Explosive PPC Campaigns - Get More Leads For Less

I just rebuilt a client’s Google Ads campaign from scratch.

Not tweaked it. Not “optimised” it. Pulled it apart, analysed five years of search data — 13,682 search terms, 62,000 impressions, over five thousand clicks — and built something completely new.

The old campaign was leaking money in three places nobody had checked. The kind of leaks that don’t show up unless you actually sit down with the data and read it line by line.

Leak 1: People 200 Miles Away Were Clicking Your Ads

This is the one that catches almost everyone.

Google Ads has a location setting with two options. One targets people in your area. The other targets people in or interested in your area. The default is “interested in.” Sounds harmless. It isn’t.

What “interested in” means in practice: someone in Birmingham googles “cleaning company Reading” out of curiosity, sees your ad, clicks it. You pay for that click. They were never going to hire you. They’re 150 miles away.

The fix takes thirty seconds. Change the setting from “Presence or interest” to “Presence only.” Now only people physically in your target area see your ads.

If you’re running Google Ads right now and you haven’t checked this setting, check it today. It’s under Campaign Settings > Locations > Location Options.

Leak 2: You’re Paying For Job Seekers

This one surprised me. Over a thousand clicks — real money — came from people searching for cleaning jobs, not cleaning services.

“Cleaning jobs Reading.” “Cleaner vacancy near me.” “How much do cleaners earn.”

These people aren’t looking to hire a cleaner. They’re looking to become one. But because the keywords were broad enough, the ads showed up anyway. And every click cost money.

The fix: negative keywords. A list of terms that tell Google “never show my ad when someone searches for these.” I built a list of 65 terms across four categories — job seekers, distant locations, irrelevant services, and competitor brands.

Sixty-five terms that were burning budget every single month.

Most businesses set up Google Ads and never build a negative keyword list. It’s the single highest-impact thing you can do after launching a campaign.

Leak 3: Your Ads Send Everyone To The Same Page

The old campaign had four ad groups, but they all pointed to the homepage. Someone searching for “end of tenancy cleaning Reading” landed on a generic homepage that talked about everything.

That’s a problem for two reasons. First, the visitor doesn’t immediately see what they searched for, so they bounce. Second, Google notices the bounce and decides your ad isn’t relevant, which pushes your cost per click up.

I built dedicated landing pages for each service. End of tenancy cleaning has its own page. Office cleaning has its own page. Domestic cleaning has its own page. Each one speaks directly to what the person searched for.

The Rebuild

Here’s what the new campaign looks like versus the old one:

Four targeted ad groups instead of four scattered campaigns. Each group has its own keywords, its own ads, and its own landing page. Reading domestic cleaning. Maidenhead and Slough. End of tenancy. Office and commercial.

Phrase match keywords only. The old campaign used broad match, which meant Google showed ads for anything vaguely related. Phrase match means the ad only shows when someone searches for something that includes your actual keyword. In the historical data, phrase match converted at 23.8% — nearly one in four clicks became a lead. Broad match was a fraction of that. Knowing which keywords actually convert is the difference between spending and investing.

Full conversion tracking from day one. Contact form submissions, booking requests, phone clicks, and completed payments — all tracked. No guessing whether the ads are working. Real numbers, real leads, real cost per acquisition.

Why Your Website Matters More Than Your Ads

Here’s something most PPC agencies won’t tell you: your website speed directly affects your cost per lead.

Google measures what happens after the click. If your site loads slowly, people bounce. Google sees the bounce, decides your landing page is poor quality, and charges you more per click. Same ad, same keyword, higher price — because your website let you down.

This client’s site loads in under a second. Lighthouse performance score: 96 out of 100. Every page is optimised, every image is compressed, every line of code is clean. That’s what happens when you build on a modern stack instead of dragging WordPress along. Google rewards that speed with lower costs and better ad positions.

If you’re spending money on Google Ads and your website takes three or four seconds to load, you’re paying a speed tax on every single click.

The Numbers That Matter

After analysing five years of this client’s data, here’s what I found:

• Best performing service: Office cleaning — 35 conversions at just under 6 pounds per lead
• Core business: Domestic cleaning — 163 conversions, solid and consistent
• Worst waste: Job seeker clicks that had nothing to do with hiring a cleaner
• Biggest fix: Location targeting that stopped paying for clicks from Birmingham

The new campaign has been live for less than a week. It’s too early for results. But the foundations are right: targeted keywords, dedicated landing pages, proper tracking, and a website that loads instantly.

I’ll share the performance data once there’s enough to be meaningful. No vanity metrics. Real leads, real costs — the same evidence-over-guesswork approach I apply to everything.

What This Means For You

If you’re running Google Ads — or thinking about it — here’s where to start:

1. Check your location settings. “Presence only” not “Presence or interest”
2. Build a negative keyword list. Search for your business and look at what else comes up. Block everything irrelevant
3. One landing page per ad group. Don’t send everyone to your homepage
4. Check your website speed. If it’s slow, fix it before spending another pound on ads
5. Track conversions properly. If you can’t tell which keywords generate leads, you’re guessing

If you want someone to do this properly — the audit, the rebuild, the tracking, the landing pages — that’s what I do. Reply to this email.

Tony Cooper We Build Stores

tony.cooper@webuildstores.co.uk 07963 242210

P.S. The five-year data analysis took about ten minutes. Most agencies skip it because they don’t have the tools. They set up a campaign based on assumptions and “best practices.” Best practices are averages. Your data is specific. The answers are always in the data — you just have to be willing to read 13,682 lines of it.