Well-managed paid search targets terms with genuine buying intent, keeps a disciplined negative keyword list so budget is not wasted on irrelevant matches, uses landing pages matched to each query, and optimises toward qualified leads or revenue rather than raw clicks or form fills.
The search terms report is where the money leaks
Broad match and automated campaign types will spend your budget on queries you would never have chosen. The only defence is reading the search terms report regularly and excluding what does not belong — a genuinely unglamorous weekly task that separates accounts that work from accounts that drain.
The second leak is optimising to form fills. Platforms happily deliver cheap leads of poor quality. Feeding qualified-lead or closed-revenue data back from your CRM changes what the algorithm chases, and it is usually the single highest-impact change to an underperforming account.
Stack decisions follow the problem. This is where we usually start, not a fixed menu.
Frequently asked
Questions we get about this
Should we bid on our own brand name?
Usually yes, if competitors are bidding on it — the clicks are cheap and ceding the top position to a competitor costs more than the defence. If nobody is bidding against you and you already rank first organically, the case is much weaker and we will say so.
Do automated campaign types work?
They can perform well when conversion tracking is accurate and enough quality data feeds them. Run with poor tracking they optimise confidently toward the wrong outcome. Automation amplifies whatever signal you give it, including a bad one.
Talk it through before you commit
A discovery call is a working session on your constraint, not a sales pitch.
