Appearing at the exact moment
somebody looks for you.

We start by checking that your account measures the truth. On most of the accounts we take over, conversion tracking counts things that are not conversions: a click on a phone number that never connected, a form counted twice, a thank-you page reloaded. Until that is fixed, every decision that follows rests on wrong figures.

Then we look at which searches your money actually goes on. Not the keywords you chose: the queries people actually typed, which are often very different. That is where the fastest saving is to be found, and it is often considerable.

Finally we rebuild the structure around intent. Somebody typing a product name, somebody comparing two solutions and somebody looking for a definition are not worth the same price and must not land on the same page.

Google Ads presents itself as a keyword marketplace. That is a convenient way to sell the tool, and a bad way to run it. Two people can type very similar words while being months apart in their decision.

Transactional intent

Somebody searching for a precise service, in a precise town, is ready to act. Those searches are few, expensive, and they are the only ones that genuinely deserve your budget at the start.

Comparative intent

Somebody weighing two solutions will not buy today, but they are choosing now who makes their shortlist. Those searches are worked with pages that compare honestly, not with an ad promising to be the best.

Informational intent

Somebody looking for a definition or a tutorial is not a customer. Paying for those clicks is the most common way to burn a budget while feeling productive, because the volume is flattering and the visit count rises.

Our work consists above all of separating those three populations, excluding one, and not speaking to them the same way.

An audit returning two hundred recommendations sorted by tab serves no purpose. Here is what we look at, in order, and why that order.

Measurement, first

We check what is counted as a conversion and we test it in real conditions. An account optimising towards a false conversion methodically learns to find people who will not convert.

The searches actually paid for

We export the queries of the last few months and we read them. The off-topic ones, job searches, competitors searched by name, the merely curious. We build the exclusion list, which is the most immediate saving.

Automatic campaigns left alone

Formats that spread the budget themselves across search, display and video do work, on one condition: that they are given rules and good measurement. Left to themselves with a vague objective, they find the cheapest click, which is almost always the least qualified.

The landing page

We look at where the clicks land. Many campaigns judged bad simply send people to the site’s home page, leaving the visitor to find what they were looking for.

On a search account, the temptation to raise the budget is permanent: there are always more searches to buy.

Three rules apply across the whole division. The media budget does not pass through us and we take no percentage of it: our fee is fixed. The account is created in your name, and the history as well as the audiences stay with you if we stop working together. And there is no minimum term on advertising management. The detail of those three points is on the division’s page.

Many companies who call us about search advertising have a local subject first, and part of their budget would be better spent elsewhere.

If you work within a geographical area, part of your visibility rests on things that are not billed: the business listing filled in correctly, exact opening hours, up-to-date photographs, reviews that get answered. That groundwork produces calls without buying a single click.

Advertising comes next, and it comes well: over a restricted area, the auctions are more affordable and the searches are far better qualified than nationally. But it comes afterwards. Paying to be visible in a town where your listing shows the wrong opening hours amounts to funding visits that end at a closed door.

A promise of first place

An ad’s position depends on an auction replayed at every search, on the perceived quality of your page and on what your competitors are doing at that instant. Nobody controls it. You can always buy it by paying any price, which is not a strategy.

Being paid a percentage of the spend

It would pay us more on the day we advised you to spend more, and cost us on the day the right decision was to cut. We charge a fixed amount.

Clicks at any price

There is always a way to raise the number of visits: broaden, accept vague searches, aim wide. The number rises, the number of customers does not move. We prefer an account that spends less and produces as much.