How a US investment platform’s Google Ads cost per lead fell from $80 to $40 in six weeks
A $5,000-a-month Google Ads account paying about $80 a lead. Six weeks of work on its tracking, structure, keywords and creative, and cost per lead halved while verified lead volume rose 60%.
Business
A US investment platform
Market
United States
Channel
Google Ads
Timeframe
Six weeks, 2024
Budget
$5,000 a month
Role
Took over and ran the account, in a prior role
Headline result
Cost per lead from $80 to $40 in six weeks; verified lead volume up 60%
The starting point
When I took the account over, it was paying about $80 for each lead on a $5,000 monthly budget.
A fintech account in that state usually has the same root problem: it cannot tell the platform which clicks became leads, so the bidding has nothing good to learn from, and the budget spreads across searches that never convert. Fixing it is structural work before it is creative work.
What was done
01
Conversion and call tracking, rebuilt so that the leads and calls the account produced were recorded and the bidding could learn from them.
02
An account restructure, so spend could be read and controlled campaign by campaign.
03
Keywords and negatives. Underperforming keywords were paused and negative keyword lists added, so spend stopped going to searches that did not convert.
04
Creative A/B testing on the ads, keeping what earned leads and cutting what did not.
The compliance angle
Financial products are a restricted category on Google Ads, and investment advertising carries its own rules on what an ad may claim. Every change to copy and landing pages had to stay inside Google’s financial services policy.
Results
$80 → $40
Cost per lead
In six weeks
+60%
Verified lead volume
Over the same work
$5,000
A month
Google Ads budget
Figures are as recorded at the time. Screenshots are not shown because the account belongs to a former employer. The same company’s organic content programme is a separate case study: content that closed investor deals.
What this means for you
The Acquisition Audit is this work done first as a diagnosis: the account audit, the tracking gaps, the negatives, the structure and the creative tests, set out as a prioritised 90-day plan. If your fintech account spends and cannot say which clicks became leads, the Audit finds where the money goes.