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Gigde · PPC & performance

Fix the tracking, then touch the bids.

Most underperforming ad accounts are not badly bid. They are badly measured — so the algorithm optimises toward a conversion signal that does not match the revenue. Tracking goes in first here, as a stage, before a single bid is changed.

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5
stages

Audit, offer and targeting, build with airtight tracking, test for return, then scale the winners.

6.6%
median landing-page conversion

Unbounce, across 41,000 landing pages in 2024 — the benchmark a new page is judged against.

7.52%
average search conversion rate

WordStream 2025 Google Ads benchmarks, across more than 16,000 campaigns.

$25–$250
B2B cost per lead by channel

HubSpot 2025 benchmarks: email at $25–$75, Google Ads $100–$175, LinkedIn Ads $150–$250.

01

What PPC & performance is

Performance advertising engineered for return: a 90-day audit of the ad accounts and analytics that maps every pound from impression to closed revenue and surfaces wasted spend, broken conversion tracking and untapped audiences; a sharpened offer; a targeting map across Google Search and Shopping, Meta and LinkedIn; and creative briefs that test angles rather than button colours.

Then the instrumentation stage, which is what makes the rest work. Server-side conversion tracking, offline-conversion imports and UTM hygiene are installed before optimisation begins, so every decision rests on revenue data you can trust. In our own implementation the lead event fires only after the CRM write resolves successfully — a phantom conversion is architecturally impossible — and consent mode is denied by default across the EEA, the UK and Switzerland with the tag manager deciding what any tag may use.

The landing page usually matters more than the bid, and the arithmetic is unarguable: doubling landing-page conversion from 2% to 4% halves your cost per acquisition without spending another pound on media. For context, Unbounce measured a 6.6% median landing-page conversion rate across 41,000 pages, and WordStream put the average Google Ads search conversion rate at 7.52% across more than 16,000 campaigns.

02

What it does

The account, the measurement and the page a click lands on — treated as one system, because optimising any of them alone hits a ceiling.

01

A 90-day account and funnel audit

Every pound mapped from impression to closed revenue, with wasted spend, broken conversion tracking and untapped audiences surfaced. Most of the first month's value is usually in what gets switched off.

02

Offer and targeting strategy

A sharpened offer and the one reason a prospect books, then a targeting map across Google Search and Shopping, Meta, LinkedIn and programmatic — chosen by where your buyers actually convert rather than by channel fashion.

03

Tracking installed first

Server-side conversion tracking, offline-conversion imports and UTM hygiene before optimisation begins. Where we build it, the lead event fires only after the CRM write succeeds, so the number in the dashboard is a real lead.

04

Message-matched landing pages

A dedicated page per major campaign, matched to the ad that sent the click. The ad buys the click; the page decides whether it becomes revenue, and that is where the cheaper CPA usually comes from.

05

A creative testing engine

Disciplined tests of angles and audiences with fast kill decisions, briefed and approved before launch — so a test produces a conclusion rather than a spend report.

06

A dashboard with the next bets on it

Spend, return on ad spend and pipeline, plus what is being tested next. Weekly bid, budget and landing-page tuning against cost per acquisition rather than against click volume.

03

How it runs

Five stages, and the third one is an instrumentation stage rather than a media stage.

  1. Account and funnel audit

    Ninety days of history read end to end: where spend went, what tracking claims, and where the two disagree. The disagreement is usually the finding.

  2. Offer, targeting and creative strategy

    What we are actually selling and to whom, mapped across channels, with a creative brief built to test angles. Nothing goes live before the brief is agreed.

  3. Campaign build and airtight tracking

    Account structure, ad copy, dedicated landing pages, then server-side tracking, offline conversion imports and UTM discipline — installed before optimisation, not alongside it.

  4. Test and optimise for return

    Weekly tuning of bids, budgets and pages against cost per acquisition and return on ad spend, with fast kill decisions on tests that have answered their question.

  5. Scale the winners

    A scaling plan once a campaign clears its profit threshold — and the winning keywords and angles handed to the organic side, because paid is the fastest lab for finding out what converts.

04

Who it is for

Four buyers, and one of them is buying data rather than leads.

Heads of paid at DTC and e-commerce brands

Rising acquisition costs and dangerous dependence on a single channel, where the real measure is CAC payback in weeks rather than platform-reported return.

Heads of demand generation at B2B software companies

A launch, a quarter or a new market that needs pipeline inside a defined window, where organic cannot move fast enough to matter.

E-commerce managers

Shopping and feed-driven performance where the catalogue, the margin structure and the landing experience are as much of the lever as the bid.

Founders buying the data

Many brands run ads as much for the learning as for the immediate return — paid buys fast, clean feedback on which messages and offers convert, and the winners become the compounding investments.

05

What it does not do

Four honest limits, published rather than discovered in month three.

  • When you pause spend, the leads end that day. Unlike search and content, ads build no compounding asset — which is the argument for running both rather than choosing. SEO & GEO →
  • There is an effective budget floor. Campaigns starved of spend never gather enough conversion data for automated bidding to optimise, so under-funded accounts underperform for a reason that has nothing to do with the strategy.
  • Platform numbers and your backend numbers will rarely match exactly. Privacy and consent changes mean platform-reported conversions increasingly rely on modelling, and pretending otherwise makes every report an argument.
  • Optimisation cannot fix unit economics. If the margin does not support the cost of a customer, no bidding strategy makes it work, and the honest answer is to say so early.
  • Working the leads the ads produce is a different service — and paid leads landing in a spreadsheet is the most common reason a good campaign looks bad. B2B lead generation →
06

Answers

How do you actually lower cost per lead?

Three levers together: a sharper offer, tighter conversion tracking and faster creative iteration. Tracking and the landing experience get fixed before bids are touched, because when the algorithm sees clean revenue signals it finds cheaper buyers on its own.

Why does the landing page matter more than the bid?

The ad only buys the click; the page decides whether it becomes revenue. Doubling landing-page conversion from 2% to 4% effectively halves cost per acquisition without spending another pound on media, which no bidding change can match.

What happens when we pause?

Leads stop that day. Paid media builds no compounding asset, which is why it works best alongside a channel that does rather than instead of one.

Is there a minimum budget?

Effectively yes. Campaigns starved of spend never gather enough conversion data for automated bidding to optimise, so an under-funded account underperforms because the algorithm never had enough signal — not because the strategy was wrong.

Why do your numbers differ from the platform dashboard?

Because privacy and consent changes mean platform-reported conversions increasingly rely on modelling. Platform and backend numbers rarely match exactly, and we report both rather than picking the flattering one.

How do paid and organic work together?

As a flywheel. Paid gives immediate measurable demand and a fast lab for testing which messages and offers convert; the winners become the search and content investments that keep delivering after the spend stops.