Account Audits
Paid search strategy for Australian businesses
Plan paid search around customers you can serve, a clear offer, meaningful conversions and confirmed business outcomes.
Start with a customer action your business can fulfil. Work backwards to the searches, offer, page and spend that might produce it. Clicks and enquiries diagnose performance; use accepted work or sales to judge the commercial result when those records are available.
Define the outcome and spending boundary
Choose a primary outcome for each campaign. A retailer might track orders; a service business might track enquiries that meet its service and location requirements. Decide who will assess those outcomes and where they will be recorded. A low reported cost per lead says little if the business cannot tell which leads were useful.
Estimate what an acquired customer is worth using your own margins, variable costs and sales records. Where sales take time to close, keep the early enquiry measure separate from the later confirmed outcome. Treat platform forecasts as planning estimates, not promised acquisition costs.
Set a maximum approved spend for the learning period and decide who can authorise a change. Keep that budget boundary separate from the outcome target: the cap controls exposure, while customer value and sales records help judge whether the result is commercially worthwhile.
Decision / Question to settle
- Outcome
- What customer action would justify the spend?
- Customer
- Which requests can the business serve?
- Offer
- What can the ad and page promise accurately?
- Spend
- How much can the business commit while learning?
- Review
- Which record will show whether enquiries became useful work?
Steps to Define a Successful Paid Search Outcome
- Choose a primary outcome (e.g. order, enquiry)Align with what your business can deliver
- Define which customer requests you can serveInclude location, service availability, capacity
- Craft an accurate offer in ad and landing pageAvoid misleading promises
- Set maximum approved spend for learning phaseSeparate from outcome target
- Identify where useful work is recordedUse ATO, ABN, or internal CRM data
Choose the demand to pursue
Separate searches for your business by name from searches for a product or service without your name. Brand advertising may provide a useful route to your offer, but an ad-attributed brand conversion does not show that the ad created a new customer. Non-brand searches may reach people still choosing a supplier. Report the two separately when they serve different purposes.
A keyword is a candidate, not a customer. Ask whether the likely searcher wants what you sell, can be served in the relevant location and has a suitable next step. Keyword research can help you assess demand, but lead quality and profit need your own records.
Google Ads offers broader reach, while Microsoft Advertising runs across Bing, Yahoo and partner sites and may offer lower competition and cost per click. In Australia, Bing and its partner search engines power approximately 5% of all searches, while Microsoft's Australian desktop search share is estimated at 7–9%. Treat these figures as audience context, not a forecast of demand or profitability for your business.
Google Ads vs Microsoft Advertising in Australia
- Competition Level
- Higher on Google | Lower on Microsoft Advertising
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- Generally higher on Google | Often lower on Microsoft Advertising
Connect the ad to a useful action
Review which actions the campaign is set up to measure. Check that an easy-to-count action has not displaced the purchase or enquiry the business actually values.
Plan conversion tracking and analytics before launch so the recorded action reflects the outcome you chose. Keep a recorded enquiry distinct from a later sale or accepted job, and check both against the business's own records.
Group offers so each ad makes a specific promise and sends people to a page that fulfils it. Check the page and next step on a phone. Keep the ad promise and landing-page messaging aligned.
Give the searcher a clear next step, such as “Shop Now” or “Get a Quote”, and make the benefit clear. Test variations over time rather than treating a higher click-through rate as proof of sales.
Review location and network settings before launch, and set a spending boundary you can monitor. Targeting settings cannot confirm a customer's job address or ability to buy.
Review searches and business outcomes
Compare platform-recorded actions and outcomes confirmed by the business. Use platform reporting as one input, and check it against the records your business keeps.
Agree a regular review point before launch and name the person responsible for it. Review spend, recorded actions and confirmed sales or useful work together; changes in clicks or conversions can diagnose performance but do not, on their own, establish commercial success.
Record why you changed a campaign, when you changed it and what outcome you will review. If traffic is irrelevant, revisit the query and offer. If enquiries are relevant but rarely become sales, examine capacity, follow-up and the page promise before assuming that bidding is the cause.
Key Metrics for Evaluating Paid Search Performance
- Customer Value Estimate
- Based on margins, variable costs and sales records
- Cost Per Lead (CPL) – Low value if not tied to useful work
- Requires business confirmation of lead quality
- Confirmed Sales or Useful Work
- Primary measure of commercial success
- Platform Forecasts as Planning Estimates Only
- Not guaranteed acquisition cost
In this guide
- Brand search versus non-brand acquisitionSeparate own-brand search from non-brand acquisition and assess each budget against its purpose and measurement limits.
- Choosing search campaigns by commercial objectiveMatch Search campaign goals, bidding focus and reporting to orders, qualified enquiries, traffic or visibility.
- Deciding whether a keyword represents a viable customerJudge a paid search keyword by customer fit, serviceability, page relevance and business economics before relying on volume.
