Every euro of ad spend answerable
PPC agency Cavan where spend is accounted for
Ceol Digital manages pay per click advertising for businesses across County Cavan. The work covers where the budget goes, which platforms deserve it, what the bids should be and which searches should never have triggered an advert at all. The report comes back as a cost per enquiry rather than a tally of clicks, because a click is not a customer and a low cost per click can still be an expensive month. If the numbers cannot justify the spend, we will say so.
- Spend logged line by line
- Reported at cost per enquiry
- No tie-in beyond the notice period
Paid advertising is the fastest way to find out whether a market wants what you sell, and the quickest way to lose money discovering that it does not. The difference is rarely the platform. It is whether somebody is reading the search terms, cutting the waste and moving the budget towards what works. An account left alone for a quarter quietly funds every wrong search in the county. An account reviewed weekly stops paying for the searches that were never going to convert.
What managing paid search actually involves
An advert competes for a place on a screen, and what it costs to appear depends on how relevant the search engine judges it to be. That judgement is not fixed. It shifts with the wording of the advert, the page it points at, the terms you bid on and how people respond once they click. Managing an account well means adjusting those four things continuously, in the order the data suggests, rather than setting a campaign up in January and looking at it again at Christmas. An account that is never reviewed tends to drift in one direction, which is towards spending more for the same number of enquiries.
The account work sits in four areas, and the split is decided by what the opening audit finds rather than by a package:
Platform choice
Which search engines and social platforms deserve the budget for what you sell, decided on where your customers actually look rather than on where an agency prefers to work.
Bids and budgets
What each enquiry can afford to cost, what each campaign is allowed to spend, and the adjustments made week by week as the numbers come in rather than at year end.
Search terms and exclusions
The searches an advert actually appeared against, sorted into the ones worth paying for and the ones to block, which is where most wasted spend hides.
Cost per enquiry reporting
Enquiries by campaign and platform set against what they cost, with the pages that produced them, so the invoice is tied to something you can count.
Paid search cannot fix a weak offer or an unclear page. If the margin is too thin to fund a click, or the site loses people before they reach the form, the spend will disappear regardless of how neatly the campaigns are built. We will tell you that at the audit rather than after a quarter of invoices, even when it means we do less work.
Which platform deserves the budget
Search and social do different jobs. Search catches somebody who is already looking, which makes it the faster route to an enquiry and usually the more expensive click. Social reaches people who were not looking and might be persuaded, which costs less per impression and takes longer to prove. Shopping sits between the two for retailers, showing a product and a price to somebody comparing. A platform chosen because it is popular rather than because your buyers use it is a bill with nothing attached to it. The right mix depends on how your customers buy, and it is rarely all three at once.
So the first decision is not how much to spend, it is where. A trade business with urgent demand does well from search. A retailer with a catalogue and clear prices often gets more from Shopping. A firm with something worth showing does better from social, provided there is enough budget to reach a real audience and let the data mean something. We write the reasoning behind the split for you, so the choice can be argued with rather than taken on trust.
Waste cut before budget rises
How we take over an account
Most accounts we pick up have been running for a while and carry habits nobody has questioned. The takeover is deliberately unhurried for the first fortnight, because changing bids and budgets before you understand what is producing the enquiries is how a working account gets broken. The first month is mostly reading and testing, and anything that follows comes from what that reading showed rather than from a fresh set of campaigns built to look busy.
Read the history
Spend, conversions and search terms over the past year, so the account is understood before anything about it is changed at all.
Set the target
What a lead is worth and what it can cost, agreed with you, so every later decision has a figure to be measured against rather than a feeling.
Cut the obvious waste
Terms that never convert blocked, weak adverts paused, and the settings nobody has opened in months reviewed and corrected.
Reset the structure
Campaigns, ad groups and the pages they point at reorganised so the account reflects what you sell rather than how it was first set up.
Report and adjust
A monthly report at cost per enquiry, with the changes made, the reasons behind them and what the next month will test.
PPC questions from advertisers
What is a realistic cost per enquiry?
It depends on your sector and your competitors, and it can be worked out from what the market is already paying rather than guessed. We set the target with you at the start and report against it. If the figure cannot be reached for what you sell, better to know at the audit than after three months of spend.
How much should we spend each month?
Enough for the platforms to gather data and for you to handle the enquiries that arrive. Too small and the account never learns. Too large and you pay for volume you cannot serve. The starting figure is set so the result is measurable, then adjusted once there is something real to read.
Do you work with accounts that are already running?
Often, and it is usually the quicker route. An existing account carries a year of learning in its search terms and conversion data, which is worth reading before anything is rebuilt. Where the structure is genuinely wrong we will say so, but we do not rebuild for the sake of a fresh start.
Who owns the account and the data?
You do. The account, the conversion tracking and the history stay in your name throughout, and they stay with you if you leave. An agency holding your advertising account is holding your access to your own customers, which is not a position we would want to be in.
Can paid search and SEO run together?
Yes, and they sharpen each other. The terms that convert in paid search tell you what the organic pages should target. The pages that rank organically tend to lower what you pay per click. Where both are worth doing, the Google Ads agency and SEO agency work is run from one plan rather than two.
When to pay for clicks, and when not to
Where paid search earns its keep
It suits a business with a margin that can absorb a click, demand that already exists, and a page that turns a fair share of visitors into enquiries. It fits firms that need to appear now rather than wait six months for organic work, and owners who will read a cost per enquiry figure and act when it drifts. A clear target and a service somebody can actually deliver are the two things that make paid search work.
Where it is the wrong spend
If nobody searches for what you sell, there is no campaign to run. Where the whole Google picture needs managing together, a Google agency holds it, and the wider digital marketing agency view suits a business whose paid work has to sit beside other channels. For firms wanting the entire digital mix rather than paid advertising alone, an online marketing agency engagement is the broader starting point. We would rather say that at the start than take a budget for a platform that cannot reach your customers.
Send us your account and your target
Tell us what an enquiry is worth to you and what you would like to pay for one. We will look at the account as it stands and say whether that figure is reachable. Call +353863487761 or use the contact page.