Paid Ads
Ad platforms optimize for whatever you tell them to. These playbooks show how to feed them the right signals, structure campaigns that scale and judge everything on cost per qualified lead. They come from real budgets, including paid ads that returned 323% ROI for a hotel group.
What you'll learn
- Set up Performance Max to find qualified leads
- Send real sales signals back to Google and Meta
- Run Meta and Google together without double counting
- Judge every campaign on cost per qualified lead
Start with these
How to use these playbooks
Start with tracking, not targeting. Every ad platform optimizes for the conversion you give it, so if you count form fills, you'll get form fills. The Performance Max setup shows how to send qualified leads back to Google, which is the single change that has improved lead quality most in the campaigns I've run.
The rules I run every account by
- Judge every campaign on cost per qualified lead or cost per sale, never cost per click.
- Send real outcomes back to the platforms: qualified leads, booked calls, sales.
- Split campaigns by how people buy, not by how your company is organized.
- Let landing pages qualify. One good question beats ten form fields.
- Answer leads within five minutes. Slow follow-up quietly burns budget.
Google or Meta?
Usually both. Meta creates demand before people search, and Google captures it when they do. For a hotel group, Performance Max and Meta together brought in 5,000+ quality wedding leads, and paid ads returned 323% ROI. The trick was judging both channels on the same number.
When to get help
If you spend more than a few thousand dollars a month and can't say what a qualified lead costs you, fix that before you raise the budget. It's the most common problem I see, and the cheapest one to solve.
Questions people ask
Many accounts need both. Search gives you control over high-intent keywords, while Performance Max reaches people across Google's channels. Keep a brand search campaign and use brand exclusions in Performance Max.
It depends on what a customer is worth to you. Work backwards from your close rate and average sale, and compare cost per qualified lead, not cost per form fill.
Usually because the campaign optimizes for form submissions. Track qualified leads in your CRM and send them back to Google as conversions with values.
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