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PROBLEM · SOLVED BY PAID ADVERTISING · AI & INTELLIGENCE · STRATEGY & CONSULTANCY

Paid ads burning budget. The fix is rarely "spend less."

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.

Get the diagnosis → Book a 30-min diagnostic
Symptoms

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

01

Spend went up, leads went sideways or down

02

You see "conversions" in the platform but sales hasn't felt it

03

Performance Max is consuming most of your budget with no breakdown

04

You've paused campaigns that "stopped working" and bookings dropped anyway

Why it happens

The root cause — in plain English.

Paid platforms are pay-to-play black boxes that reward whoever feeds them the cleanest signal. If your conversion data is stale, deduplicated wrong or sent client-side, the algorithm chases ghosts. Add broad match, automated assets and Performance Max defaults and you end up paying premium prices to reach people already searching your brand name. The budget isn't burning — it's being spent on traffic you would have got for free.
How we diagnose it

The first three things we check.

First we run a brand-vs-non-brand spend split — if more than 25% of paid spend is on your own brand terms, you're subsidising organic. Then we check search-term reports for the last 30 days and flag the top 20 wasted queries. Third, we audit Performance Max signal: are you feeding it a customer-match audience and conversion values, or just letting it guess? Those three answers usually reveal where 30-50% of spend is leaking.

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

AI & Intelligence

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

Open the pillar → PILLAR

Strategy & Consultancy

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

Open the pillar →
The cost of waiting

Most accounts we audit have between £1,200 and £8,000 a month going to brand search and zero-intent broad match — that's the cheque you write yourself every month while waiting.

First action this week: Open Google Ads search-term report for the last 30 days, sort by cost descending, and screenshot the top 50. The waste is in plain sight.

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

Real Estate & Property

Open the industry hub to see how we run this work for real estate & property operators.

Open the hub → INDUSTRY

Automotive

Open the industry hub to see how we run this work for automotive operators.

Open the hub →
Adjacent problems

Operators with this problem usually have these too.

PROBLEM

Our cost-per-lead is too high — what do we cut?

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

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 → PROBLEM

Our tracking has been broken since iOS 14

iOS 14, ITP and consent mode silently broke most marketing measurement. Server-side tagging is the proper fix — here's how we deploy it.

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