [The benchmark: what audits recover across 74 cases →](/benchmark/) [All case studies](/case-studies/) [Model a Services budget in the wasted ad spend calculator →](/estimator/services/)