REF / MARKETING

Meridian Limo - Local SEM that Filled the Fleet

Took a regional limo operator from 80 bookings a month to a fully-utilised fleet using Google Ads, GMB optimisation, and a tight retargeting funnel.

RoleDigital Marketing Lead
Year2024-2025
Outcome+575% bookings in 12 months
DomainMarketing
00
STACK

Tech used.

Google AdsMeta AdsGMBLooker StudioGA4CallRail

The Problem

Meridian was a well-reviewed limo operator with a clean fleet of 9 vehicles, but inbound demand was unpredictable. Most bookings came from referrals and a thin Google Maps presence. The owner was paying a generalist agency for "SEO + social" with no ROAS reporting, and fleet utilisation was sitting around 38%: every empty Saturday night was lost revenue that couldn't be recovered.

The brief was simple: fill the fleet, prove the spend.

The Approach

I rebuilt the marketing stack around search intent: when someone types "airport limo" at 2am, you either show up first or you don't exist. The plan ran across four channels with very different jobs.

Channel Mix. Q4 Spend Allocation
Google Search Ads52%
Local SEO + GMB18%
Meta Retargeting16%
YouTube Pre-roll8%
Email / SMS Reactivation6%

Google Search Ads carried the funnel. I rebuilt every campaign around match-type discipline. exact-match for high-intent ("book limo near me", "wedding limo [city]"), phrase-match for the long tail, and aggressive negatives to kill prom-night clickbait. Every campaign was geo-fenced to a 35-mile service radius.

Local SEO + GMB was the moat. We rebuilt the Google Business Profile, added every service category, ran a structured review-request flow after each ride, and pushed the rating from 4.2 → 4.8 across 312 new reviews in 9 months.

Meta Retargeting caught the people who clicked the ad but didn't book. wedding planners, executive assistants, repeat fliers. Lookalike audiences off the booking pixel did the prospecting.

The Outcome

+575%
Monthly Bookings
80 → 540
6.8x
Blended ROAS
vs 1.4x baseline
−71%
Cost per Booking
$54 → $16
84%
Fleet Utilisation
+46 pts
Monthly BookingsSept 2024. Aug 2025 · holiday peak in Dec, post-NYE slump in Jan
Sep
80
Oct
112
Nov
184
Dec
286
Jan
198
Feb
232
Mar
304
Apr
348
May
462
Jun
510
Jul
478
Aug
540
Bookings by Day of WeekMonth 12 average. Saturdays carry the fleet
Mon
14
Tue
11
Wed
18
Thu
26
Fri
38
Sat
47
Sun
22
Before vs After: 12 Months
MetricBeforeAfterΔ
Monthly Bookings80540+575%
Avg Booking Value$165$214+30%
Cost per Lead$32$8.40−74%
GMB Rating4.24.8+0.6
Fleet Utilisation38%84%+46 pts
Repeat Booking Rate11%29%+18 pts

By month 8, Meridian added two SUVs and a stretch to keep up with demand. The reactivation flow. a quarterly SMS to corporate accounts and frequent-flier customers. alone generated 22% of bookings at a $2.10 cost per booking. We retired the old agency, brought reporting into Looker Studio, and the owner now sees ROAS by campaign every Monday morning.