PPC case study: 174% more recorded conversions at 67% lower cost per conversion in Google Ads
Date : November 3, 2026 By
An Australian environmental consultancy’s Google Ads account recorded 174% more conversions after I restructured its campaigns, revised keyword targeting and bidding, and improved its landing pages. Advertising spend decreased by 9%.
Comparing March–May with August–October 2026, recorded conversions increased from 20 to 54.88. Cost per recorded conversion fell from A$437.08 to A$145.06.
The client has requested anonymity, so I have removed the company name and campaign identifiers. The work covered three services.
The starting point
During the earlier three-month period, the account spent A$8,741.50 across Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.
That spend produced 769 clicks and 20 recorded conversions. Results varied considerably between months: March recorded 13 conversions, April two and May five.
Across the full period, campaigns with no recorded conversions accounted for A$4,962.52, or 56.8% of advertising spend. This did not automatically mean that every one of those campaigns had no commercial value. It did mean that a substantial share of the budget was producing no conversion activity visible in these reports.
My work focused on campaign structure, traffic relevance and the experience after someone clicked an ad.
Three changes I made
1 Restructured the campaigns
I restructured the account’s campaigns covering three services. In the later comparison period, all advertising spend went to Search campaigns, compared with 87.1% previously.
That change matters when interpreting the results. Search, Shopping and Performance Max have different traffic characteristics, so an account-wide comparison can partly reflect a change in channel mix.
For that reason, I also compared Search performance separately.
2 Revised keywords negative keywords and bidding
I changed keyword targeting, added negative keywords and adjusted bidding.
The purpose was to improve the relevance of the traffic being purchased and how the budget was used. For a consultancy, a click only has value if there is a reasonable chance that the person needs the service being advertised.
Negative keywords help exclude searches outside that scope. Keyword and bidding adjustments work alongside them to improve the account’s focus.
These changes formed part of the overall programme. The campaign reports do not isolate the contribution of each individual adjustment.
3 Improved the landing pages
I also improved the landing pages to support the path from an advertising click to an enquiry.
PPC performance depends on what happens after the click as well as which searches trigger an advertisement. Landing page improvements therefore sat alongside the campaign changes.
The results below reflect the combined work.
The results
|
Metric |
Before |
After |
Change |
|
Advertising spend |
A$8,741.50 |
A$7,960.87 |
−8.9% |
|
Recorded conversions |
20.00 |
54.88 |
+174.4% |
|
Cost per recorded conversion |
A$437.08 |
A$145.06 |
−66.8% |
|
Clicks |
769 |
714 |
−7.2% |
|
Impressions |
52,903 |
10,962 |
−79.3% |
The account recorded 2.74 times as many conversions while spending A$780.63 less.
Overall clicks and impressions decreased. Much of the impression reduction coincided with the move away from Shopping and Performance Max. The recorded conversion activity increased substantially while total advertising spend decreased.
Search performance improved too
The Search-only comparison helps assess the results without combining different campaign types.
Search spend increased by 4.6%, from A$7,609.71 to A$7,960.87. Recorded conversions increased from 16 to 54.88.
As a result:
- Cost per recorded conversion fell by 69.5%, from A$475.61 to A$145.06.
- Average cost per click fell by 31.6%, from A$16.29 to A$11.15.
The account-wide improvement therefore coincided with a substantial improvement within Search itself.
What this case demonstrates
For this environmental consultancy PPC campaign, the combined work on account structure, keyword targeting, bidding and landing pages was followed by more recorded conversions at a substantially lower advertising cost per conversion.
