Clean data, better leads: how Kingsley Healthcare Group cut CPL by 33%
One of the UK's top 20 large care home groups, Kingsley Healthcare Group generates 75% of its business revenue through digital marketing. But signal loss from browser restrictions, ad blockers and long, multi-device journeys meant many inquiries landed in reporting as "unknown," even when callers told the team they'd found Kingsley Healthcare Group on Google in the first place. Kingsley Healthcare Group needed to close that gap while fully respecting each visitor's consent choices. See how Tracklution helps source those inquiries, and give algorithms the complete and clean signals they need.
- 33% drop on CPL
from over £150 to £100 (on average)
+30% recovered conversions
compared with before Tracklution
7 days to verified data
from discovery session to a fully tested setup
Kingsley Healthcare Group is a privately owned family business that has been caring for people across the UK for over 25 years. The group currently runs 43 care homes (around 2,500 beds) offering nursing, residential and respite care, specialist learning disability services across six sites, and Kingsley Home Care, a home care service that grew to 8 branches across the UK in its first year.
Consistently ranked among carehome.co.uk's top 20 large care home groups, Kingsley keeps occupancy at 93% across its matured portfolio.
This story was written in collaboration with Chathura Kannangara, Digital Marketing Manager at Kingsley Healthcare Group.
The challenge: leads with no source attached
With a solid reputation and 93% occupancy, most Kingsley Healthcare homes fill organically. And so, paid campaigns mainly focus on roughly 10 to 15 homes with vacancies at any given time (often newly opened or newly acquired locations).
Each target location is allocated £1,000 to £2,000 a month in ad spend, with the total monthly Google Ads spend kept between £10,000 and £25,000.
Google Ads is the largest contributor to digitally attributed revenue, with Meta, TikTok and Microsoft Ads supporting awareness and enquiries across the wider customer journey.
A long and partly offline customer journey
Choosing a care home is not an impulse purchase.
From the first search to a family member moving in, the journey takes anywhere from 1 to 12 weeks. Throughout this journey, Chathura estimates that 4 in 10 touch points happen offline, via phone calls, visits, or conversations with home managers.
The "unknown" problem in a restricted industry
Kingsley already had a call tracking provider giving keyword-level data and AI summaries of every call. But that wasn’t enough.
When a visitor didn't accept marketing cookies, their call or inquiry came through with no source.
"
We had inquiries coming in where people told us on the phone, 'I found you on Google,' but the tracking said unknown.
Chathura Kannangara
The frustration was building up, and Chathura says it made it more difficult to justify the ad spend to management.
A knowledge gap affecting campaign performance
Ad algorithms learn from the conversions you send back to them: send them incomplete or wrong data, and they optimize toward the wrong people.
Chathura sums it up in four words: “garbage in, garbage out”.
"
It's garbage in, garbage out. Feed Performance Max bad signals and it'll bring you bad leads, no matter how good your team is. The quality of the data you send back is what makes the difference.
Chathura Kannangara
The solution: a setup a small team could own
With around £25,000 a month going into Google Ads, running blind on a share of inquiries wasn't an option for Kingsley Healthcare Group.
After screening the market for potential solutions, Chathura and team set their minds on Tracklution, for 2 reasons:
- People. Meeting the team face to face built the kind of trust that's hard to get from a sales email.
- The product. During the demo, they saw how user-friendly Tracklution was, which is a significant advantage for a small marketing team.
"
When we did the demo, we actually realized it's a very user-friendly system. You do the Tag Manager integration, then the rest is very easy to configure.
Chathura Kannangara
7 days from discovery session to collecting verified data
After a discovery session, Chathura and two team members configured the events, then spent a few days checking that the right events reached Google Tag Manager and every ad platform.
After the implementation, the whole process (testing included) took 7 days.
The results: “a source of truth” for every budget decision
From that point on, conversions started registering properly in ad platforms, UTM sources, landing page attribution, and click IDs came back with the leads. Considering the complexity of the industry and customer journey, Chathura now estimates Kingsley's tracking is around 90% accurate.
Enhanced conversions let you send Google first-party details a customer has shared with you, like an email address or phone number, in hashed (scrambled) form. Google uses them to match a conversion to the ad click behind it, even when cookies alone can't.
30% more conversions recovered
Across connected platforms, especially Google and Meta, Kingsley now recovers 30% more conversions than before Tracklution, conversions that previously showed up as unknown in reports.
Now, the care industry and data processing in the UK is highly regulated. Chathura is aware that one cannot track every inquiry with 100% accuracy.
"
We're now recovering 30% more conversions than before, especially on Google and Meta. In our industry, it’s impossible to get 100% accuracy, but now we can actually see where our leads come from, and we're missing far fewer click IDs too.
Chathura Kannangara
Cost per lead (CPL) down 33%, from over £150 to around £100
Before Tracklution, Kingsley Healthcare Group's average CPL was above £150.
Now that they are feeding complete and clean data back to ad platforms, it's averaging £100.
"
Before Tracklution, our average cost per lead was over £150. Now, we're at around £100. Tracklution isn't the only reason, but it plays a central part to make sure our ad platforms get the right signals. The rest comes down to our hard-working team, who support lead conversion throughout the customer journey.
Chathura Kannangara
Better budget planning
Tracklution has become “a source of truth for where revenue comes from” for Chathura and his team.
"
Without correct, clear data, it's really difficult to plan and justify your budget. Tracklution plays a vital role by filling the gaps in missing data points and campaign signals across our channels, so we have a source of truth for where our revenue comes from.
Chathura Kannangara
More data for on-site conversion optimization
With more individual micro-conversions (downloads, CTA clicks, etc.) now tied to their source, Chathura and team have more clues to follow the journey from first click to admission opportunity, making it a lot easier to improve on-site experience, landing pages and CTAs.
The learning: Fix your tracking before AI spends your budget
Chathura's advice for anyone in his position? Get your tracking configuration clean and set up server-side tracking first, especially if AI-driven campaigns are part of your plan for the next few years.
Skip that step, and the platforms will keep optimizing on bad data.
"
Without accurate tracking, cost per lead stays higher than it needs to be on every platform. The ad algorithms are doing exactly what they're designed to do, but they can only optimize on the data they receive. Feed them incomplete signals and they'll optimize in the wrong direction.
Chathura Kannangara
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