Search is still the closest paid signal to “I have a problem and I might pay to solve it”. Service businesses waste that signal by mixing every query into one campaign and sending everyone to the homepage.
Three buckets, three pages
Group queries by job, not by how the keyword tool labelled them:
- Brand — people who already know your name. Protect them. Do not learn about non-brand here.
- Problem / research — “how to”, comparisons, definitions. These can be content or a soft offer. They should not share budget with “hire” language if your sales team is capacity-constrained.
- Purchase-intent — “agency”, “pricing”, “near me”, competitor-plus-alternative. These deserve a page that asks for one action: a call or a diagnostic.
Each bucket gets its own ads and a landing page that uses the same words as the query. If someone searches “Google Ads audit for ecommerce” and lands on a generic “we do digital marketing” hero, you paid for a bounce.
Negatives are a weekly habit
Export search terms. Add negatives for jobs you do not sell, geographies you do not serve, and informational phrasing that never becomes a meeting. This is unglamorous and it is where most accounts leak.
Performance Max is not a starting point
PMax can work when it has conversion history and assets that match the offer. On day one of a messy account it will find cheaper events. If your conversion action is “form submit”, it will find form submitters.
Stand up Search first. Import held meetings or qualified opportunities when you can. Then decide whether PMax has anything truthful to learn from.
Copy that matches the query
Responsive search ads still need a point of view. Write headlines that include the service, the constraint (“for B2B teams”, “for D2C brands”), and the next step. Sitelinks should go to proof — a case study method, a process page — not to four more ways to say “contact us”.
For a worked example of this split, read the anonymised B2B search pipeline or our Google Ads service.