Would you stay calm if your cost per click suddenly jumped from $1 to $27 overnight?
My Google Ads coaching client, Hannah, was really anxious about this, and I don't blame her!
Hannah first hired me to audit her Google Ads account. At first glance, the data looked incredible: she was getting over 100 conversions a month, and her CPCs were just $1.
However, Hannah had zero clients. Those conversions? They were just page views. She also had Search Partners enabled with hundreds of Broad Match keywords. To put it mildly: she was lighting her money on fire.
Here was my final recommendation coming out of the audit...
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Let's start over! No search partners, Exact Match with only a handful of keywords, and most importantly - stop tracking page views as conversions, and start tracking form fills as conversions.
We implemented these recommendations together on a coaching call, waited a few weeks, and then met again. On that follow-up call, Hannah was feeling uneasy because her average CPC had jumped from $1 to $27, and her conversion count had "dropped" from 100 to just 4.
I told her: "This is exactly what success looks like."
Hannah provides a high-end service. Her projects start at $10,000 and average $40,000. Those 4 leads weren't just clicks; they were real, high-intent humans looking for her specific expertise.
Then, I told her the next step: "It's time to turn Broad Match back on."
She was shocked. "Wait, isn't that what we just worked so hard to get away from?"
I explained that Broad Match is only as good as the signals you provide. Previously, Hannahā€™s account was "teaching" Google that page views and cheap clicks were the goal. So it got her a ton of page views and cheap clicks!
Now that weā€™d spent weeks feeding the algorithm only high-intent, clean conversion data, the AI finally knows what a $40,000 lead looks like.
By opening back up to Broad Match now, Hannah can scale into her high season with the confidence that Google is hunting for her ideal clients, not just padding her campaigns with junk.
If you're spinning your wheels with Google Ads, here's how to know if you need a "Great Reset," like Hannah:
- Stop optimizing for garbage: Ensure your conversion tracking only fires for high-intent actions (like a form fill or, even better, a qualified lead or purchase). If you track page views, Google will find you more "viewers," not "buyers."
- Lock down the network: Just say no to Search Partners. And while we're on the topic, Display network has no place in Search campaigns, either.
- Trust your bank account, not the CPC: A $27 click for a $30,000 project is a much better deal than thousands of $1 clicks for people who will never buy from you.
Stop paying for $1 clicks that don't convert. Book a call with me so we can adapt Hannahā€™s strategy to your business.
