Paid search does not create demand. It catches it. Somebody in Sussex is typing your service into Google this afternoon, and the only question that matters is whose name sits at the top when they do.
An account left alone will happily spend your budget on people researching salaries, hunting for a job, or shopping three counties away. The skill is not writing the advert. It is deciding, week after week, which searches you refuse to pay for.
An example, using one trade. Yours will look nothing like it, which is rather the point.
Account structure, conversion tracking that genuinely fires, and an agreed definition of what counts as a lead. All of it before a penny is spent.
Tight match types on the searches closest to buying. We would rather be first on twenty searches than nineteenth on two thousand.
Half of paid search is the page they land on. If that page is your homepage, we will tell you, and we will tell you what to do about it.
Search terms read, negatives added, wasted spend removed. This is the part that quietly stops happening at most agencies around month three.
Budget moves towards whatever is producing enquiries. Nothing gets scaled on a hunch or because it looks good in a report.
Paid search is the easiest channel in marketing to make look good and the easiest to waste. Four things keep everybody honest.
Clicks are simple to buy. We report what an actual enquiry costs you, and whether that number is moving in the right direction.
You see the real queries your money went on, every month, including the ones we cut and why we cut them.
Tracking is set up so an enquiry can be traced back to the search that caused it, rather than credited to whichever channel shouts loudest.
Once a month, and not a tour of a dashboard. What we changed, what it did, and what happens next.
Whether we are building it from nothing or taking over something that has been drifting, the work is the same and the account stays yours.
Paid search suits some businesses and quietly drains others. We would rather work that out on the first call than three months in.
Paid search puts your business at the top of Google at the exact moment someone searches for what you sell. You pay per click, which is why the account has to be run tightly: the searches that were never going to buy are where budgets quietly die.
The account properly run, in five stages that never stop: keyword and search term control, ad copy that matches intent, landing pages that convert, bid and budget management, and reporting you actually open.
Most wasted spend goes on searches that were never going to buy. Loose match types, missing negative keywords and set-and-forget management let irrelevant clicks drain the budget. Cutting that waste is usually the fastest win in an account audit.
Paid search buys the top of Google today and stops when you stop paying. SEO earns its place over months and keeps working. Established businesses usually run both: paid for demand now, organic for the falling cost per customer.
If you are already running ads, we will audit what is there and tell you what we would change first. If you are not, we will tell you honestly whether it is worth starting.
