Google Ads that returned 5x spend in closed deals

The challenge

When I joined, Google Ads had been set up in-house and was getting a healthy click-through rate, but it hadn’t produced a single lead in the previous two months. The business needed leads quickly. So while I worked on the bigger picture (personas, positioning, the customer journey, and a marketing plan), fixing the ads came first.

The business sold large, considered projects to Australian enterprise organisations, with six-figure first deals. That buyer is a small group, and search is full of people who look similar but aren’t.

My approach

I started with the search terms report. It showed where the budget was going: job seekers, people after a cheap website, and searches for services we didn’t offer. The account needed a restructure before we spent anything more on traffic.

I rebuilt the account around the searches that matched our services and ideal clients, added negative keywords for the searches we didn’t want, rewrote the ad copy, and reworked the landing page.

Once leads were coming in, I turned to who we should be targeting. I used CRM data to see which industries had converted best and brought in the most revenue. Alongside our head of sales, I interviewed current clients, past clients, and prospects we hadn’t won, asking why they chose us (or didn’t) and what they thought we did. I also reviewed around 200 Australian competitors to see how each one positioned itself.

The interviews and competitor research pointed to a clearer message: a secure, local team with healthcare experience and an understanding of regulated organisations.

What I built

I built three industry campaigns, led by healthcare, alongside the existing service campaigns.

For each industry I:

• researched keywords and grouped them by theme into ad groups
• reviewed competitors’ ads, offers, extensions, and landing pages, and looked for ways to offer something better
• wrote the ad copy and extensions
• wrote, designed, and built a landing page in Webflow
• set up UTMs, Google Tag Manager, and custom Google Analytics events for form interactions and scroll depth

The campaigns bid on return on ad spend. With so few form fills to go on, I also tracked micro conversions, such as starting a form or scrolling most of the page, as secondary conversions with small values. They showed me which keywords and ads were bringing in engaged visitors well before the form data could.

I also used a click-tracking tool that showed the IP address behind each ad click. That let me match genuine prospects in HubSpot for follow-up, and block repeat or spam clicks.

Optimisation was daily. I checked the search terms report for mismatches, added negatives, and turned off keywords that overlapped and competed for the same searches. Every ad group ran at least two ads, and I used a statistical significance calculator to decide when to retire the weaker ad and write a new challenger. I ran the same tests on sitelinks and callouts.

For reporting, I connected Google Ads to HubSpot and built a management dashboard showing contacts, campaigns, and search terms. Behind that sat a monthly model that followed every stage from impressions to clicks, contacts, deals, and revenue won, with the cost and conversion rate at each step. I compared rolling six-month periods rather than single months, which swing too much at this scale, and flagged each figure red or green against Australian benchmarks.

Results

Across three and a half years, every dollar spent on Google Ads came back five times over in closed-won revenue, and the most recent 12 months held the same ratio. That only counts the first deal won with each client. When clients went on to spend more with us, that revenue wasn’t included, so the full return was higher. For context, Dreamdata’s B2B benchmarks put the average return on non-branded search at 78% of spend, so most B2B search doesn’t pay for itself in tracked revenue.

How it unfolded

• Month 1Leads came in after two months with none.
• Month 2The first six-figure deal closed.
• Month 3Leads were ten times month one, and cost per contact was 86% lower.
• Months 2 to 3Healthcare pulled ahead on cost per enquiry, so the budget moved there.
• Three and a half yearsEvery dollar spent came back five times over in revenue from first deals alone.

My read is that healthcare buyers search with their industry in mind, because they want a partner who has worked in healthcare before. Buyers in the other two industries seemed to search more generically. The business also had more healthcare case studies and relationships to back up the message.

Healthcare then went on to drive LinkedIn campaigns, an account-based marketing program, new case studies, blog posts, and social content, and it became a central part of how the business marketed itself.

Benchmark sources: Dreamdata B2B Google Ads benchmarks, Leadpages via SaaS Hero, WordStream via Search Engine Land.

What I’d do next

Search costs in this category rose sharply over my time there, with the average cost per click increasing more than tenfold as more competitors bid for the same buyers. It’s a wider trend too: WordStream found average costs per click rose in 87% of industries in 2025. On a lean budget, that meant fewer clicks, less data, and slower testing. Next time I would:

• Spread the budget across channels earlier. I’d keep paid search for the high-intent searches and use ABM and LinkedIn to reach target accounts directly. That’s where this program went next.
• Qualify leads after the form. I’d keep the enquiry form short and ask about budget in an automated follow-up email, which filters out small projects without losing completions.
• Run fewer campaigns with more budget each. Our three industry campaigns split a small budget, so each one took months to give a clear result. Two would have got us to the healthcare answer sooner.