Conversions more than doubled. Cost per conversion down by nearly two thirds. Total spend cut by a fifth. The Google Ads rebuild paying out across every metric that matters.
DeskLodge, one of Bristol’s best-known flexible workspace providers, with coworking and serviced offices at Temple Meads and Beacon Tower.
DeskLodge runs some of Bristol’s most loved coworking spaces. The product and the brand had real personality. The Google Ads account did not. Comparing the two years before we took it on to the two years since, conversions are up 109%, cost per conversion is down 62%, conversion rate has improved by 43% and total spend has dropped by 19%. Here is how the rebuild played out.
The client
DeskLodge is one of Bristol’s most recognisable flexible workspace providers, with coworking spaces and serviced offices at Temple Meads and Beacon Tower. The offer covers everything from hot desks for solo founders through to full serviced offices for growing teams, and the brand has built a loyal following among Bristol’s freelancers, startups and scale-ups.
The product is strong and the personality is unmistakable. The Google Ads account was not doing either of those things justice.
The situation
The account had been running for a while, but a proper audit made clear that quite a bit of the budget was going to waste. A few issues kept coming up.
Conversion tracking was outdated. The setup was recording the wrong events and missing Enhanced Conversions entirely. The data being used to make decisions was not reliable, which meant every optimisation built on top of it was working from a flawed foundation.
Budget was favouring branded search. A large slice of spend was going to people searching for DeskLodge by name. Those visitors were almost certainly going to get in touch anyway. Paid budget should be paying for new customer acquisition, not buying clicks the brand had already earned.
Targeting was too broad. The campaigns were running across the whole of the UK for a business whose customers, by definition, work in Bristol. That meant a real chunk of impressions and clicks were going to people who were never going to walk into a Temple Meads coworking space.
Irrelevant search terms were triggering ads. Queries like “free coworking” were regularly pulling ads that had no chance of converting. Every one of those impressions and clicks was budget out the door for nothing.
The ad copy needed a refresh. The messaging was not leading with what makes DeskLodge worth choosing. Searchers comparing coworking options had no clear reason to click DeskLodge over a competitor.
What we did
We started with the foundations. Conversion tracking was rebuilt from scratch with Enhanced Conversions configured properly, so for the first time the account had data it could actually trust. Every subsequent change was made against numbers that meant something.
Campaigns were restructured around new customer acquisition. Brand search was separated and capped, so paid budget was buying new prospects rather than chasing visitors already on their way to the site.
Location targeting was tightened to Bristol. A flexible workspace business needs to be visible to people who actually use Bristol. We pulled the geo radius in to match the catchment that matters.
Negative keywords cut out the dead clicks. “Free coworking” and dozens of similar non-buyer searches were added as negatives. Spend stopped leaking into queries that were never going to convert.
Ad copy was rewritten to lead with USPs. The personality DeskLodge has in person started showing up in the ad copy. Searchers got a clear, distinctive reason to click rather than a generic coworking pitch.
Ad assets, demographics and keyword coverage were filled in. The account had gaps that had been quietly capping performance. Sitelinks, callouts, demographics, an expanded keyword set, all brought up to the standard a Google Ads account needs to compound properly.
Two years on, comparing the two years before
All four numbers moving the right way at once:
- More leads coming through the door
- Each one costing meaningfully less
- A higher share of clicks turning into enquiries
- The whole thing running on a smaller budget
What it looks like now
DeskLodge now has a Google Ads setup built around bringing in new customers rather than just generating activity. Every conversion is tracked accurately, so there is a clear view of what paid is actually producing each month. And the account structure and data quality mean it can keep compounding from here rather than plateauing.
The bigger lesson is that the headline number on a PPC account (“we spent X, we got Y leads”) often hides a lot of accidental damage. Branded budget cannibalisation, broad geo, lazy negatives and broken conversion tracking all quietly hold back the real result. A proper audit and rebuild can produce step changes without spending more.
Three things this case study tells us
- Tracking is the foundation, not a finishing touch. If conversion tracking is wrong, every optimisation that follows is working from bad data. Enhanced Conversions are no longer optional for a serious Google Ads account.
- Paying for your own brand can hide weak acquisition. If branded clicks are a big share of spend, the real cost per new customer is much higher than the headline number suggests. Separate it out before you celebrate the report.
- A local business should look local in the ads platform too. If your customers can only come to Bristol, your geo, your negatives and your ad copy all need to behave like a Bristol business. UK-wide settings on a single-site venue are a quiet form of budget waste.
Thinking about your PPC?
If your Google Ads has been ticking along but you are not convinced it is working as hard as it could be, it is usually worth a proper look. We offer a free discovery call where we can talk through where things are at and what good could look like for you.
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