Loft Life already has the ingredients most businesses are still trying to build: more than 25 years in the trade, an in-house team, strong local relevance and projects worth tens of thousands of pounds. So I did not look at this as a case for simply “doing Google Ads”. I looked at whether the paid activity can be made more commercially selective around the projects you actually want to win.
Loft Life publishes project pricing from roughly £35,000 to £90,000. That changes the marketing question. You do not need a flood of leads; you need enough of the right local searches turning into surveys and signed projects at an acquisition cost the job can support.
That history, combined with Dave's direct involvement in surveys, quotes and projects, is a trust signal paid media should amplify rather than replace.
At this value, the economics can work without chasing huge lead volumes. A small number of incremental wins can materially change the return.
The research found Loft Life already advertising. The opportunity is therefore not “get onto Google”, but to understand what is being bought, what becomes real work and what deserves more budget.
Paid positions vary by auction, device, location and time. I have deliberately not treated a single search result as proof that the current account is good or bad.
I am not assuming the existing activity is poor. Without seeing the account, that would be guesswork. The difference is the framework I would use to decide what is worth changing.
Work backwards from what a completed loft contributes, then set the acquisition cost the business can sensibly tolerate.
An in-house team has finite capacity. Fifty weak enquiries are not automatically better than a handful of projects that fit the work you want more of.
The useful question is not only which keywords generate forms, but which searches become surveys, quotes and signed contracts.
I personally handle the marketing science, strategy and account, so the commercial thinking is not separated from the person making the optimisation decisions.
The first phase should stay deliberately local and high-intent. Broad reach is only useful after we know the account is converting the right kind of demand.
Bromley, Sidcup, Bexley, Chislehurst, Orpington and Beckenham. These searches make location and service intent explicit, which makes them the cleanest place to measure demand quality.
Start narrowMore specific searches can tell us what somebody is actually planning. That makes ad copy, landing-page relevance and qualification easier to control.
Higher intentPeople researching cost are not always ready to sign, but they are often much closer to a project than generic inspiration traffic. The job is to separate serious planners from low-value research.
Qualify carefully“The goal is not to make the lead count go up. It is to make the economics of the next signed loft project easier to see and easier to improve.”
Search terms, impression share, lost impression share, budget limits, actual conversion actions and which enquiries became surveys or signed work. That tells us whether the opportunity is more demand, better targeting, better qualification, or simply better measurement.
If the account is already doing these things well, the numbers should show it. If it is not, we know exactly where to look next.
The model below is intentionally simple. The CPC and click-to-enquiry assumptions sit inside the cautious and realistic scenarios because those are marketing inputs I would validate from the live account. The fields left open are the ones Loft Life is much more likely to know.
Working paid-media assumptions: £10 CPC, 8% click → enquiry, 12% enquiry → signed project.
How it works: media spend ÷ CPC estimates clicks; clicks × enquiry rate estimates enquiries; enquiries × close rate estimates signed projects. Contribution uses project value × gross margin. Net contribution then subtracts media spend, the ThinkingMan base fee and the per-project success fee. Signed-project outputs are rounded down to whole jobs. Year 1 then counts nine months of the run-rate to allow for the assumed sales lag.
| Scenario | CPC | Click → enquiry | Enquiry → signed | Enquiries / yr | Projects / yr | Year 1 net |
|---|
This is an adjustable commercial model, not a forecast. Signed loft projects arrive as whole jobs and can move between months. If one conservative-case project slips into the following year, Year 1 can move materially below breakeven. That is why the account should be assessed over a meaningful sales window rather than one or two quiet months.
At a lower contribution per project, the allowable acquisition cost tightens. We would protect efficiency before trying to scale.
Then volume is the wrong objective. Paid media should support the job types, locations or seasons where extra demand is actually useful.
Good. Then the first job is not a rebuild. It is to identify what is already working, preserve it and only change what the commercial evidence justifies.
I would start by understanding the existing paid-search account rather than assuming it needs replacing. From there, the work is to connect search intent, lead quality and signed projects so budget decisions are made against commercial value.
plus £300 per signed project attributed to paid media.
The model above uses £800/month in media as the starting case. Media spend is paid directly to the advertising platform.
We work backwards from profit rather than clicks.
What is a signed project worth? What can it afford to cost to acquire? Which searches deserve the budget?
If the economics look worth exploring, I would first compare the working assumptions here with the existing account: actual CPCs, search terms, enquiry volume, survey rate and any signed-project data available. That tells us whether there is genuinely something to improve before either of us makes a bigger commitment.
