Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out!
Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your Google Ads campaign for your wedding marketplace. I've had a look at what you've described, and while it's good you're thinking about things like ad scheduling, I'd say you're trying to tune the engine of a car that hasn't got its wheels on yet. Your core problem isn't the time of day your ads are running; it's much more fundamental than that.
The single conversion after 10 weeks on a £10/day budget tells me there are some serious foundational issues with either your website's offer, your campaign's strategy, or both. Focusing on scheduling right now is a distraction from the real issues that are costing you money. Below, I'll walk you through what I believe are the actual problems and give you a proper framework for how to think about growing your marketplace with paid ads. It's a bit of a read, but it's what you need to hear.
TLDR;
- Stop worrying about ad scheduling. With only one conversion and a tiny budget, it will do more harm than good by starving Google's algorithm of precious data.
- Your 'Maximise Clicks' bid strategy is the main reason you're burning cash. You are explicitly telling Google to find people who click, not people who book. You must switch to a conversion-focused strategy.
- The biggest problem is almost certainly your website's offer and its ability to build trust. A wedding booking is a huge decision, and your marketplace needs to feel more trustworthy and emotionally resonant than a simple directory. This is likely your biggest conversion blocker.
- Your keywords are probably too broad, attracting window shoppers instead of serious couples. You need to target long-tail keywords that signal high intent from your specific niche (Asian & Muslim couples).
- This letter includes an interactive calculator to help you figure out what you can actually afford to pay for a booking, which will change how you view your ad spend.
We'll need to look at why you're really not getting conversions...
Alright, let's get your question about ad scheduling out of the way first. Should you use it? No. Absolutely not. Not yet.
With a budget of only £10 a day and only one conversion to your name, your campaign is starving for data. The Google Ads algorithm learns by getting feedback—clicks, and more importantly, conversions. When you tell it to only run ads during specific hours, you're taking its already tiny plate of food and throwing half of it in the bin. You're making it impossible for the system to learn. Your hypothesis about when people plan weddings might be right, it might be wrong, but you don't have anywhere near enough data to make that call. You need hundreds of conversions before you can confidently identify time-of-day patterns. For now, leave it running 24/7 and let Google figure it out.
The much bigger issue is your bid strategy. You're using 'Maximise Clicks'. Think about what you've instructed Google to do. You've said, "Please, Google, go and find me the people within my targeting who are most likely to click on an ad, regardless of whether they have any intention of ever booking anything." And Google, being the obedient machine it is, has done exactly that. You've got 250 clicks and one conversion. The strategy is working perfectly as intended—it's just the wrong instruction.
You are paying to attract window shoppers. People who are bored, curious, or just randomly clicking. You need to attract people with intent to book. To do that, you must align your campaign objective with your business objective. Your goal is conversions (bookings), so your campaign objective must be conversions. I know it feels counterintuitive when you have so little data, but you have to switch to 'Maximise Conversions'. Yes, the learning phase will be slow and perhaps painful at first, but it's the only way to teach the algorithm what a valuable customer looks like. By optimising for clicks, you are actively teaching it to find the wrong people.
I'd say your offer and website are the real problem...
Let's be brutally honest. Even with the perfect ad campaign, you're sending traffic to a marketplace. A person planning their wedding—one of the most important, emotional, and expensive days of their life—is not going to "instantly book" a photographer they've never spoken to from a website they've never heard of. That assumption is the single biggest flaw in your business model from an advertising perspective.
You are not selling a pair of shoes. You are facilitating a high-trust, high-consideration B2C service transaction. Your website's number one job is to build overwhelming trust, and I'd wager it's currently failing at that. This is why you have 250 clicks and only one conversion.
Think about the user's journey. They click your ad. They land on your site. What do they see?
- Trust Signals: Are there reviews and testimonials from real couples? Not just for the photographers, but for your marketplace itself? Is there a clearly visible UK address and phone number? Are you featured in any wedding blogs or publications? Without these, you look like a faceless, risky middleman.
- Emotional Connection: Your niche is Asian & Muslim couples. Does your website's imagery, language, and content reflect a deep understanding of their specific ceremonies, traditions, and values? Or does it look like a generic template with some stock photos? You need to show photos from a Nikah, a Mehndi, a Walima. The copy needs to use words that resonate. If you fail to make this specific emotional connection, you lose them instantly to a photographer who has this on their own website.
- The "Offer": "Instantly book" is a terrible offer for this service. It's high-friction and low-value. A much better offer would be "Schedule a Free 15-Min Chat" or "Request a Personalised Quote." This lowers the barrier to entry and starts a conversation, which is essential for a service like this. Nobody books a £2,000 photographer without a conversation first. You're not just a directory; you should be a trusted matchmaker. Frame your service that way. Your Call-to-Action buttons should reflect this lower-friction approach.
Your competition isn't just other marketplaces. It's every individual photographer's beautiful, curated website. It's recommendations from friends and family. It's Instagram. To win, your platform needs to offer a superior, more trustworthy, and more specialised experience than any of those. Before you spend another pound on ads, you need to work on your website. Some professional copy could go a long way, as could a complete rethink of the user journey to build trust before asking for any kind of commitment.
You probably should rethink your campaign structure...
Once your website is in a better state, you can fix your campaigns. Getting the structure and targeting right is critical, especially with a small budget where every click counts.
Your goal is to "pre-qualify" users with your targeting, so the clicks you do get are from people with genuine booking intent.
Keywords: From Broad to "Buyer Intent"
I suspect your keywords are too broad. A term like "wedding photographer" will get you clicks, but they're from people at the very beginning of their research. They're not ready to book. You need to target "long-tail" keywords that signal urgency and specificity to your niche. This is how you find people who are problem-aware and solution-aware.
Keyword Intent: From Low to High
| Keyword Type | Example | User Intent | Conversion Likelihood |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad/Informational | "wedding photographer" | Just looking, getting ideas. | Very Low |
| Niche-Specific | "asian wedding photographer" | Refining their search, seeking specialists. | Medium |
| Location-Specific | "muslim wedding videographer london" | Ready to compare options in their area. | High |
| High Intent / "Buying" | "book pakistani wedding photographer birmingham" | They know what they want and are ready to take action. | Very High |
Ad Groups & Ad Copy: A Message They Can't Ignore
You need to structure your campaign with tight, themed ad groups. Don't lump all your keywords together. Create separate ad groups for photographers and videographers, and further separate them by location or specific cultural ceremony if the search volume allows.
- Ad Group 1: Asian Photographer Manchester
- Ad Group 2: Muslim Videographer London
- Ad Group 3: Sikh Wedding Photographer Birmingham
Then, your ad copy must speak *directly* to the keyword in that ad group. Use a Problem-Agitate-Solve framework.
For the "Asian Photographer Manchester" ad group, instead of a generic ad, write something like this:
Headline: Top Asian Wedding Photographers in Manchester
Description 1: Struggling to find a photographer who gets it? We specialise in capturing the vibrant colours and traditions of Asian weddings.
Description 2: View portfolios & get quotes from trusted local pros. Book a free consultation today.
This copy acknowledges their specific pain point (finding a culturally aware photographer) and offers a low-risk next step ("get quotes", "free consultation"), not the scary "book now".
You'll need to understand your numbers to make this work...
Advertising is a game of numbers. If you don't know your numbers, you're just gambling. With a service-based marketplace, the two most important metrics you need to understand are your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and the "Lifetime Value" (LTV) of a transaction, which in your case is your commission.
Let's break it down. You need to know how much you can afford to spend to get one couple to book a photographer through your platform. This will tell you if your business model is viable with paid ads.
Let's make some assumptions:
- Average booking value (what the couple pays the photographer): £2,000
- Your marketplace commission: 15%
- Your revenue per booking: £2,000 * 0.15 = £300
This £300 is your "LTV" for this one transaction. Now, a healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio. This means you want to make £3 for every £1 you spend on acquiring a customer.
So, your target CAC should be £300 / 3 = £100.
This means you can afford to spend up to £100 on ads to get a single booking. Suddenly, your £10/day budget seems very small, right? At that budget, you're hoping to get a booking every 10 days just to break even on a 3:1 model. This is why every click has to be from a highly qualified user. The maths is tough at this scale, and it highlights why you cannot afford to waste money on 'Maximise Clicks' or poorly targeted keywords.
To make this more concrete for you, I've built a small calculator. Play around with your own numbers—your actual average booking value, your commission rate, and your target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)—to see what your target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) should be.
This is the main advice I have for you:
I know this is a lot to take in, and it probably feels like I've dismantled your whole approach. That's the point. The "death by a thousand cuts" approach of tiny tweaks won't work here. You need a fundamental strategic shift. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a table to give you a clear, actionable path forward.
| Area of Focus | Your Current Approach (The Problem) | My Recommended Action (The Solution) | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bid Strategy | 'Maximise Clicks'. Attracting low-quality traffic that doesn't convert. | Immediately switch to 'Maximise Conversions'. Set up proper conversion tracking for booking enquiries. | This tells Google to find users likely to become customers, not just clickers. It aligns your ad spend with your business goals. |
| Website & Offer | "Instantly book" a high-value service. Likely low trust and poor emotional connection with the niche audience. | Overhaul your website to build trust (reviews, contact info). Change the core CTA to "Get a Quote" or "Schedule a Call". Ensure copy and imagery deeply resonates with Asian & Muslim weddings. | A wedding photographer is a high-trust purchase. Your website is the biggest lever you can pull to increase conversion rates. You must fix this before scaling ads. |
| Keyword Targeting | Likely using broad keywords, resulting in unqualified clicks. | Focus exclusively on niche, long-tail keywords with high buyer intent (e.g., "bengali wedding videographer east london"). Be ruthless with negative keywords. | With a small budget, you can't afford wasted clicks. Every penny must go towards attracting users who are actively looking to hire someone. |
| Campaign Structure | Unclear, but likely one ad group for all keywords. | Create tightly-themed ad groups (e.g., by service + location). Write specific ad copy for each group that matches the keywords exactly. | This ensures maximum relevance between the user's search, your ad, and your landing page, which increases Quality Score and lowers your costs. |
| Micro-Optimisations | Focusing on ad scheduling prematurely. | Forget ad scheduling, device bid adjustments, etc., until you have at least 50-100 conversions. Focus on the foundational strategy first. | You're trying to solve a stage 10 problem when you're stuck on stage 1. It's a distraction that will actively harm your campaign's ability to learn. |
This is a lot to do, I get it. And it can be daunting. The path from where you are now—spending £300 a month to get one conversion—to running a profitable acquisition channel is long. It requires expertise, constant testing, and a deep understanding of how these platforms actually work. With such a small budget, there is absolutley no room for error, as every mistake is costly.
This is precisely the kind of strategic overhaul we specialise in. We don't just tweak campaigns; we rebuild them from the ground up based on sound marketing principles and a deep understanding of the numbers that drive growth. For instance, I remember one campaign we worked on for a student recruitment platform where we reduced their cost per booking by 80% by implementing a similar strategic overhaul. We've also helped e-commerce businesses see significant returns, like a women's apparel brand for whom we generated a 691% return on ad spend.
If you've found this initial analysis helpful and you'd like to discuss how a professional team could implement a strategy like this for you, I'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation 20-minute consultation. We can take a proper look at your account and website together and give you an even clearer picture of the path forward.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
