We halved a heating brand's cost per enquiry — and held it for two years
A national UK electric-heating brand was paying around £85 for every enquiry from Google Ads. We took over the account, rebuilt it around real leads, and cut cost per enquiry by nearly half — then kept it there for two winters running.
When we took over the account, it was paying £85 for every enquiry — and generating them at a conversion rate of just 0.88%.
It was buying reach, not results. Most of the traffic was broad and low-intent — clicks the account paid for that were never going to become enquiries. Bidding was manual, capped by max CPC, with no line of sight to which clicks actually turned into business.
For a lead-generation business in a competitive UK energy market, that's expensive noise. They didn't need a bigger budget. They needed the budget they had to find the people ready to enquire.
We rebuilt the account around one principle: optimise toward real enquiries, not clicks.
- Rebuilt the bidding strategy — moved off manual max-CPC bidding to Maximise Conversions, so Google's algorithm could chase leads instead of us hand-capping clicks.
- Wired the CRM into Google Ads — offline conversion tracking feeds real enquiries (and enhanced conversions) back into bidding, so the algorithm learns from leads that actually count. Next step: moving to Maximise Conversion Value to push performance further still.
- Restructured by product and intent — separate Search and Performance Max campaigns for radiators, hot water and solar, so budget and messaging matched what each customer was searching for.
- Focused reach on the people who buy — tighter targeting and negative keywords moved spend from broad, low-intent traffic to searches with real intent.
- Split out brand search so brand and non-brand performance could be judged honestly and budgeted separately.
Same market. Same seasons. Half the cost per enquiry — held for two years running. That's what happens when an account is run toward real leads, not clicks.