Clicks and Clarity with Claire
If you’re spending real money on Google Ads and still asking, “Why isn’t this working?”—this podcast is for you.
I’m Claire Jarrett, Google Ads strategist and founder of Jarrett Digital. Each week, I break down what’s actually going on behind the numbers—so you can stop wasting ad spend, start attracting qualified leads, and scale with confidence.
No fluff. No jargon. Just clear advice, real audits, and proven strategies from accounts managing four to six figures in monthly ad spend.
Whether you're DIY-ing your ads or working with an agency, this is the clarity you've been missing.
Clicks and Clarity with Claire
755 Leads at $7 Each — So Why Was Nobody Booking?
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755 leads at $7 each. Sounds incredible until you realise none of them were converting into bookings.
Claire audits an events venue where maximise conversions was feeding on bad data, broad match keywords were destroying lead quality, and the dashboard numbers were hiding the real problem.
She explains how dynamic ad groups meant for e-commerce were misused for lead generation, why ballroom wedding and ballroom venues near me need completely different ad groups, and how the agency's cheap leads looked great on paper while producing nothing.
If your lead volume looks healthy but your sales team has nothing to work with, this one is for you.
Welcome to Clicks and Clarity with Claire.
755 lead forms at $7 each.
That is what the Google Ads dashboard was showing for an events venue. On paper, it looked phenomenal. Cheap leads. High volume. The numbers were brilliant.
But the business was not getting bookings.
So I went in and had a look.
The first thing I asked was whether those 755 leads were genuine. Because $7 for a lead form submission in the events space is suspiciously cheap.
The campaign was set to maximise conversions. And this is where it gets dangerous.
Maximise conversions tells Google to bring in as many leads as possible. Google does not care whether those leads are good. It cares about volume. So if the conversion tracking is counting the wrong things, or if the leads coming in are low quality, Google just brings in more of the same. It thinks it is doing a good job. The numbers go up. The dashboard looks great. And the problem gets progressively worse over time.
The campaigns were using dynamic ad groups, which is a lazy form of setup for lead generation. Dynamic ad groups are designed for e-commerce, where you have 20,000 products and need Google to auto-generate ads for each one. For a venue that needs qualified enquiries from people ready to book, you want carefully built ad groups with specific ads.
And the keywords were all broad match.
Now, broad match with maximise conversions is a combination that can work when you have excellent conversion tracking and enough genuine conversions for Google to learn from. But when the leads are bad, broad match makes the problem worse and worse. Google goes sideways. It finds cheaper and cheaper clicks. The quality drops further. And the cycle continues.
The keywords were a complete mix. Ballroom wedding and ballroom venues near me were sitting in the same ad group. But someone searching for a ballroom wedding is thinking about it. They are at the information-seeking stage. Someone searching for ballroom venues near me is actively looking for a place to book.
Those are two completely different levels of intent. They need different ad groups, different ads, and ideally different landing pages.
The business owner had also been running their own campaigns separately. Those campaigns had higher costs per lead. But I suspect the leads were better. The ones the owner set up were more expensive because they were more targeted. The agency-built campaigns were cheaper because they were bringing in rubbish.
And that is the trap.
When you compare the two side by side, the agency campaigns look better on every metric. Lower cost per lead. Higher volume. Better click-through rates. The agency can point to the dashboard and say look at these numbers.
But the business is not converting those leads into revenue.
If your lead numbers look too good to be true, they almost certainly are.
The fix is to go back to basics. Segment every keyword type into its own ad group. Reception venues in one group. Wedding venues in another. Corporate event spaces in another. Each with a matching ad that speaks directly to what was searched. Get the ad strength to excellent so you appear in every relevant auction.
And critically, fix the conversion tracking so Google knows what a real lead looks like. Because if you are measuring the wrong thing, maximise conversions will bring you 755 of the wrong thing.
That is it for today.
If your lead volume looks healthy but your sales team has nothing to work with, book a free audit at clairejarrett.com.
So many thanks for listening.
Bye for now.