From fragility to resilience: building a predictable enquiry engine with Google Ads

THE CHALLENGE

A six-month recovery gap they couldn’t afford to repeat

Three years ago, Mayfield Warrington faced a crisis common in the care sector. A shift in local council contracts resulted in the loss of 20% of their client base overnight. Without a predictable way to attract private-paying clients, it took the business six months of financial strain to recover. Enquiries relied entirely on word of mouth and council referrals — external factors they couldn’t control. That left the business exposed to sudden market shifts with no way to respond quickly.

THE STRATEGY

Build, test, optimise, scale — in that order

We built the account in four deliberate phases. Each phase had a specific goal before we moved to the next. Nothing was scaled until it was proven.

Campaign mix

We used a combination of campaign types and assets to find the most efficient traffic at each stage:

• Performance Max (PMAX) with guardrails — content exclusions, asset group segmentation and placement controls to prevent budget waste on low-quality inventory.
• Geo-targeted Search campaigns — exact match keywords focused to capture high-intent local search traffic.
• Video assets — short-form testimonial videos added to PMAX to unlock YouTube inventory and build credibility with families in the research phase.
• Image assets — lifestyle and care home imagery added to expand Discover and Display reach at minimal additional cost.

Algorithm training

In the early phase we tracked microconversions (CTA clicks, form starts, page engagement) to give Google’s algorithm enough signal to learn. Once the algorithm had sufficient data, we migrated the custom goals entirely to hard conversions: phone calls, phone number clicks and form submissions. This is the critical step that drove the CPA improvements in Q4 and beyond.