FastFrame Increased Conversions by 396% While Reducing CPA by 69% Through a Franchise-Focused Google Ads Strategy
FastFrame needed a Google Ads strategy capable of supporting a national franchise system without treating every store, market, or customer search the same. When Bluum took over, the account was optimizing toward a mix of high and low-value actions, budgets were distributed without enough consideration for store-level performance, and much of the traffic came from broad, lower-intent searches.
Bluum rebuilt the strategy around high-intent local acquisition, cleaner conversion tracking, tighter geographic targeting, and performance-based budget allocation. Within the first few months, conversions increased 396% while CPA decreased 69%. As the strategy evolved, Bluum introduced a scalable tiered budgeting system that ultimately drove 16% more conversions at a 17% lower cost per conversion, with Tier 3 stores seeing a 73% reduction in cost per conversion.
396% Increase in Conversions 🔥 69% Lower CPA 🔥 73% Lower Cost Per Conversion for Tier 3 Stores 🔥
The Challenge
Managing paid search for a franchise system introduces a challenge that doesn't exist in a typical single-location account: every market behaves differently.
FastFrame's existing Google Ads account was generating activity, but the underlying structure made it difficult to determine how much of that activity represented meaningful customer intent. The account included low-value conversion actions such as time on site and pages viewed, while nearly half of franchise campaigns were sending paid traffic to a generic locations page rather than the individual store's microsite.
Bluum's challenge was to rebuild the account around the actions that actually mattered to FastFrame's franchisees, including calls, form submissions, requests for directions, and other behaviors more closely connected to someone becoming an in-store customer.
The Pain Points
Improving FastFrame's performance meant looking beyond account-wide averages and creating a strategy capable of balancing dozens of individual locations, different levels of local demand, and limited store-level budgets.
Optimizing Toward the Wrong Actions
The previous account included micro-conversions like time on site and pages viewed. In Q1 2023, those low-value actions represented approximately 30% of reported conversions, making performance appear stronger without necessarily representing meaningful customer activity.
Too Much Low-Intent Traffic
A large portion of paid search traffic came from generic searches such as "picture frames." These keywords could generate inexpensive clicks, but they weren't necessarily coming from consumers actively looking for a local custom framing store.
One Budget Strategy Across Very Different Stores
Individual locations varied significantly in demand and performance, yet distributing budget too evenly meant high-performing stores could be constrained while weaker stores continued receiving comparable investment.
A National Strategy That Still Needed to Be Local
Someone searching a few miles from a FastFrame location represented a very different opportunity than someone farther away. Bluum needed to balance system-wide scale with the hyper-local nature of an in-store service business.
The Huumans
Behind The Work
Great results don’t come from systems alone, they come from the people behind them.
Each Bluum partnership is backed by a cross-functional team that blends strategy, design, and leadership oversight to move fast and think smart.
Every win starts with the people who make it happen.
Here’s the team that brought this one to life.
Account Lead
Austin Spikes
Austin served as the main point of contact and project quarterback. He guided communication, managed timelines, and made sure every piece of the partnership stayed on track and on brand.
Lead Designer
B. Bernhard
B. shaped the visual direction of the work by translating goals and audience insights into creative that captured attention and drove action.
Executive Sponsor
Ally Michelle
Ally stayed close to the partnership from start to finish, providing executive oversight, helping remove roadblocks, and keeping the work aligned with the client’s bigger business goals.
The Results
Bluum's restructuring produced meaningful gains early in the engagement, but the larger success came from continuing to evolve the strategy as store-level data revealed where FastFrame's advertising dollars could work hardest.
396% Increase in Conversions
In August, conversion volume increased 396% compared to July as Bluum continued refining campaign structure, bidding, targeting, and budget utilization.
69% Lower CPA
That growth didn't require sacrificing efficiency. During the same period, FastFrame's average CPA decreased 69%, while CPC fell 20.85%.
17% Lower Cost Per Conversion With Tiered Budgets
Bluum's tiered budget system allocated more resources toward stronger groups of stores rather than distributing budget evenly. Compared with the previous structure, the tier system generated 16% more conversions, 33% more clicks, and a 17% lower cost per conversion while spend decreased 3%.
73% Lower Cost Per Conversion for Tier 3 Stores
The system didn't only benefit FastFrame's strongest locations. By giving Bluum a scalable way to identify and optimize groups requiring additional attention, Tier 3 stores ultimately experienced a 73% decrease in cost per conversion.
The Strategy
Bluum began by changing what success meant inside the account. Low-value micro-conversions were removed from optimization, and the strategy shifted toward actions more closely connected to in-store intent, including calls, lead forms, clicks for directions, and interactions with individual Google Business Profiles. This meant reported conversion volume could initially look less impressive, but the remaining actions represented significantly stronger signals of potential customer intent.
Search strategy shifted at the same time. Bluum paused lower-performing ad groups, tightened geographic targeting around individual locations, and prioritized searches indicating someone was actively looking for custom framing nearby. The tradeoff was intentional: higher-intent searches could cost more per click, but someone searching for a "custom picture framing store" near a FastFrame location represented a much stronger potential customer than someone broadly searching for "picture frames."
Bluum then began testing new ways to create additional scale without sacrificing that focus on quality. Performance Max was introduced to support local store actions, while keyword and bidding experiments uncovered additional opportunities. A broad-match "Near Me" test, for example, reduced cost per conversion by approximately 41% compared with other keywords, providing another strategy Bluum could progressively roll out across locations.
As more store-level data accumulated, Bluum moved away from treating every franchise location equally. Stores were ranked using historical conversion performance and grouped into three budget tiers, allowing more of FastFrame's advertising dollars to flow toward the locations demonstrating the greatest opportunity while creating a scalable framework for optimizing weaker groups. The tier system ultimately delivered improvements across clicks, CPC, conversions, and cost per conversion, turning what had been dozens of individual local campaigns into a more strategic system for managing franchise growth.
“Bluum brought an incredible level of thought, detail, and commitment to our paid search strategy. Their professionalism and determination to get results for FastFrame were evident throughout our partnership.”
John Fletcher, President & Founder @ FastFrame
Cue
Bluum
More locations shouldn't mean more wasted spend.
For FastFrame, scaling Google Ads across a franchise system meant abandoning the idea that every store, search, and conversion deserved equal weight. Bluum rebuilt the account around higher-intent customer actions, localized search behavior, continuous testing, and a budget structure that allowed performance to determine where the next advertising dollar should go.
The result was a 396% increase in conversions alongside a 69% decrease in CPA, followed by a tiered franchise strategy that generated 16% more conversions at a 17% lower cost per conversion.
“Bluum brought an incredible level of thought, detail, and commitment to our paid search strategy. Their professionalism and determination to get results for FastFrame were evident throughout our partnership.”
John Fletcher, President & Founder @ FastFrame
“Bluum brought an incredible level of thought, detail, and commitment to our paid search strategy. Their professionalism and determination to get results for FastFrame were evident throughout our partnership.”
John Fletcher, President & Founder @ FastFrame
Creative That Converts
For FastFrame, creative meant meeting potential customers with the right message at the exact moment they were searching for a framing solution. Bluum developed and tested more conversion-focused, brand-aligned Search copy against legacy ads, progressively replacing underperforming messaging as the new creative demonstrated stronger performance.
