PPC Management Services That
Turn Clicks Into Customers

Why is our cost per lead rising?

Usually competition and match-type drift together, and the second one is fixable. Broad match with a weak negative list gradually pulls in queries further and further from buying intent, and the cost per lead rises without anything visibly changing.

The other common cause is Quality Score. Ads written for the brand rather than the query, and landing pages that do not obviously answer what was searched, both raise what each click costs against a competitor bidding the same amount.

Both show up in the search terms report, which is the cheapest diagnostic in paid search and the one most accounts have not opened in months.

How much budget does paid search need?

Enough to generate consistent conversion data, which depends on your price point and conversion rate rather than on a benchmark figure. We are not going to invent a number.

What we can say is what happens below that threshold: automated bidding cannot learn, campaigns stay in an extended learning phase, and results read as noise. At that point the honest strategy is fewer campaigns, tighter match types and manual control — not the same tactics at smaller scale.

Where the budget genuinely cannot support paid search for your competition level, we will say so. That conversation is cheaper than three months of spend proving it.

Should we run Performance Max?

Sometimes. Performance Max needs meaningful conversion volume to optimize well and trades control and reporting visibility for reach across more inventory.

The specific risk is brand cannibalisation. Without brand exclusions applied, PMax will serve on people searching your company name — traffic that would have converted anyway — and report an excellent return while total revenue stays flat. That is the single most common reason a PMax campaign looks outstanding and changes nothing.

Standard Shopping and Search keep granular control, which matters more on smaller accounts. We recommend from your data rather than from what is newest.

How do paid search and SEO work together?

Paid intercepts demand immediately and stops when you stop paying. Organic earns placement slowly and keeps it. Run blind to each other, they waste money in both directions.

The useful overlap is data. Search term reports from a paid account are genuine query research for content — you learn which terms actually convert before committing months of organic work to them. Equally, a page that already ranks usually makes a better paid landing page than one built for the campaign.

The other shared constraint is the destination. A slow or poorly-targeted landing page hurts both channels at once, which is why technical SEO findings frequently improve paid performance as a side effect.

Why does search intent decide account structure?

Because an ad group exists so that one ad and one landing page can answer one thing a person wanted. When a group contains queries that want genuinely different things, the ad has to be vague enough to cover all of them, and vague ads perform accordingly.

The same words carry different intent. Someone typing a service name plus "cost" is comparing; the same name plus "near me" is ready to act; the name plus "how does it work" is not buying today. Those are three ad groups and three destinations, not one.

This is also why the search terms report matters more than any other screen in a paid account. It is the only place the account tells you what it actually bought, in the words people typed — and it is where intent mismatches become visible before they become expensive.

Grouping by intent rather than by your own service taxonomy is the practical version. If two queries would be answered by the same sentence and sent to the same page, they belong together; if not, they do not.

How should ad testing actually be run?

On one substantial variable at a time, for long enough to mean something, and starting with the argument rather than the wording.

The large differences come from what the ad claims, not from how it phrases it. Testing a price-led message against a speed-led message against a risk-reversal message tells you something you can use everywhere. Testing two orderings of the same headline usually tells you nothing that survives the next month.

Responsive search ads changed the mechanics rather than the principle. The system assembles combinations from the assets supplied, so the quality and variety of those assets sets the ceiling on what it can find. Fifteen headlines that make one argument give it nothing to choose between.

The most common testing failure is impatience. A test called before it has accumulated enough conversions is measuring noise, and acting on it moves the account for no reason. Where volume genuinely cannot support a test, judgement plus a landing-page change is more honest than an underpowered experiment.

What should you expect from a PPC agency?

Account ownership, first. If the agency runs your campaigns inside their own manager account, you lose the conversion history and audience lists when you leave — which is a commercial arrangement, not a technical necessity.

Then ask how they report. Google Ads services that report platform conversions without reconciling them against your CRM or store data are reporting the flattering number. Some gap is normal; an agency that will not discuss it is not measuring.

Be wary of anyone who quotes a cost per lead before seeing your account. They cannot know it, and a number offered that early is a sales device rather than a forecast.