What we check before spending a rupee on ads

Most wasted ad budget is not wasted in the campaign. It is wasted before the campaign, in decisions nobody wrote down. Here is what we insist on seeing before we turn anything on.

Can we actually measure a sale?

Not a click. Not a form view. A completed enquiry or purchase, firing a conversion event we have tested ourselves. If conversion tracking is broken or missing, every optimisation decision after launch is guesswork, and Google will happily spend the budget while you guess.

We test by submitting the form ourselves and watching the event arrive. If it does not arrive, nothing launches.

What is a customer worth?

You cannot judge a cost per lead without knowing what a lead becomes. We ask two numbers: what does an average order or contract bring in, and what share of enquiries turn into one.

If ten enquiries produce one customer worth thirty thousand rupees, a two thousand rupee cost per enquiry is excellent. Without those numbers, that same figure sounds alarming and gets campaigns switched off while they are working.

Where does the click land?

Sending paid traffic to a homepage is the most common and most expensive mistake we see. The homepage has to serve everyone, so it persuades nobody in particular.

Each ad group needs a page that answers the exact search. If that page does not exist, building it comes first. That work sits with our website and landing page team before a single rupee goes to Google.

Who are we not selling to?

Negative keywords are not a tidy-up job for month three. Free, jobs, salary, course, repair, second hand, the name of every competitor you do not want to pay for. We build the first negative list before launch, from the search terms we already know are coming.

Can the business answer the phone?

This sounds like it is not our problem. It is entirely our problem. Leads that ring out at 4pm on a Saturday cost exactly as much as leads that convert. We agree who answers, in what time, and what happens to enquiries that arrive out of hours, before we start generating them.

What does month one actually mean?

The first month buys data, not profit. We agree in writing what we expect to learn and what would count as a reason to stop. A campaign judged on week one impressions gets killed before it has told you anything.

The point of the list

None of this is clever. It is just the difference between advertising and gambling. If you would like your account checked against it, the same list is where we start on every engagement in our Google and Meta Ads management.