— Paid media
Paid media, with the tracking built first
The most common thing we find in a new ad account is spend with no conversion tracking behind it. Months of budget, thousands of clicks, and no way to know which keyword produced a customer. That gets fixed before anything is turned on.
Review my account01 Tracking before spending
Conversion actions defined against real business outcomes, not page views. A form submission, a booking, a purchase, with values attached so a large enquiry outweighs a small one in the reporting.
Google Ads and Meta pixel installed correctly, including on sites that change pages without reloading, where a standard install silently records one page view per visit and nothing else.
02 Search, where the intent already exists
Someone typing a service and a town is ready to buy. That traffic is expensive and worth it, provided the negative keyword list is doing its job. Without one you pay for students, job seekers and people looking for free alternatives.
Landing page matters as much as the ad. Search traffic should not land on a home page that makes them hunt.
03 Social, where you interrupt instead
Nobody on Instagram is shopping for a contractor. Paid social has to stop the scroll on its own, which makes the creative the whole job. Video outperforms static almost every time.
04 What we will tell you
If your budget is too small to learn anything, we will say so before taking it. Under about twenty dollars a day on search, most accounts gather data too slowly to optimise, and you are better off putting that money into the site or into local search first.
— Straight answers
How much should I spend on Google Ads?
Setup is $700 to $1,600, then $500 a month to manage, and we would suggest at least $20 to $30 a day in ad spend on search. Below that the account gathers data too slowly to optimise and you are paying to learn nothing.
Google Ads or Meta ads?
Google for intent, Meta for interruption. Someone typing 'web designer Cambridge' is ready to buy, which is why that click is expensive and worth it. Nobody on Instagram is shopping for a contractor, so paid social has to stop the scroll on its own and the creative is the whole job.
Why is my current agency's reporting useless?
Usually because conversion tracking was never set up properly, so the account optimises for clicks rather than enquiries. On sites that change pages without reloading, a standard install silently records one page view per visit and nothing else.
Do I need a landing page or can ads point at my home page?
Search traffic should not land on a home page that makes them hunt. Someone who typed a service and a town wants that service, priced, with a way to get in touch above the fold.