How a recycler opened a second metro from a standing start — 14 jobs before the truck was paid off

The challenge

An established recycler had capacity, certifications, and a truck — and zero name recognition in the metro they’d just expanded into. In their home market, referrals carried them. Two hours down the highway, nobody had heard of them, and every disposal job went to the incumbent who’d been there fifteen years.

What we did

Paid search doesn’t care how long you’ve been in town. We pointed IT asset disposal and e-waste pickup demand at the new metro only — tight geography, no wasted spend on their home turf where referrals already worked — and routed every call live to their reps. No agency retainer, no lead forms: they funded a call budget and paid per qualified inbound call, tracked from delivered to closed.

This is where a call budget beats a reputation: it buys the conversation a fifteen-year incumbent gets for free. We took first offer on the recovered categories we purchase from the jobs we originated, and they stayed free to sell elsewhere any time we passed.

The result

In 90 days, 140 qualified calls in a market where they were unknown produced 14 booked jobs, and we purchased $48K of recovered inventory at fair market. Fourteen customers who now know their name — and who are theirs permanently, not ours.

The numbers behind it

The economics of this engagement, start to finish. Run the same math on your own budget, close rate and project values in the.

Monthly call budget	$5,700
Price per qualified call	$100
Campaign length	3 months
Close rate (calls → jobs)	10% — our conservative default
Avg recovered inventory we buy, per job	~$3,400
Delivered	140 qualified calls · ~14 jobs · ~$48K bought back