The challenge
Better Broking, a Melbourne-based mortgage brokerage, had been running Google Ads for almost two years before we started. The account was generating leads, but at a CPA that wouldn’t pencil at the volume the business wanted. Quality Score sat at an average of 5. Search Term reports were full of broad-match drift. PMax was on at 25% of budget but couldn’t be evaluated cleanly because the conversion taxonomy was inconsistent across campaigns.
The strategy
The plan for the first 30 days was unglamorous:
- Fix conversion tracking. Rebuild the GA4 event taxonomy, import conversions to Google Ads, set enhanced conversions, dedupe a phone-call event that was double-counting.
- Quality Score work. Tighten ad groups to single themes, rewrite RSAs with explicit keyword inclusion, and rewrite the post-click landing page for message-match.
- Search term hygiene. Add 240+ negative keywords from a six-month STR pull; tighten match types on the lowest-converting campaigns.
- Bidding migration. Move the strongest campaigns from MaxConv to tCPA at a starting target 15% above blended historical CPA, then tighten weekly.
The execution
The first two weeks were almost entirely tracking and structure work. The first measurable lift didn’t come from the ads — it came from a Quality Score improvement on the two highest-spend campaigns, which dropped CPC by 18% before any bidding change. The bidding migration landed in week three; by week six, tCPA was hitting target consistently.
The results
The bigger story past 60 days was scaling — once CPA hit target, the same budget delivered more volume, and the brokerage was able to lift spend by 60% without CPA degrading. The account has compounded steadily since.
The takeaway
Most Google Ads accounts don’t need a new strategy — they need the structural and tracking work that the previous quarter didn’t get to. Better Broking is a clean illustration: the headline 35% CPA reduction came almost entirely from work done in the first two weeks on tracking, structure and Quality Score. The strategic decisions (PMax weighting, audience signals, creative rotation) only worked because the foundation finally did.