Case study Results / Financial services · Tax
We cut reported conversions by 89%. That was the win.
A UK tax return service arrived reporting 13,155 conversions a year at £1.58 each. It looked extraordinary. Almost all of it was people viewing a page. Twelve months after the rebuild the account reports 1,426 conversions at £17.28, and every one of them is a person who signed up. This is the case study behind the talk we have given at SearchDay, Hero Conf and PMCR.
13,155 → 1,426 conversions · £1.58 → £17.28 · 726 → 34 keywords · 13 → 1 campaigns
One of thirteen case studies, published from more than a hundred accounts since 2021. We publish the ones we can put a source against. See all thirteen →
01 The starting point
A dashboard that flattered everybody.
In the twelve months before we rebuilt it, the account reported 13,155 conversions on £20,744 of spend. April alone reported 7,925 conversions at 39 pence each. Nobody was lying. The account had simply been told that looking at a page was the same thing as becoming a customer, and it believed it.
Everything downstream inherits that. Smart bidding was chasing page views. Target costs per acquisition had drifted as low as £0.92. Budget was being allocated to whatever produced the most of a thing that was worth nothing.
02 The teardown
Thirteen campaigns on a small budget.
A small budget spread across thirteen campaigns, ninety ad groups and sixty-eight locations gives an algorithm almost nothing to learn from. Each fragment collects a handful of clicks a week, none of them accumulate enough signal to optimise, and broad match with a thin negative list quietly spends the rest on searches nobody would have chosen.
Consolidation is not tidying. On a small budget it is the difference between an account that can learn and one that cannot.
03 What we did
What we did
Rebuilt the conversion tracking first, and deleted most of it. Page views stopped being conversions. What counts now is a completed signup, a live chat and an enquiry email. The reported number fell by 89% on the day, which is an uncomfortable conversation to have and the only honest one available.
Consolidated thirteen campaigns into one. One campaign at £70 a day, three ad groups, thirty-four keywords. Enough volume in one place for smart bidding to have something to learn from, instead of thirteen fragments each starved of data.
Cut sixty-eight locations to four. The account was targeting places the business had no particular reason to serve. Geography now follows where the customers actually come from.
Moved from broad to mostly exact and phrase, then built the negative list. Over 2,540 negatives and counting. Broad match on a small budget without a serious negative list is not a strategy, it is a subscription to other people’s search terms.
Set a target cost per acquisition from the unit economics. Not from what the dashboard happened to be reporting. The old targets had drifted to £0.92 because that is what a page view costs.
Turned Search Partners and Display off. Both were spending against intent the business could not use. On a budget this size that is the first thing to go, not the last.
Is your conversion count telling you the truth?
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