ELEMENT OUTDOOR LIVING Wilmington, NC • Luxury Outdoor Living
From Feast or Famine to a Pipeline They Could Control
Great work doesn't find the right clients. The right system does.
with Halstead
Lead increase over prior quarter — in their first year with Halstead
Stabilized quality demand
Of all leads coming in qualified
Connected pipeline — CallRail · Monday.com · Zapier · Slack
The work didn’t change.
The system did.
Within months, the bigger design/build projects Element had been working toward started coming back. CPL dropped from a peak of $886 to $172. Lead volume went from 2–3 questionable leads per check-in to 27–43 qualified leads per reporting period. The pipeline went from inconsistent and unattributed to steady, qualified, and visible.
Lead increase over prior quarter
Website sessions since launch
CPL reduction
Of leads qualified
Keywords ranking Top 3
Google Ads CTR (from 3.86%)
Meta Ads CTR
Qualified leads per period (was 2–3)
The work was exceptional.
The pipeline wasn’t.
$120K/year on paid media. Lead quality declining.
No visibility into what was producing pipeline.
Element Outdoor Living builds premium pools, pavilions, and full outdoor environments for high-value homeowners across Wilmington. Founded in 2013 and grown to a 52-person operation, they come in with creative vision, do the foundational work others skip, and stay with clients from initial design through long-term maintenance. They're self-described dream makers, not order takers.
The craftsmanship was never the problem, the demand system was.
They were spending $120K a year on paid advertising with a previous agency and watching lead quality decline anyway. Their website hadn't been meaningfully updated in years and didn't reflect who they were. When their internal marketing resource left, they had no strategy, no consistency, and no clear picture of what was working. They wanted a proactive partner, not another order-taker.
Lead flow was feast or famine. CPL peaked at $886, tracking was incomplete, and there was no visibility into what was producing pipeline. By the time homeowners were ready to call, they'd been thinking about their project for months. Element needed a system that could find those homeowners and earn their trust before the first conversation.
They knew what work they wanted to win. The system wasn’t built to find it.
They needed demand that matched the work they wanted to win.
Rebuilt to match the brand Element already was in the field — premium, deliberate, design-led.
Restructured against the projects they actually wanted to win. CPL down 68% in under six months.
55 keywords now ranking in the Top 3. Showing up for high-intent homeowners in the right neighborhoods.
CallRail · Monday.com · Zapier · Slack — every lead source connected back to revenue.
Element needed more than better ads. They needed a system that could find the right homeowners, bring them in qualified, and show leadership exactly where every opportunity came from.
Halstead built that system — website, paid media, local search, and pipeline tracking connected as one. The website finally reflected the brand they already were in the field. Paid media started working for the projects they actually wanted to win. Local search put them in front of high-intent homeowners in the right neighborhoods. And for the first time, every lead was connected back to its source — so the team could respond faster and leadership could see what was working.
the website
A site that matched the work — not what came before it.
Rebuilt to reflect the brand Element already was in the field: deliberate, premium, design-led. Editorial typography, real project photography, and a structure that lets homeowners imagine the work on their own property.
Increase in website sessions since launch
Keywords ranking in the Top 3
For the first time, Element can see the full picture — leads by source, qualification rate, consultations scheduled, design contracts signed, and conversion at every stage.
Within their first several months working together, the bigger design/build projects they’d been working toward started coming back. Five active pool leads in pipeline simultaneously — volume they hadn’t seen in months. A Google Business Profile lead came in from the next-door neighbor of a past Element project, unprompted. Internally, the conversation shifted from "how do we get more leads" to "how do we close them faster."
For the first time, they could see exactly what was working.
For the first time, they weren’t chasing demand. They were managing it.
For the first time, they could see exactly what was working.
For the first time, Element can see the full picture — leads by source, qualification rate, consultations scheduled, design contracts signed, and conversion at every stage.
Within their first several months working together, the bigger design/build projects they’d been working toward started coming back. Five active pool leads in pipeline simultaneously — volume they hadn’t seen in months. A Google Business Profile lead came in from the next-door neighbor of a past Element project, unprompted. Internally, the conversation shifted from "how do we get more leads" to "how do we close them faster."
For the first time, they weren’t chasing demand. They were managing it.
Visible everywhere it matters — including AI search.
Beyond Google and Meta, Element now ranks consistently across AI assistants — ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overview — for the most valuable queries in their market. Halstead tracks visibility weekly and feeds it back into content, on-page, and local strategy.
Start with a diagnosis
Stop buying marketing.
Start operating a system.
See what a connected demand system would look like for your business.