Most ad accounts we inherit are quietly wasting 20–40% of their budget. The good news: recovering that spend is a repeatable process. Here is the practical framework we use to audit campaigns, tighten targeting and put every pound to work.
Start with a ruthless search term audit
Export the last 90 days of search terms and sort by spend with zero conversions. You will almost always find irrelevant queries eating budget. Add negatives aggressively and group them into shared lists so every campaign benefits.
Restructure around intent, not products
Campaigns organised purely by product category mix high-intent buyers with casual browsers. Split brand, competitor, generic and remarketing traffic into their own campaigns so you can bid what each audience is actually worth.
Fix conversion tracking before touching bids
Smart bidding is only as good as the data you feed it. Make sure you are tracking real outcomes — qualified leads and purchases, not page views or button clicks. Import offline conversions if sales close over the phone.
Let budget follow profit, not history
Review spend allocation monthly. Campaigns often keep their budgets out of habit long after performance has shifted. Move budget towards the campaigns with the best cost per acquisition, and cap the ones that only look good on vanity metrics.
Test creative like you mean it
On paid social, creative fatigue sets in fast. Rotate fresh angles every two to three weeks and let the data kill weak variants early. Small, frequent creative tests beat big quarterly refreshes.
Applied together, these steps routinely cut cost per acquisition by a third while lifting ROAS. Want us to run the audit for you? Get in touch — the first review is on us.
