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PROBLEM · SOLVED BY PAID ADVERTISING · LEAD GENERATION · AUTOMATION & CRM

Cost-per-lead too high. What's actually broken — and what to fix first.

CPL climbing while spend grows? It's rarely the bid. We diagnose the real cause — tracking, audience overlap, offer mismatch — and cut CPL fast.

Get the diagnosis → Book a 30-min diagnostic
Symptoms

If any of these sound familiar, this is your problem.

01

CPL has crept up quarter on quarter despite spending more

02

Bid strategy keeps switching itself in Performance Max

03

You can't see why some leads close and some don't

04

Same creative, same audience — CPL doubled in eight weeks

Why it happens

The root cause — in plain English.

A rising CPL almost never means your bid is wrong. It means the auction is feeding on bad signal. iOS 14, broad-match expansion, and Performance Max defaults blend your real buyers with form-fillers, freebie hunters and bots. The platform optimises toward the cheapest "conversion" it can find, which is rarely a customer. Your CPL looks like a cost problem; underneath it's a data problem dressed up as a bidding problem.
How we diagnose it

The first three things we check.

We start with three checks before we touch a single bid. First: server-side tagging integrity — are your conversion events firing once, with revenue, with the right dedupe key? Second: audience hygiene — what percentage of "leads" are duplicates, spam, or existing customers re-submitting? Third: offer-to-keyword match on your top 20 spend terms. Nine times out of ten the leak is in those three. Only then do we touch tROAS, exclusions or creative.
The solution

The pillars that fix this.

Each pillar is productised — fixed scope, fixed weekly delivery, walk-away rights at every 90-day cycle.

PILLAR

Paid Advertising

Open the full pillar to see the productised stack, deliverables, pricing and 90-day roadmap.

Open the pillar → PILLAR

Lead Generation

Open the full pillar to see the productised stack, deliverables, pricing and 90-day roadmap.

Open the pillar → PILLAR

Automation & CRM

Open the full pillar to see the productised stack, deliverables, pricing and 90-day roadmap.

Open the pillar →
The cost of waiting

At a CPL drift of 15% a quarter you double your acquisition cost inside a year — same leads, same close rate, half the margin.

First action this week: Pull your last 90 days of paid leads into a spreadsheet and tag each row "real" or "junk" — the ratio tells you whether to fix tracking or fix targeting.

Book the 30-min diagnostic →
Free 2-page diagnostic

Send your domain. We’ll send back a 2-page diagnosis.

Specific to your stack, scoped to this problem. Three quick wins. A tailored band for the work it would take. No call required.

No card required · Your data stays private · One reply, then nothing unless you ask

Where this hits hardest

The industries that feel this most.

INDUSTRY

Eco / Energy / Heating / Solar

Open the industry hub to see how we run this work for eco / energy / heating / solar operators.

Open the hub → INDUSTRY

Trades & Home Services

Open the industry hub to see how we run this work for trades & home services operators.

Open the hub → INDUSTRY

Professional Services & B2B

Open the industry hub to see how we run this work for professional services & b2b operators.

Open the hub →
Adjacent problems

Operators with this problem usually have these too.

PROBLEM

Paid ads are burning budget and we can't tell what's working

When paid spend stops producing leads, the cause is almost always invisible: broken tracking, broad-match drift or audience overlap. Here's how we diagnose it.

Open the diagnosis → PROBLEM

Leads disappear inside our CRM

Leads vanishing between form and follow-up usually means broken routing, dead owners or stalled stages. Here's the audit that surfaces the leak.

Open the diagnosis → PROBLEM

We don't know what's actually working

When you can't see what's working, the platforms decide for you. We close the loop with server-side events and CRM-back signal — properly.

Open the diagnosis → PROBLEM

Our CPL is low but we're not getting customers

A low cost-per-lead means nothing if those leads don't buy. We rebuild the metric that matters: cost per acquired customer, with revenue attached.

Open the diagnosis →

Browse all 30 problems →

Three ways to fix this

Read the playbook, get coached, or have us ship the fix.

You can solve this yourself with the playbook below, get a senior practitioner reviewing your work each week, or hand the whole pillar over on a productised retainer. Whichever you pick, the canon is identical.

DIY · Self-serve

Read the playbook

If you have an in-house team with the bandwidth to run an audit and ship the fix yourselves, the playbook is free.

From £0

144 free playbooks · templates £49+

The full diagnosis, the audit checklist, the deliverable templates, and the 90-day roadmap. Same canon we use on retainer.

  • 50+ page playbook for the pillar that fixes this
  • Audit checklist — the 8–10 things to check first
  • Deliverable templates — GA4 spec, briefs, schemas
  • Quarterly office hours — bring your work, get reviewed
Open the playbook →
DWY · Done with you

Coach us through it

For teams that have hands but want a senior practitioner reviewing the work each week and unblocking quickly.

From £750 / mo

Coaching · cohort · sprint

Weekly 1:1 or team coaching, a custom course built around this exact problem, plus optional embedded sprints.

  • Weekly 90-minute coaching with a named practitioner
  • Custom course built around fixing this exact problem
  • Embedded sprints — we sit in your tools 1–2 weeks
  • Audit pack with named owners and dated steps
See coaching plans →
Most chosen
DFY · Done for you

Ship the fix on retainer

We run the pillar that fixes this, end-to-end. Fixed scope, weekly delivery, server-side tracking from form-fill to closed-won.

£1,500 – £6,000+ / mo

Foundation · Compound · Architect

The bands above. We diagnose in week one, ship the first fix in week two, and run the cycle on rolling 90-day terms with walk-away rights.

  • Productised pillar with named owner and dated 90-day roadmap
  • Server-side tracking from form-fill to closed-won
  • Weekly delivery — no scope creep, no surprise invoices
  • You own everything — tools, data, accounts, content
Book a discovery call →
Ready to fix it

Book the 30-min diagnostic.

Bring one number you want moved and one constraint you cannot break. We’ll spend the first five minutes on those, the next twenty on the playbook that fits, and the last five on whether we’re the right studio for you.

Book the call → Browse all 30 problems
Operating across the Weir family network — Josh Weir·Mark Weir·Weir Digital Media·CMW Consultants