Audit the spend, not the settings
We read the search terms report line by line, identify what you are actually paying for, and quantify what is being lost to wrong intent, invalid traffic and mismatched landing pages.
Buy attention where the intent is already there.
Paid search is the one channel where someone tells you what they want, in their own words, at the moment they want it. Most accounts still lose more than half the budget before it reaches those people. We fix that first, then scale what works.
Wasted spend removed first
Invalid clicks filtered
Landing pages that match
Measured on enquiries
THE SITUATION
Most of the money is spent before anyone qualified clicks.
Paid search fails quietly. The dashboard shows clicks going up and cost per click looking reasonable, so nothing appears wrong. Meanwhile the budget is being drawn down by searches that were never going to buy, by automated traffic, by competitors clicking to push your costs up, and by people landing on a page that cannot answer what they asked.
None of that shows up as a failure. It shows up as an underwhelming month. The first job is not to spend more or bid smarter — it is to stop paying for clicks that could never have become customers.
SYMPTOMS WE HEAR MOST
Clicks look healthy but enquiries do not move with them Nobody can say which search terms actually produced business Spend rises when a competitor is active, for no extra return Ads point at a homepage instead of a page about the thing searched forHOW THE WORK RUNS
Stop the leak, then buy more of what works.
Scaling a leaking account multiplies the leak. The sequence matters more than the bidding strategy.
Close the leaks
Negative keyword structure, match type discipline, invalid-click filtering, geographic and scheduling limits, and IP exclusions for known offenders. This usually returns budget before anything else changes.
Align the landing pages
Each campaign points at a page that answers the search it came from, with one obvious next step. Ads and pages are built together, because separately they fail together.
Track properly, then scale
Conversion tracking on real enquiries rather than page views, then measured expansion into the campaign types and terms that have proven they produce business.
TRY THE ACTUAL WORK
Eight searches. Which ones would you pay for?
This is the job. Not bidding, not dashboards — reading what someone typed and deciding whether they were ever going to buy. Pick before you see the answer.
SEARCH TERM 1 OF 8
0 CORRECT SO FAR
hdb plumbing regulations pub guidelines
SEARCH TERM 1 OF 8
0
/ 8
That was eight terms from one trade. A live account generates hundreds a month, and every one left unjudged is billed at full price. This is the work, repeated, with the money attached.
Have us read yours
THE FULL SET, JUDGED
emergency plumber jurong 24 hours
WORTH PAYING A PREMIUM FOR
Urgent, local, and names the service. This is the most valuable click in the account and worth bidding hard for.
plumber salary singapore
PURE WASTE — EXCLUDE
A job seeker or a curious student. It looks close to your service and it will absolutely appear in your search terms report if nobody has excluded it.
best plumbing company singapore reviews
HIGH INTENT, OFTEN MISSED
The one most people get wrong. Reading reviews is late-stage behaviour, not idle research — this person is choosing between shortlisted firms and you want to be on that list.
how to fix a leaking tap yourself
EXCLUDE FROM ADS, KEEP FOR CONTENT
Explicitly wants to avoid hiring you. Worth nothing in search, though it is a reasonable subject for an article that later earns the job.
plumber near me cheap
CONVERTS, LOSES MONEY
The other one most people get wrong. It reads like intent, and it is — intent to pay as little as possible. These convert, then erode your margin and rarely return.
plumbing course nitec singapore
PURE WASTE — EXCLUDE
A prospective apprentice. Cheap clicks, which is exactly why an unmanaged account accumulates so many of them.
commercial plumbing contractor tender
LOW VOLUME, HIGHEST VALUE
Procurement language. Low volume, high value, and usually neglected because the click count looks unimpressive next to consumer terms.
is my water heater under warranty
WRONG STAGE ENTIRELY
An existing customer of someone else, looking for admin. Costs you a click and answers a question you were not asked.
water leak detection service singapore
STRONG INTENT, SPECIALIST WORK
Names a specialist service and a location. Someone with a problem they cannot see and cannot fix themselves.
burst pipe insurance claim
URGENT-LOOKING, WORTH NOTHING
The most convincing trap in the set. It reads as an emergency, but this person has already had the work done and now wants paperwork.
plumbing parts wholesale supplier
WRONG AUDIENCE ENTIRELY
Another trade buying stock, not a customer buying labour. Cheap clicks that quietly accumulate in every unmanaged account.
toilet bowl replacement cost singapore
READY, COMPARING PRICE
Price research is buying behaviour. They have decided to replace it and are working out what it should cost — answer that and you are on the shortlist.
hdb plumbing regulations pub guidelines
RESEARCH, NOT DEMAND
Compliance research. Sometimes a contractor, sometimes a nervous homeowner, almost never an enquiry.
24 hour plumber whatsapp
READY TO CONTACT IMMEDIATELY
Naming the contact method is the strongest signal there is. They want to message someone now.
plumber jobs hiring singapore
PURE WASTE — EXCLUDE
A job seeker. Obvious once you read it, and still one of the most common wasted terms in trade accounts.
grease trap cleaning contract restaurant
RECURRING COMMERCIAL VALUE
Commercial, recurring, and contract language. One of these is worth dozens of consumer clicks.
diy unclog drain baking soda
EXCLUDE FROM ADS, KEEP FOR CONTENT
Actively avoiding paying anyone. Fine as an article subject, worthless as a paid click.
sanitary ware showroom singapore
ADJACENT, NOT YOUR SERVICE
Subtle one. They are shopping for fittings, not for a plumber. Retail intent pointed at the wrong business.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
Move the slider. Watch your budget get spent.
Set your monthly spend and see the split we typically find in an unmanaged account, against the same account once the leaks are closed. Illustrative ranges from accounts we have audited — not a promise about yours.
MONTHLY SPEND
S$8,000
Qualified, intent-matched clicks
People searching for what you sell
42%
S$3,360
Wrong intent
Researchers, students, job seekers, DIY
18%
S$1,440
Invalid traffic
Bots, click farms, automated crawlers
11%
S$880
Competitor clicks
Rivals driving your costs up
7%
S$560
Out of hours and out of area
Nobody there to answer, or you cannot serve them
9%
S$720
Landing page cannot convert
Right search, wrong page
13%
S$1,040
NOT REACHING A BUYER, PER MONTH
S$4,640
RECOVERABLE BY CLOSING THESE
S$28,800
Audit our account
Percentages are illustrative ranges from accounts we have audited. Yours will differ — the point is that the number is never zero.
WHERE THE ADS APPEAR
Four surfaces. Different jobs.
Search is where intent lives, so it comes first. The rest earn their place only once search is producing.
Search
Text ads against what people type. The highest intent and the first place to get right.
Display
Visual placements across millions of sites, apps, YouTube and Gmail. Reach and recall, not intent.
Remarketing
Following up with people who already visited and did not act. Usually the cheapest return in the account.
Shopping and video
Product listings and pre-roll where the catalogue or the story justifies it.
WHAT YOU ACTUALLY GET
You get the account, the data and the reasoning.
- Search terms audit with quantified wasted spend
- Restructured campaigns and ad groups
- Negative keyword framework
- Invalid click filtering and IP exclusions
- Geographic and scheduling controls
- Landing page alignment per campaign
- Conversion tracking on real enquiries
- Google Analytics and Search Console configuration
- Monthly reporting against enquiries, not clicks
- Full account ownership — it stays yours
HONEST SCOPE
Is this the right thing to buy?
GOOD FIT WHEN
People already search for what you sell, in volume You can answer an enquiry quickly when it arrives There is a real page, or willingness to build one, behind each campaignWAIT, OR DO SOMETHING ELSE FIRST
Nobody searches for your category yet — awareness has to come first The margin cannot support paid acquisition at your average order value Enquiries would sit unanswered for days; paid search would just cost moreCOMMON QUESTIONS
The things people ask first.
What is the difference between SEO and paid search?
Paid search buys the click; SEO earns it. Paid traffic starts the day you switch it on and stops the day you switch it off. Organic traffic takes months to build but keeps arriving without a per-click cost. Most businesses need both, in that order: paid to learn what converts, organic to stop paying for it forever.
Are competitors really clicking our ads?
It happens, and in tight local markets it happens often. It is rarely a coordinated campaign — usually just rivals checking your positioning repeatedly. We log the pattern and exclude the source. We cannot recover what was already spent, but we can stop it continuing.
How do you deal with bot and click-farm traffic?
We monitor click patterns for the signatures of automated and fraudulent traffic, log the offending sources and exclude them at IP and placement level. Google filters some of this itself; the residue is what quietly erodes a budget month after month.
Do we need a new website before running ads?
Not usually a whole site — but you do need the right page. Sending paid traffic to a homepage wastes most of it. Often the fastest improvement is one properly built landing page per campaign, which we can do without touching the rest of the site.
Who owns the account?
You do. We work inside your account, so the history, the data and the learning stay with you if we ever part ways. Agencies that run your spend through their own account are keeping your data, not protecting it.
How much should we spend to start?
Enough to gather signal in a month — usually a few thousand a month in a Singapore market, less in a narrow niche. We would rather start smaller and prove cost per enquiry than take a large budget and hope.
Let us tell you what your account is actually paying for.
Send us access and we will come back with the search terms report read properly: what produced business, what never could have, and what we would change first.