Client Background: CloudIA took over the Google Ads account for a confidential retail business after it had been managed by another agency for several years. The business served a specialised market and needed better quality enquiries without increasing the overall advertising budget.

Challenge: Before making any campaign changes, CloudIA completed a full account audit. We discovered several issues reducing performance and wasting budget, including legacy campaigns competing against each other, no structured negative keyword strategy, overly broad nationwide targeting, ads running 24/7 regardless of business hours, and an unoptimised account structure.

Solution: CloudIA rebuilt the account foundation by removing redundant campaigns, consolidating budgets, implementing 200+ negative keywords after analysing six years of search term data, refining keyword targeting, restricting ads to the client’s service area, optimising ad schedules, and continuously monitoring search terms and campaign performance.

Lead Quality Validation: We also worked directly with the client’s store staff to validate the quality of incoming leads. This ensured that optimisations translated into real business outcomes rather than only improving platform metrics.

Results: Within two weeks, the business reported a 25% increase in qualified enquiries, with leads becoming significantly more relevant to their specialised offering. Approximately R3,000 per month in wasted ad spend was eliminated, and around 95% of top search traffic became highly relevant searches.

Performance Impact: The account achieved a 10%+ conversion rate and maintained an average cost per conversion of approximately R15. This created a substantially higher return on ad spend without increasing the client’s overall advertising budget.