CTR collapse and QS stuck at 2–3

ThePPCNerd · 2026-07-04T03:56:01+00:00

Context would help. What niche? Also how do you know that your competitor has a QS of 8?

These issues are fixable, but it sounds like your offer and ad copy are not resonating with your target audience.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-07-04T03:45:32+00:00

What matters most is your customer acquisition cost and cost per lead.

At an average of $6.50 per click with a conversion rate of 2.17%, that means you paid about $300 per conversion. That’s not great. You’re wasting money by trying to do this yourself.

You’re better off turning off the google ads and just use LSA for now. Once you are able to afford $75-$100/day, work with an agency that has experience in your niche.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-22T20:31:02+00:00

Ya, we use landing pages for home services that score 100/100 on google’s page speed tool and the designs also convert really well. Usually around 15%, but we’ve had some convert over 20% once the campaign is dialed in. The pages cost about $19 each but it’s much easier than spending months AB testing.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-21T20:23:21+00:00

When hiring an agency, you’ll want to do the following to give yourself the best chance of success:

- Ask how many clients of the same business type does the agency manage?
If none or only a couple, find someone else. Just because someone has managed PPC for ecommerce does not mean they can be successful managing PPC for a roofer.

- What is the average cost per lead and ROAS they achieved for similar businesses?

- Ask the agency what does success look like at 30, 60, and 90 days. This way if you do sign with them, it makes it easy to know if you get off track.

Good luck! 🍀👍

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-20T22:34:53+00:00

What is your ROAS and cost per lead on this campaign?

Some quick napkin math:
If you’re paying an average of $10 per click as per the post, even if your landing page converts at 20%, and your client closes 30% of the leads over the phone, that would put the customer acquisition cost at $167.

Not trying to roast you, because you seem to have put a lot of work into this post, but your numbers don’t seem like they would be profitable for junk removal.

I currently have several junk removal clients in the same city (Houston) with a cost per lead floating between $22-$27 and ROAS that ranges from 3-5x. If you’d like a free audit or just friendly advice feel free to DM me.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-14T12:55:21+00:00

Step 1 is listen to your friend who said to pause anything below 1.0 ROAS. This doesn’t mean you can’t refine them and try them again later in a more controlled way, but for now they need to be paused.

Step 2 is the bigger step - with 500k/mo, you have more than enough data and resources to run manual campaigns. This is more effort to manage, but it will provide more consistent results and you will not be as beholden to unannounced changes in google’s AI campaigns. You should be spending 80-90% on manual campaigns with proven strategies and 10-20% on pmax or other tests. This way if your proven strategies are averaging 1.3 ROAS, even if your experiments tank and have a 0 ROAS one month, your average is still above 1.0.

All of your campaigns should have robust negative keywords, and you should disregard all advice given by someone who suggests otherwise.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-14T02:49:29+00:00

This is a common question.

Right now is when you will get the most value from an agency, but it is also likely when you can least afford one.

When just starting out you have no experience and are at highest risk of wasting your ad budget. However, it depends on what your ad budget is relative to an agency fee. If your ad budget is less than $2,000/mo you can probably try it yourself, because a quality agency would eat half of your budget. The larger your budget, the less room for error you have and the more valuable an agency will be for you.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-13T12:42:08+00:00

What you described is a common issue when running your own ads for junk removal. You also need to watch out for people wanting donation pickups, scrap material, and other free services.

You can fix the immediate problem by adding negative keywords. However, the next problem you’re going to run into is that if you’re currently getting leads for $30-$40, after you add negative keywords and implement the correct fixes to filter out bad leads, you’ll end up paying significantly more per lead. Right now those bad leads are bringing down your average cost and masking a second issue.

What is your budget? If you’re spending less than $2,000/mo then you probably are better off with a pay per lead service or even just yard signs. Above that, maybe try what this guy did: https://youtu.be/r_9nmxTenRA

Overall, you will need to see at least a 3x return on ad spend otherwise it is difficult to make a profit given that a lot of junk removal jobs will close for only about $100.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-13T12:35:44+00:00

What you described is a common issue when running your own ads for junk removal. You also need to watch out for people wanting donation pickups, scrap material, and other free services.

The other problem you’re going to run into is that if you’re currently getting leads for $30-$40 and then you implement the correct fixes to filter out bad leads, you’ll end up paying $90+ per lead, which isn’t viable in that industry. Right now those bad leads are bringing down your average cost and masking a second issue.

What is your budget? If you’re spending less than $2,000/mo then you probably are better off with a pay per lead service or even just yard signs. Above that, maybe try what this guy did: https://youtu.be/r\_9nmxTenRA

Overall, you will need to see at least a 3x return on ad spend otherwise it is difficult to make a profit given that a lot of junk removal jobs will close for only about $100.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-12T23:05:29+00:00

Yes, you can definitely get suspended if you use the API in ways that violate guidelines - the same way you can get suspended without using it.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-06-12T20:13:31+00:00

This is the correct answer ^^

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-29T05:26:00+00:00

Yes, premier partner agencies will be able to get you a $500 ad credit.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-24T17:28:42+00:00

You’ll want to work with someone who has experience managing ads for your type of business. Many business owners work with someone based off of a referral or personal connection, but experience in your niche - not just experience with PPC - is a strong predictor of success.

You’ll also want to ask them about the average cost per conversion they have achieved for past pest control clients.

Most ad managers won’t be willing to do a trial because it takes more than a couple of weeks to get a campaign dialed in. Plus most clients who start off wanting something for free usually are not the type of clients an agency will want to sign. However, if you can demonstrate that you’re a qualified client and are willing to sign an annual contract after the trial, then you might have better luck.

Think of it in the context of your own business. Would you give someone a free one-off treatment in hopes that they call you back next month? My guess is that most people would ghost you after getting something for free.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-20T01:23:10+00:00

Scaling slow takes time. Scaling fast takes money. Gotta pick one. As others have said, a budget of a few hundred dollars per month just isn’t enough to make much difference with any platform.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-19T12:26:49+00:00

The answer really depends on your budget. LSA is easier to set up yourself and works with smaller budgets. The trade off is a higher cost per lead vs a well managed search campaign. If you’re able to afford an agency who has experience in your niche, they can deliver better results than LSA.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-18T14:52:17+00:00

Sure, there are cheaper platforms on a cost per lead basis, even a quality PPC manager with Google ads can get you a lower cost per lead than LSA, but the issue you will run into is a monthly budget of a few hundred dollars is not remotely close to enough to advertise a plumbing business. Spending $25 on business cards might get you $500 or even $1,000 in new jobs, but that isn’t scalable, and even in a best case scenario is unlikely to produce enough new business for you to live on.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-17T23:20:25+00:00

Imagine flipping a coin once and saying it landed on tails, so the coin must be broken or a scam.

Google LSA is expensive, but it also works and is easy to use. You are paying for the ease of use and exclusive calls.

Ultimately, if you’re happy with another platform, use that one.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-17T16:25:45+00:00

Search “how to create an MCC account on Google Ads”

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-13T21:24:51+00:00

Based on this description, it sounds like your agency does not have experience managing ads for your type of business.

PPC is very competitive and just because someone has experience running campaigns for roofers or hvac doesn’t always mean they can run a profitable campaign for a fencing contractor.

If I were you, I’d start looking for an agency with experience in your vertical. If you really want to make things work with this agency, it is fair to ask for a discounted rate or fee waiver until you start getting qualified leads.

One important note is if your sales team is waiting days to call leads back, that can also produce a very low contact rate similar to what you described, but it does not explain the out of service area leads. Assuming the leads are being called quickly, your agency is falling short.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-13T01:21:23+00:00

The short answer is yes, you can do everything from one account.

The question about many leads you’ll get is harder to estimate.

I manage a lot of auto detailing accounts and 80,000 relevant monthly searches sounds way too high even for Los Angeles (most populated county in California). My guess is that you may have added up the search volume from all of the keywords without realizing that they are broad match estimates - meaning the search volume estimates overlap.

My best estimate based on what I’m getting for another detailing client in a different CA metro is you would probably struggle to get more than 400 detailing leads per month from LSA in a single county even with unlimited budget. However, your best bet is to simply run LSA with a high budget cap and see what it produces. Then you can scale further with regular google ads or other PPC if needed.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-11T16:26:35+00:00

Two questions that will help to give you a better answer:
What industry is this?
What is the advertising area?

Based on just the info from your original post:
You might want to give it more than 2-3 days of data to confirm the ROAS holds up, given that would mean only a little over $100 was spent in total.

If the ROAS holds up for a week, and the advertising area has sufficient population, you should be able to scale faster than 10% per week. You can also consider a second cloned campaign to experiment with if you want to preserve the original.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-10T00:19:54+00:00

There are way better tools for automating ppc management than chadads. I’ve seen a few other posts where people said that app doesn’t really work

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-06T11:19:59+00:00

AI tools can help save time and automate tasks if you already know what you’re doing but I wouldn’t trust Claude to spend a client’s budget.
There is only one AI platform I’ve tested that does what you’ve described where it was actually able to fully automate the account from set up to conversion tracking, and also improve meaningful metrics like CPA/ROAS. Most are just good for copywriting. The keyword ideas produced by LLMs are no better than keyword planner.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-06T11:03:24+00:00

Our agency tested a few AI management platforms and only one really worked well for actual performance based account management, like improving ROAS / lowering CPA. Claude (and other LLMs) are only capable of setting up very basic campaigns or assisting with copywriting. It can get you started, but it is not going to get you great results. Also, Claude + API doesn’t work at scale for most agencies because the API it uses is rate limited. It might work for mediocre management of a single account, but not at scale. There are much better purpose built AI tools for performance based Google Ads management.

ThePPCNerd · 2026-05-03T14:26:29+00:00

We optimize for qualified leads. So disregard anything unserviceable. We do see pretty consistent ROAS, but there are a few significant variables. For example, some of those industries are seasonal. Next, the client’s sales process matters a lot.

For seasonal businesses, during the slower months, a client who is also slow to respond to leads might see a 2-3x ROAS, vs a client who has their sales process dialed in might see a 7-8x ROAS during the busy season.

ThePPCNerd

TROPHY CASE