The Gentle Mind

Paying for Results That Never Came

When James Thomas, founder of The Gentle Mind, first approached CreateTheWeb, he was frustrated.

He had already invested in PPC advertising through another agency, and the experience had left him sceptical about whether Google Ads could work for his business at all.

The previous agency had charged a significant monthly fee, sent him regular reports full of vanity metrics, yet delivered very little in return.

Clicks were coming in. Enquiries were not.

Month after month, the budget saw little return, and James had no answers.

It is a story we hear more often than we should at CreateTheWeb.

Sadly, some agencies treat PPC as a “passive income stream” - no care in the world about real results.

What James needed was an agency willing to take ownership of the results.

And that meant starting fresh: honest about what was and was not working, and committed to building something that would return.

Building a Campaign That Was Designed to Convert

The first thing we told James was that sending paid traffic to a general website is rarely the right approach.

When someone clicks a Google Ad, they have a specific intent.

The page they land on needs to meet that intent immediately without distractions or guesswork about the next step.

The Free Landing Page

Before we launched a single campaign, we built a free dedicated landing page for The Gentle Mind, focused on getting visitors to enquire. 

Every element of that page was designed with conversion in mind.

Alongside that, we put careful thought into location-based targeting. Advertising to the wrong location is one of the fastest ways to burn through a budget.

We worked with James to define exactly where his ideal clients were based, and focused the spend accordingly.

The campaign structure itself was built to give us clear data from the start, set up to make ongoing refinements straightforward.

Monthly Refinement

Getting a PPC campaign live is only the beginning. The real work happens in the weeks and months that follow, as data comes in and the picture becomes clearer.

Each month, we review the performance of The Gentle Mind's account in detail.

We look at which keywords are driving enquiries and which are eating budget without contributing.

We then test and refine ad copy, adjusting messaging to improve click-through rates to attract the ideal customers.

Next, we tighten targeting where the data tells us to, and we make decisions based on what is actually happening rather than assumptions.

But the real hard work happens in our monthly meetings with James, where we walk through performance, share what we are seeing, and explain what we are planning to do next.

He knows exactly where his money is going and why.

And this approach is what separates a PPC campaign that delivers from a mediocre one.

Numbers That Speak for Themselves

The cost per lead now stands at £18. This means that James is paying only £18 per high-intent enquiry.

That is a figure that makes commercial sense: a clear, trackable cost for every genuine enquiry the campaign generates.

The landing page converts at 7.42%. To put that in context: the industry average for landing pages is between 2% and 3%.

A well-optimised page performing at 5% would be considered a strong result.

At 7.8%, The Gentle Mind's landing page is operating at more than double the typical benchmark — a direct result of conversion rate optimisation.

Most significantly, 80% of The Gentle Mind's current business now comes through these campaigns.

For James, Google Ads has gone from a frustrating expense to the primary driver of new client enquiries.

From a campaign that delivered nothing to one that now accounts for 75% of all new business — the difference was doing PPC properly.

Not Getting Value from Your Current PPC Agency?

Does any part of James' original situation feel like de ja vu? We would be glad to have a conversation.

We always aim for results and returns - that’s the CreateTheWeb difference.