Paid search and paid social are the fastest way to get traffic — and the fastest way to set fire to a marketing budget. Used well, PPC fills the gap while organic SEO compounds. Used carelessly, it's a money pit. The difference is mostly in the pre-work.
The pre-flight before any spend
- The site has to convert. If your contact form is broken on mobile, or your page takes 7 seconds to load, you'll waste every cent of ad spend. Fix the site first.
- Conversion tracking has to be set up correctly. Without working conversion tracking, you're flying blind — Google's algorithm optimises for "clicks" rather than "leads," and you'll get the wrong customers cheaply. Use Google Tag Manager with proper conversion events.
- You need to know your customer's lifetime value. A €40 lead is cheap if a customer is worth €4,000 to you over five years. It's expensive if a customer is worth €60. Without this number, you can't decide what bid is "too high."
- You need a single clear primary call to action. "Get a quote." "Book a consultation." Not "browse our website."
A sensible first PPC budget
- €300–€500 for the first month — explicitly framed as a learning budget, not a results budget. The objective is to learn which keywords convert, which don't, and what your real cost-per-lead looks like.
- Six to ten tightly-themed keywords, not three hundred broad ones. "Emergency plumber Rathmines" beats "plumbing services Ireland."
- Negative keyword list from day one. The phrases that aren't your customer ("free," "DIY," "course," "jobs"). Add them as negatives so Google doesn't waste your budget on them.
- Three or four ad copy variants per ad group, rotated so Google can find which works best.
- Geo targeting to your actual service area. Most Irish SMBs lose money advertising to the entire country when they only serve Leinster.
What to look at every week
- Cost per conversion. Trending down = working. Flat or up = needs adjustment.
- Search terms report. The actual queries people typed. Add bad ones as negatives; add good ones as keywords.
- Quality Score. Below 6 means Google thinks your ad-to-page relevance is weak. Usually fixable with better landing-page copy.
- Time of day / day of week. If conversions happen Tuesday-Thursday during business hours, schedule your spend there.
Red flags when hiring a PPC manager
- They want to set up the account in their name. Always your account, your billing, you as the primary owner. They get manager-level access.
- They report on impressions and clicks instead of conversions. Impressions and clicks are vanity metrics; conversions are the only PPC number that matters.
- They want a one-year contract. A month-to-month rolling agreement is the industry standard for SMB PPC. Long lock-ins protect the agency, not you.
- They charge a percentage of ad spend without a floor or ceiling. You end up paying them more to spend more, which is the wrong incentive.
Meta Ads, briefly
Facebook and Instagram ads work well for visual products, lower-consideration purchases, and broad-audience consumer brands. They work badly for B2B, professional services, and purely local businesses with small audience pools. The "Boost Post" button on Facebook is almost always a bad use of money. If Meta Ads are right for your business, learn the proper Ads Manager interface, or hire someone who has.