Rebuilding PPC Campaigns to Deliver Higher-Quality Leads

Onyx Money are specialists in bridging loans and commercial property finance, serving clients across the UK from their base in Fareham, Hampshire. Their team helps borrowers navigate complex funding requirements — from short-term bridging through to long-term commercial mortgages.

Onyx had been running PPC campaigns but were struggling with lead quality. Enquiries were coming in, but too many were unqualified or irrelevant, driving up cost per lead without delivering the kind of borrowers the team could actually help. At the same time, there were concerns that the campaigns weren’t reaching the right audiences in the right locations, and that fundamental tracking issues meant performance data couldn’t be trusted.

They came to Atelier looking for a partner who could refine the entire paid search operation — from keyword strategy and ad copy through to conversion tracking and targeting — to generate fewer but better leads at a lower cost per acquisition.

Audit and conversion tracking

The first step was a comprehensive audit of the existing account. This immediately revealed conversion tracking issues that had been skewing performance data and making it impossible to optimise with confidence. Fixing this gave the team a clean baseline to measure genuine campaign performance against.

Alongside the tracking overhaul, we conducted detailed keyword research specific to the bridging and commercial finance sector. Budget-based campaign recommendations ensured spend was allocated to the areas with the strongest commercial intent.

Ad copy and creative

With responsive search ads, we maximised the available asset slots — 15 headlines and 4 descriptions per ad group — to give Google’s algorithm the widest possible range of high-performing combinations. Every asset was written to pre-qualify leads before the click: USPs, minimum loan values and service specifics were woven into the copy so that unqualified prospects self-selected out, reducing wasted spend.

Image assets were introduced to increase ad real estate and visual standout in competitive search results.

Targeting and optimisation

Geographic targeting was refined to a 100-mile radius from the Fareham office, with negative bid adjustments applied in London where cost per click was disproportionately high relative to lead quality. This ensured budget was concentrated in the areas most likely to convert.

Quality scores were improved across the account through a combination of keyword relevance improvements, landing page experience enhancements and tailored PPC landing pages with lead capture forms positioned above the fold. Each landing page was purpose-built for its campaign, removing friction between the ad message and the conversion action.

The rebuilt campaigns delivered substantial, measurable improvements across every key metric:

• Impressions increased by 566%, dramatically expanding Onyx Money’s visibility to borrowers actively searching for bridging and commercial finance
• Click rate improved by 135%, confirming that the refined ad copy and targeting were reaching the right audience with the right message
• Bounce rate reduced by 30%, reflecting the improved alignment between ad copy, keyword intent and landing page experience
• Lead quality improved significantly, with pre-qualifying ad copy filtering out unqualified enquiries before they reached the sales team
• Cost per lead decreased, driven by higher quality scores, tighter targeting and better-converting landing pages
• Conversion tracking was fully resolved, giving the Onyx team reliable data to measure return on ad spend for the first time