Solved: Need Google Ads Consultant for Lead Generation

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on what you've described. It sounds like you've got a decent foundation with your Google Ads campaign already generating some leads, but the fluctuating CPA is causing headaches. That's a really common problem, especially for local businesses, so don't worry, it's usually fixable.

What you're asking for – mentoring and optimisation help rather than just a full takeover – is a smart way to go about it. You get the expert view to get things on track while also building up your in-house skills for the long term. What I'll outline below are the main areas I'd want to look at to stabilise those costs and hopefully increase your lead volume. This is the kind of stuff we'd normally chat through in a free initial consultation, getting into the specifics of your account.

Tbh, a lot of the time, inconsistent results from ads don't just come from the ad account itself. It often starts with the website and what happens after the click.

We'll need to look at your website and sales process first...

Before we even touch a keyword or an ad, the very first thing I'd look at is your website, or more specifically, the landing page your sending ad traffic to. You can have the best ad campaign in the world, but if the page it leads to is confusing or doesn't convince people to act, you'll just be wasting money on clicks. This is often the biggest reason for a high or fluctuating CPA.

Think about your sales process. What is the one single thing you want someone to do when they land on your page from an ad?
-> Is it to fill out a contact form?
-> Is it to call you directly?
-> Is it to book a consultation in a calendar?

Whatever that one action is, the entire page needs to be built around making it as easy and compelling as possible for a visitor to do it. A lot of businesses just send ad traffic to their homepage, which is usually a massive mistake. A homepage has to do a dozen different jobs – tell people who you are, show all your services, link to your blog, etc. It's full of distractions. A dedicated landing page, however, has one job and one job only: convert that visitor into a lead. It should have no main navigation menu, no links to other parts of your site, just a clear headline, persuasive copy about the service they just searched for, and a very obvious call-to-action (your form or phone number).

The copy on that page is also massively important. It needs to speak directly to the problem the user typed into Google. If they searched for "emergency electrician in Glasgow," the headline on your page should say something like "Reliable Emergency Electrician in Glasgow – Call Us Now." It immediately reassures them they're in the right place. Some professional copy here could go a very long way in improving your conversion rate. When your conversion rate goes up, your cost per lead (CPA) goes down, simple as that. I've seen clients double their lead numbers without spending a penny more on ads, just by sorting out their landing page. It's the cheapest and most effective place to start.

So, the first bit of mentoring would be a deep review of that user journey. We'd look at your analytics to see where people are dropping off. Are they hitting the page and leaving straight away? Or are they scrolling but not clicking the button? Each of these behaviours tells us something different about what needs to be fixed. It could be the page is slow to load, the offer isn't clear, or it just doesn't look trustworthy enough for someone to hand over their contact details. Getting this foundation solid is non-negotiable before we start trying to scale things.

I'd say you need to get ruthless with your targeting...

Once the landing page is in a good place, we can turn our attention to the Google Ads account itself. Given you're a local firm in Scotland looking for leads, Google Search ads are almost certainly your best bet. You're catching people at the exact moment they have a problem and are actively looking for someone like you to solve it. You aren't trying to convince someone they need you; they've already decided they do. That's why Search is so powerful for service businesses.

The key to making it work is getting ruthless with your targeting. This means two things: keywords and location.

Keywords: Your person managing the account needs to think like a customer. What exact phrases would a real person in your target area type into Google when they need your help? We need to go beyond the obvious one-word terms. For example, if you were an electrician, you wouldn't just target "electrician." That's too broad. You want to target "intent" keywords. These are phrases that show someone is looking to buy or hire, not just research.

Some examples of intent-based keywords would be:
-> "[service] near me" (e.g., "electrical repair near me")
-> "emergency [service] [city]" (e.g., "emergency plumber Edinburgh")
-> "local [service] company"
-> "get a quote for [service]"
-> "cost of [service] in [area]"

Just as important, if not more so, is your negative keyword list. This is a list of terms you tell Google not to show your ads for. It's one of the most overlooked parts of managing a Google Ads account and a huge source of wasted spend. We'd want to build a massive list of negatives to filter out anyone who isn't a potential customer. For most service businesses, this would include terms like:

-> "jobs", "hiring", "careers", "salary" (people looking for work, not to hire you)
-> "training", "course", "how to", "DIY", "learn" (people wanting to learn, not pay a professional)
-> "free", "cheap", "cheapest" (unless you compete on price, this attracts time-wasters)
-> Names of competitors (usually not worth bidding on initially)
-> "reviews", "forum" (people in research mode, not buying mode)

Every week, your account manager should be going into the "Search Terms" report in Google Ads. This report shows you the actual search queries that people typed to trigger your ads. It's a goldmine. You'll find new, brilliant keywords to add to your campaigns, and you'll find a load of rubbish to add to your negative keyword list. Constantly cleaning this up is how you make sure your budget is only being spent on the most relevant traffic. This single activity will have a huge impact on stabilising your CPA.

Location: Being a local firm, your location targeting needs to be precise. Don't just target "Scotland." Target the specific postcodes, towns, or a radius around your base that you actually serve and that are profitable for you to travel to. If a job in Aberdeen is less profitable than one in Dundee because of travel time, you might want to have separate campaigns for each area with different bids. Getting granular here makes a huge difference.

You probably should structure your campaigns for control and testing...

How the account is structured is another big factor in performance fluctuations. A common mistake is to lump all your services and keywords into one single campaign and ad group. This gives you very little control and makes it impossible to know what's truly working.

Instead, I'd mentor your person on how to structure the account properly. The best practice is to create separate campaigns for each main service you offer. For example, if you were a plumber, you'd have:
-> Campaign 1: Emergency Callouts
-> Campaign 2: Boiler Installations
-> Campaign 3: Bathroom Fittings

Why do this? Because someone searching for an "emergency plumber" is in a completely different mindset to someone researching "new boiler costs." They need a different ad message and a different landing page. By separating them, you can write super-specific ad copy for each service. The ad for the emergency campaign can talk about "24/7 Callouts" and "Fast Response Times," while the boiler campaign ad can mention "Free Quotes" and "Energy Efficient Models." This relevance between keyword, ad, and landing page leads to a higher Quality Score from Google, which means you pay less per click and get better ad positions.

Within each campaign, we'd then get into systematic split testing. This is the core of optimisation. You should always be testing something. This is what turns advertising from a gamble into a science. We'd set up tests for:

-> Ad Copy: Always have at least two or three different ads running in each ad group. Test different headlines. Test different calls to action ("Call Now" vs. "Get a Free Quote" vs. "Book Online"). After a week or two, you'll see one ad performs better than the others. You pause the loser, and write a new ad to try and beat the winner. You just keep repeating this process. It's a cycle of constant small improvements that add up to big results.

-> Ad Extensions: These are the extra bits of info you can add to your ads, and they're vital for local businesses. We'd make sure you are using:

• Call Extensions: A clickable phone number right in the ad. Essential for mobile users.
• Location Extensions: Shows your business address, making you look like a proper local firm.
• Sitelink Extensions: Links to other specific pages, like a "Testimonials" page or "About Us" page to build trust.
• Callout Extensions: Short snippets of text to highlight selling points like "Fully Insured," "Family-Run Business," or "20+ Years Experience."

Using these extensions properly makes your ad bigger, more prominent, and more helpful, which increases your click-through rate (CTR) and doesn't cost you anything extra.

By structuring the campaigns this way and constantly testing, you move away from the wild CPA fluctuations. You start to understand your numbers. You'll know that your Emergency campaign gets leads for £25, while the Installation campaign gets leads for £50. This allows you to allocate your budget intelligently to the areas that are most profitable for your business.

You'll need realistic expectations for your niche...

This is a big one. It's important to have a benchmark for what a 'good' cost per lead even is. Every industry and every location is different. Competing for plumbing leads in central London is going to be far more expensive than competing for gardening leads in a small town.

Based on my experience running campaigns for other service businesses, you're probably looking at a cost per lead somewhere in the range of £15 - £50. This can vary a lot, of course. We are running a Google Ads campaign for a software company, generating 3,543 users at £0.96 cost per user. It all depends on competition, demand, and how well the campaign is optimised.

A good starting point for your ad spend budget would be around £1,000 - £2,000 per month. This isn't a figure plucked out of thin air. It's based on giving the campaign enough data to work with. Google's algorithm needs a certain number of clicks and conversions to learn and optimise effectively. If your budget is too low (e.g., £10 a day), you might only get one or two clicks and you'll never get enough data to make good decisions. You calculate your budget based on your goals: if you decide a lead is worth up to £40 for you, and you want to get 50 leads a month, your ad spend needs to be £2,000 (50 x £40).

It's also important to remember that not all leads will turn into customers. You need to know your numbers. If you get 10 leads, and you manage to turn 2 of them into paying jobs, your lead-to-customer conversion rate is 20%. If each job is worth £500 in profit, then those 10 leads generated £1,000 in profit. This means you can afford to spend up to £100 per lead (£1000 / 10 leads) and still break even. Knowing this number is what empowers you to make smart decisions about your advertising budget. The mentoring process would involve helping you figure this out, so you know exactly what CPA you should be aiming for.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull all these thoughts together, here's a table summarising the key actions I'd recommend focusing on with your in-house person. This would form the basis of our mentoring plan.

As you can see, there's a fair bit to getting a Google Ads campaign running like a well-oiled machine. It's not just a 'set and forget' channel. It needs constant attention, testing, and refinement.

While your person can absolutely learn to do all of this, the value of bringing in a consultant is the experience to do it faster and avoid common, costly mistakes. We've made the mistakes already on our own money years ago, so you don't have to make them with yours. A good consultant can look at an account and, based on experience from dozens of other campaigns, spot the biggest opportunities for improvement in minutes, not months. We've worked on campaigns where we've managed to reduce a client's Cost Per Lead by over 80%, simply by applying these core principles systematically.

The mentoring approach you're looking for is ideal because it's a partnership. We wouldn't just 'fix' the account. We'd walk your team member through every change, explaining the 'why' behind it, so they understand the strategy and can continue to manage and optimise the account effectively long after our direct involvement ends. It's about transferring the knowledge and building your in-house capability.

I hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful and gives you a clearer picture of the path forward. It all starts with getting those foundations right.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have us take a look at your actual Google Ads account together, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can give you some more specific pointers.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh