It might sound strange to hear me say this, but sometimes my job as a Google Ads Coach isn't to help you run ads.
Sometimes, my job is to stop you from running them at all.
I recently had a call with Lucy, the owner of a successful mental health therapy group in Oregon. Lucy and her team had been crushing it with Meta Ads for a long time, getting leads for around $15 each.
But recently, Meta performance stalled. They were only getting about 7 leads a day, whereas they used to get 15. Google Search Ads seemed like the logical next step to fill the gap.
It’s such a common scenario for service-based business owners that I actually recorded Episode 88 of my Inside Google Ads podcast on this exact topic two months before meeting Lucy. I meet so many business owners who assume Google Search is the magic bullet when growth stalls elsewhere.
Lucy came to the call ready to launch. She wanted to target keywords like "therapy" and "mental health" to capture high-intent traffic.
But before we built a single campaign, we stopped to do the math. And the math told us a very different story.
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I explained to Lucy that in her industry (mental health / therapy) competition is fierce thanks to a proliferation of independent therapists, group practices like hers, as well as well-funded tech goliaths like BetterHelp. Because of that, the Cost Per Click (CPC) on Google Search for therapists is typically between $7 and $15.
That’s just for a click - not a lead.
I then explained that a well-optimized therapy website usually converts about 10% of traffic into leads. Lucy's conversion rate was much lower than this, but to tell the story I needed to tell, we went with the optimistic assumption that high-intent traffic from Google Search could potentially convert better:
Then, we did the napkin math:
- Cost Per Click: ~$10
- Conversion Rate: ~10%
- Estimated Cost Per Lead: $100
Lucy was used to paying $15 per lead on Facebook & Instagram.
On Google Search, she would likely be paying at least $100 per lead.
For her business model, that simply wasn't affordable.
If we had blindly launched those Search campaigns, Lucy would have burned through her budget in days with very little to show for it.
Instead, I helped her see the economic reality: Google Search Ads didn't make sense for her business goals, and Lucy saved thousands of dollars in wasted ad spend.
We didn't give up entirely, though. Since her creative assets were strong and she was used to the "push" style of social ads, I recommended that she explore Demand Gen campaigns instead. These allow her to use her existing images and targeting tactics from Meta to find clients on Google properties, at a cost per click of about $1 vs. ~$10. In case you missed it, the last issue of The Insider includes my 5x5x5 framework for Demand Gen creative.
If you're thinking of launching a Google Search campaign, here's how to run the napkin math first, like Lucy:
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Check your estimated CPC: Use Google Keyword Planner to find the expected range for your main keywords. If you operate in a sensitive category like therapy, Keyword Planner may not show you CPC estimates for all of your keywords; in this case, try asking for benchmarks in search marketing industry Slack groups like #PPCChat or the Paid Search Association
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Estimate your CPA: Multiply your estimated CPC by your website conversion rate to get a rough idea of your Cost Per Lead. Note that if most of your website visitors come from organic branded searches and direct traffic, then your conversion rate from paid non-branded searches will probably be lower.
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Compare to your margins: Is that Cost Per Lead profitable for you? If you tend to get a lot of repeat business, would it be profitable after 1 or 2 repeat purchases?
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Listen to Episode 88 of the Inside Google Ads podcast for a deeper dive on this topic, including my Rule of 2
Not sure if Google Ads make sense for you? Book a call with me and we'll figure out the best strategy for your budget.
