Wedding venue · Lead generation · Built from zero

540 enquiries at £16.83, from a standing start

A single venue bidding against national wedding directories on £50 a day. Seven months in, the campaign is limited by budget rather than by anything competitive, and the cost per enquiry is still falling.

540Enquiries generatedFrom 6 in the window before
£16.83Cost per enquiry£10.56 on the newest spend
26.8%Absolute top of page rateHighest of any advertiser in the auction

The situation

There was effectively no campaign. The comparable window before this one carried £240 of spend and six conversions, so there is no meaningful before and after to show. This is a build, and it should be read as a trend rather than a comparison.

The competitive problem is the interesting part. A single venue is bidding on generic wedding venue searches against national directories whose entire business is ranking for those terms. They have larger budgets and a page for every venue in the country. Share of voice is not a fight worth picking.

A single venue will never outspend a national directory. What it can do is appear higher when it does appear, and put its money where the demand actually is.

What I did

01

Build on Maximise Conversions from day one

With no conversion history to draw on, the bid strategy was set to find enquiries rather than traffic from the start. The campaign has held a 6.56% conversion rate at a £1.10 average cost per click, which is what allows a £50 a day budget to produce this volume at all.

02

Concentrate spend into the booking season

Wedding enquiries are heavily seasonal, so budget was pushed hardest through peak rather than spread flat across the year. The campaign has run at 85.78% of its daily ceiling, which means it is spending close to the limit during the months that matter.

03

Layer customer lists onto the campaign

Customer data was added as an audience signal so the bidding has something to work with beyond the keyword, which matters on a small budget where every click has to earn its place.

04

Trade share of voice for position

Rather than chase impression share against directories, the campaign competes on rank in the auctions it does enter. It holds a 26.8% absolute top of page rate against directories at 20.5% and 9.5%, on roughly half the impression share of the largest of them.

Share of the auction versus position won, last 30 days

Impression share Absolute top of page rate
0%10% 20%30% This venueDirectory ADirectory B 10.65% 26.80% 21.63% 20.45% <10% 9.52%
Auction insights, 23 August to 21 September 2026. Competitor names withheld. Directory B’s impression share is reported by Google only as under 10%, so it is drawn at that ceiling.

Worth being upfront about

Four things. There is no real comparison period, so nothing here is framed as an improvement on a previous agency or setup. Conversion value tracking is effectively absent on this account, only £12.50 recorded across the whole period, so no return on ad spend figure is quoted and none should be until enquiry values are attached. Impression share sits under 10% and the campaign is flagged as limited by budget, so this is nowhere near a maxed out account. And the £16.83 is generic search only: the account as a whole shows a lower cost per conversion because brand search is far cheaper, and blending the two would flatter this number considerably.

1 Feb to 31 Aug 2026

Enquiries540
Cost£9,092.45
Cost per enquiry£16.83
Clicks8,234
Conversion rate6.56%
Click through rate6.97%
Average cost per click£1.10
Daily budget used85.78% of £50

Trend to 22 Sept

Enquiries644
Cost per enquiry£15.82
On the newest spend£10.56

What made the difference

The ceiling here is budget, not competitiveness. At 26.8% absolute top of page against directories at 20.5% and 9.5%, position is not the constraint. There is real headroom the moment the venue wants to spend into it.

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