What usually goes wrong
Three problems account for most wasted small business ad spend. The first is broad match keywords with no negative list, so you pay for 'free', 'jobs', 'DIY' and 'salary' searches that were never going to convert. The second is missing conversion tracking — without it you're optimising towards clicks, and Google will happily buy you a lot of cheap, useless clicks. The third is sending every ad to the homepage instead of a page that answers the specific search.
Fixing those three things typically improves results more than any amount of bid tinkering.
What we do
Setup covers account structure, keyword and competitor research, ad copy written for intent rather than adjectives, negative keyword lists, extensions, geographic and schedule targeting tuned to where and when your customers actually search, and conversion tracking wired properly to form submissions and calls.
Ongoing management is the part that compounds:
- Weekly search term review, adding negatives and promoting what converts
- Bid and budget adjustments based on cost per enquiry, not cost per click
- Ad copy testing so the best-performing message wins over time
- Landing page improvements — the cheapest way to lower your cost per lead is usually a better page, not a lower bid
- Monthly reporting showing spend, enquiries and cost per enquiry in plain English
Ads and SEO work better together
Paid search buys you results today; SEO earns them for free later. Run together they inform each other: your ad data shows within weeks exactly which search terms convert, which tells us which pages are worth building and optimising organically. That's a research shortcut you'd otherwise wait months for.
It works the other way too. A fast, well-structured landing page raises your Quality Score, which lowers what you pay per click. The site work and the ad work are not separate problems.
Budgets and what to expect
For most London small businesses, a meaningful test needs at least a few hundred pounds a month in ad spend — below that there simply isn't enough data to optimise on. Competitive sectors like legal, trades and cosmetic services cost considerably more per click and need a larger budget to be worth running.
Our management fee is separate from your ad spend and quoted based on account size and complexity. Your budget goes to Google, not to us, and the account stays in your name — if you stop working with us, you keep everything: the account, the history and the data.
Expect the first four to six weeks to be a learning period while conversion data accumulates. After that, campaigns generally settle and cost per enquiry starts coming down.
