Pay Per Click

SEO compounds slowly and then pays for years. Paid search works today and stops the moment you stop paying. Neither is better. They answer different questions, and the research behind one feeds directly into the other.

We take this seriously, and it shows on takeover

When we inherit an existing account, it’s rare that we don’t reduce cost per lead while increasing lead volume, usually within the first couple of reporting cycles.

That isn’t because we’re performing magic. It’s because most accounts we take over have been running on autopilot for a year or more. Broad match with no negative keyword list worth the name. Ad copy written at launch and never touched. Budget flowing steadily to search terms that were never going to convert. Conversion tracking that has been quietly broken since the last site update, meaning every optimisation decision for months was made on fictional data.

The first thing we do on any new account is verify that the tracking is telling the truth. It’s astonishing how often it isn’t.

The second thing we check is whether Microsoft Ads has ever been switched on. It usually hasn’t, and that is often the cheapest available improvement to a cost per lead.

What’s included

Account structure and setup

Campaigns built around commercial intent, with tight ad groups, a serious negative keyword list from day one, and match types chosen deliberately rather than left on the default that spends fastest.

Conversion tracking that’s correct

Verified end to end before a dollar is spent. Every optimisation decision downstream depends on this being right, and it’s the most commonly broken thing in paid search.

Landing page alignment

The page an ad points at has to continue the promise the ad made. Sending expensive clicks to a generic homepage is the fastest way to waste a budget, and it’s extremely common.

Ongoing optimisation

Search term reviews, bid and budget adjustments, ad testing, audience refinement, and pruning what isn’t working. Regularly, not quarterly.

Microsoft Ads, which almost nobody will mention to you

This is the closest thing to a secret in paid search, and the reason it stays a secret is that it is unglamorous rather than difficult.

Bing has a small share of the search market. Most agencies read that number, stop there, and never open an account. What the number does not tell you is that the competition is thinner in roughly the same proportion, so the auctions are cheaper for people searching the same things with the same intent. You end up paying less per click for traffic that converts at a similar rate.

The audience is also different in a useful way. It skews older and more corporate, in large part because Bing is the default search on an enormous number of company-managed computers and almost nobody changes it. If you sell to businesses, a meaningful share of the people who could sign your invoice are searching on a work machine that has never been touched.

It is getting more interesting rather than less, too. Several AI assistants use Bing’s index to ground their answers, so presence there increasingly feeds visibility in places that did not exist a couple of years ago.

There is one more reason it is worth trying: it costs almost nothing to find out. Campaigns import from Google Ads more or less directly, so a trial is a small amount of setup rather than building a channel from scratch. We will tell you within a reporting cycle or two whether it is earning its place.

To be clear about what this is: rarely the main channel, frequently the most efficient one, and consistently the one nobody else has bothered to switch on.

Meta and remarketing

Where it makes sense for your business. For some industries it’s a strong second channel. For others it’s a distraction, and we’ll say which one you are.

Reporting in money, not metrics

Spend, leads, cost per lead, and where that sits against what a customer is worth to you. Impressions and click-through rate are diagnostics, not results.

When we’ll tell you not to bother

If your average customer value can’t support the cost per click in your industry, paid search is a slow way to lose money and we’d rather say that at the quote stage than six months in.

Who this is for

Businesses that need enquiries now, for a launch or a quiet season or while SEO builds. Businesses wanting an efficient always-on paid channel. And especially businesses currently running ads who have a nagging suspicion the account isn’t being looked after. That suspicion is usually correct.