Real demand and strong creative, held back by weak conversion tracking and an undermanaged account.
MacKnight is a safety staffing and HSE consulting firm with room to grow into multiple markets. The creative foundation is strong (Excellent ad strength, 5.6% CTR), but the account is undermanaged: blended CPA climbed from about $20 in January to $138 to $177 in April and May, with only 2 changes logged in 14 days.
Conversion tracking. The good news is the enabled campaign already optimizes to the right account default actions, calls from ads and submit lead forms, so it is targeting real leads. The opportunity is to go deeper: build offline conversions further down the funnel so Google learns which of those leads actually become customers. Get that signal in and every bid, expansion, and budget decision gets sharper.
The enabled campaign optimizes to the account default actions, calls from ads and submit lead forms, so it is already pointed at good leads. The biggest lever now is depth: feed Google what happens after the lead. The list below also carries clutter worth cleaning up, but since the live campaign is not optimizing to those extra actions, it is hygiene rather than a performance drag.
| Conversion action | Category | Counting | Lookback | Primary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clicks to call | Contact | 30d | Primary | |
| Local actions, Website visits | Purchase (miscategorized) | 30d | Primary | |
| Request Pricing Form Submission | Submit lead form | Many per click | 30d | Primary |
| Calls from Smart Campaign Ads | Phone call lead | Many per click | 30d | Primary |
| phone call | Phone call lead | Many per click | 30d | Primary |
| CSR Call Conversion | Phone call lead | Many per click | 30d | Primary |
| Submit Lead Form | Submit lead form | Many per click | 30d | Primary |
| Lead form, Submit | Submit lead form | Many per click | 1d | Primary |
| Submit lead form, unbounce | Submit lead form | Many per click | 90d | Primary |
This is the real win. When a lead becomes a paying customer, feed that back to Google with offline conversion import or enhanced conversions for leads. It teaches the system which leads are actually worth money, which sharpens bidding on terms like "staffing agencies near me" that already bring leads in.
Consolidate to one primary phone lead and one primary form lead, demote or remove the rest, and move "Local actions, Website visits" out of Purchase. This is account hygiene, not a performance fix, since the enabled campaign is not optimizing to those actions today.
While cleaning up, align the kept actions on a single 30 day click window so counting stays consistent.
Today the live campaign targets the entire US while the copy says "Houston's #1 HSE Consultants." That is a mismatch. Rather than spraying a national budget with a local message, the smarter play is deliberate, localized expansion.
Pick the metros and states worth expanding into and build localized campaigns for them, instead of targeting all of the US at once. Texas already leads (38 of about 90 mappable conversions, lowest CPA) because the message fits there. Recreate that fit market by market.
Right now everything runs to the homepage, which means higher bounce rates, message mismatch, and no control over the user's journey. Each market and service should land on its own purpose built page with matching copy. These are easy to spin up now, and tighter pages lift conversion rate and the landing page component of Quality Score.
The core "Safety Staffing" campaign runs a healthy $48 CPA but holds just 11% impression share, losing 35% to budget and 54% to rank. There is clear room to grow the terms that already work.
The live campaign has no negative keywords, so spend leaks to the wrong searches. This is not a one time fix, it needs a regular cadence.
Employment terms (jobs, careers, apply, salary) are pulling in job seekers, not clients hiring staff. Competitor and brand terms (staffmark, s3 security, 360x staffing, total safety) are leaking too. A shared negative list across the safety campaigns fixes it at the source.
Review search terms on a set cadence and add negatives continuously. About $2,057 went to 15 zero conversion keywords in 90 days, and steady pruning keeps that from rebuilding.
Search behavior is shifting. As AI Overviews take more of the results page, impressions on basic search ads are dropping, and the account needs to be positioned for where attention is going.
People phrase queries differently now, more conversational and question led. Broaden the keyword and campaign coverage so MacKnight shows up for those patterns, and so ads are eligible to serve alongside AI Overviews rather than only in the shrinking classic slots.
If impressions on standard search keep sliding, staying visible means being present where the searches are actually happening. Better conversion data (Priority 1) also lets Google confidently place ads into these newer surfaces.
Thursday leads, Monday to Thursday carry the load, 8 to 11am peaks. Overnight 1 to 5am and Fridays are the weak spots.
Mobile drives most conversions at the lowest CPA, desktop is efficient too, tablet spends with zero conversions.
The account has genuine demand and a strong creative base, but it is undermanaged and there is a lot of opportunity here. Fix the conversion tracking first, expand deliberately with localized messaging and landing pages, keep negatives current, and get positioned for how search is actually changing. That is the path from leaking budget to compounding growth.