PPC management in San Antonio: how one store got 6.45x back on ad spend by fixing the tracking, not the bidding
A San Antonio store's Google Ads account recorded 6.45 in conversion value per 1 spent, at $4.77 a conversion. The five changes, in order, and two checks.
A San Antonio store’s Google Ads reports showed hundreds of conversions a month while the orders in its shop admin never matched. The bidding was working as designed. The tracking was the problem: add-to-carts, newsletter signups and purchases were all counted as the same conversion, so the automated bidding had been buying the cheapest of them. Once purchases became the only conversion that steered bidding and the budget moved onto buying searches, the account recorded 787.59 conversions at $4.77 each and 24.3K in conversion value. That is 6.45 in conversion value for every 1 spent.
Those are the totals in the account’s own reports, on one account managed here. The record we hold does not state the period they cover, so read them as totals and not as a monthly rate. Conversion value is revenue recorded by the tag. It is not profit. The client’s name and some identifying details are withheld at their request.
The short version
- One San Antonio retail account recorded 787.59 purchases at $4.77 each and 6.45 in conversion value per 1 of spend after its conversion tracking was rebuilt. The period behind those totals is not recorded.
- The cause of the mismatch was a definition: three different actions were all set as primary conversions, and Google Ads bids towards whatever is primary.
- Four of the five changes were tracking and keyword hygiene. The bid strategy changed last, after thirty days of clean value data.
- A 6.45 return is conversion value divided by spend. It says nothing about profit without the account’s margin, which is not published here.
- Two free checks apply to any account: read which conversion actions are primary, and read the search terms report sorted by cost.
Why did the Google Ads conversions never match the orders?
Because the account was counting three different things under one word. Google Ads reports primary conversion actions in the Conversions column and uses them for bidding, while secondary actions are for observation only (Google Ads Help). In this account, add-to-carts, newsletter signups and purchases were all primary.
The client was a small retailer selling a low-ticket food product online with local pickup. Three staff, with the owner running the business and, until then, the ads. The owner’s complaint, roughly: the reports say hundreds of conversions, the orders are visible in the shop, the two have never agreed, and nobody can say why.
A second problem surfaced later. The account ran on broad match and nobody had opened the search terms report in months, so nobody knew which searches were spending the money.
Low order value matters for reading the rest of this. When the average order is modest, wasted clicks hurt faster than they do for a business selling roof replacements.
The five changes, in order
| Order | Change | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conversion actions | Add-to-carts, signups and purchases all primary | Only purchases are primary, the rest secondary |
| 2 | Count setting | Not set by action type | Purchases count every conversion, lead-type actions count one |
| 3 | Conversion value | A flat placeholder on every conversion | The real order total passed in |
| 4 | Keywords | Broad match, search terms unread | Negatives added, budget on phrase and exact buying terms |
| 5 | Bid strategy | Left as it was | Target return on ad spend, after thirty days of clean values |
Rebuilt conversion tracking. Purchases became the only primary conversion action. Add-to-carts and newsletter signups were made secondary, so they still report and no longer steer bidding.
Set the count setting correctly. Google’s guidance is to count every conversion for sales, because every sale adds value, and one conversion per click for leads (Google Ads Help). Purchases were set to every. Lead-type actions were set to one. This alone brought the old conversion number down to something that matched reality.
Passed real order values into the account. Before, every conversion carried the same placeholder value, which told Google that a small jar and a gift box were worth the same.
Cleaned up matching. Ninety days of search terms were read. A negative list was built from the recipe, how-to and do-it-yourself queries that were taking budget, and the money moved onto phrase and exact terms with buying intent. The negative keywords guide shows the method.
Switched bidding last. Only after thirty days of clean value data did the account move to a target return on ad spend. Google says that strategy needs conversion values set, and for Search campaigns at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days (Google Ads Help). Changing the bid strategy before the data is clean teaches it from the wrong numbers.
The first four are housekeeping. The bidding change is the one at the bottom, and it worked because the four above it happened first.
Photo: Kampus Production on Pexels.
Why did fixing the tracking change the result?
Automated bidding optimises towards the conversions it is given. When a newsletter signup and a sale both count, and a signup costs cents while a sale costs dollars, the system buys signups. It was doing what it had been told. Once the definition was fixed, the same system on the same budget started bidding for sales. In our reading of this account, that explains most of the 6.45.
The rest came from the negatives. A store selling a food product attracts a large volume of people looking for recipes. They are not shopping, and every click from them was spend with no chance of an order.
One detail in the figures deserves a note. The .59 in 787.59 is not a typo. Google’s data-driven attribution distributes the credit for a conversion across the ad interactions that led to it (Google Ads Help). So a campaign or a date range can end up holding part of a sale.
What does $4.77 a conversion mean against the average?
Less than it appears to. The WordStream and LocaliQ 2026 search benchmarks put the all-industry average cost per lead at $66.69, the average cost per click at $5.42 and the average conversion rate at 8.18 percent (LocaliQ). Set beside that, $4.77 flatters this account, and the comparison is not a fair one.
| Figure | This account | 2026 all-industry benchmark | Comparable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per conversion | $4.77 | $66.69 | No. One is a small sale, the other is mostly leads |
| What a conversion is | A sale with a low order value | Whatever each advertiser marked as a conversion | No |
| Conversion value per 1 spent | 6.45 | Not published in that benchmark | No benchmark to compare with |
| Period | Not recorded with the figures | Published in 2026 | No |
A $4.77 sale and a $66.69 lead are different units. Where those benchmark figures come from, and why your own account can fairly sit somewhere else, is set out in the 2026 cost per lead benchmarks.
The 6.45 is the more useful number, with its own limit. It is conversion value divided by spend, so it is a revenue ratio. Whether it is a good one depends on the store’s margin and on fees, neither of which is published here.
How do I check my own account?
Two checks, both free, about ten minutes each.
First, read your conversion actions. Open Goals, then Conversions, and look at which actions are marked primary. If anything other than a real sale or a real enquiry is primary, that is what your bidding is buying. Check the count setting too, and make sure lead actions are set to one.
Second, read the search terms report. Sort by cost, highest first, and read the top fifty. The waste is usually easy to recognise, because it is searches you would not pay for on purpose. Add them as negatives. Google leaves out some terms that too few people searched, so the report will not show every search (Google Ads Help).
If both come back clean, the problem is somewhere else, which is useful to know before spending anything on a fix.
Photo: RDNE Stock project on Pexels.
How long does a fix like this take, and what does it cost?
In the accounts we manage, expect about thirty days before the new data means anything and sixty to ninety before a bid strategy has settled. Those are our working ranges, not a Google rule. Budget enough to get roughly thirty to fifty clicks a week on your best terms. Work that out from your own cost per click and not from a figure in a blog post, including this one.
On management fees, ask three things of anyone: what the fee does if you pause spend for a month, who owns the account if you leave, and what the manager is paid for. The paid search engagement here is priced per qualified lead and not as a flat fee or a share of spend.
What this account does not prove
A 6.45 return is not a forecast for another account. This one started from broken tracking, so there was obvious waste to remove. An account that is already tidy has less room to move, and management earns less there.
The before and after are also not measuring the same thing. The old conversion count mixed signups and add-to-carts with sales, so there is no like-for-like earlier figure to compare with, and no percentage improvement is claimed here. It is one account with no control group. It shows what happened after the changes. It cannot prove how much of the result each change caused.
Run the account yourself if you have a few hours a week and like the detail, because you know your customers. Consider hiring out when the account is losing more each month than the fee would cost.
The bottom line
The account did not need a new strategy. It needed someone to open the settings, read what was being counted, fix it, and then wait a month for the data to catch up. Check what the system is being told to buy before changing how it bids.
Questions people ask about this
How do I know if my conversions are set up wrong?
Compare last month’s conversions in Google Ads against last month’s orders or enquiries in your shop admin or inbox. If Google’s number is several times larger, more than one action is counting as a conversion. Then open Goals, then Conversions, and read which actions are primary, as the post describes. Anything that is not a sale or a real enquiry sitting there is steering your bidding.
What is the difference between a primary and a secondary conversion?
Primary actions feed the bidding and appear in the main conversions column. Secondary actions are recorded for reporting but do not influence how Google spends. Make the outcome you would pay for primary, usually a sale or a qualified enquiry. Make everything else secondary: add-to-carts, signups, page views. You lose nothing, because the data still appears in the account. You gain an algorithm that buys the thing you want.
Should I count conversions once or every time?
Once for lead actions, because a person who submits the same form twice is still one lead. Every time for sales, because a repeat customer buying twice is two sales. Getting this wrong in either direction distorts the bidding. Counting leads every time inflates the number with duplicates. Counting sales once hides repeat business, which is often your cheapest revenue.
How do I pass real order values into Google Ads?
Through the conversion tag on the order confirmation page, or through your shop platform’s Google integration if it has one. The tag needs to read the order total dynamically rather than carry a fixed value. Test it by placing a small order yourself and checking the value that appears in the account a day later. If every conversion shows the same value, the tag is still carrying a placeholder.
How long should I wait before switching to target ROAS?
Until the account has clean value data for at least thirty days, as this account did, and enough conversions to learn from. Google asks for at least 15 in the past 30 days on Search campaigns. Switching earlier teaches it from the broken numbers you just fixed. While waiting, run a conversion-maximising strategy or manual bidding. When you do switch, set the target near the ratio the account is already achieving rather than the one you want, then tighten it slowly.
Does this apply to a lead generation business rather than a shop?
Yes, and the plumbing is the same. The primary conversion becomes a qualified enquiry, counted once, and the value can be set to an estimate of what a lead is worth to you. The search terms check is identical. The main difference is volume. Leads arrive more slowly than orders, so learning takes longer and consolidating campaigns matters more. The negative keyword work often pays faster for lead businesses.
How often should I read the search terms report?
Weekly for the first two months after any change, then monthly once the negative list is mature. Sort by cost, read the top of the list and add negatives in themes rather than one query at a time. A recipe query is one negative, but “recipe” as a phrase match negative covers many variants. Google’s report hides some low-volume terms, so a small share of waste stays invisible.
Why does broad match cost so much on a small account?
Because broad match lets Google extend your keyword to searches it judges related, and its judgement is only as good as the conversion data you gave it. On the account in this post, that data was wrong, so broad match spent on recipes. On a small budget every mismatched click is a large share of the day. Phrase and exact match with a strong negative list gives you control back while the data is rebuilt.
Is a return of 6.45 realistic for my business?
The post says no forecast should come from it. The number depends on margin, order value and how broken the account was to begin with. A business with high order values can be very profitable at a lower ratio. A low-margin business needs a higher one just to break even. Work out the ratio at which you make money after product cost and fees. That is your target, not someone else’s case study.
What should I ask a PPC manager about their fee?
The three things in the post: what the fee does if you pause spend, who owns the account if you leave, and what exactly they are paid for. Add one more. Ask what they would change in the first week, and listen for whether they mention conversion settings before bidding. A manager who starts with bids on a broken account is optimising the wrong thing.
Can I fix the tracking myself without an agency?
Yes, if you are comfortable in the Google Ads interface and your shop platform. The two checks in the post are free, and demoting conversion actions to secondary is a single setting each. Passing real order values is the step most owners need help with, because it touches the site code. Do the first two yourself this week, then decide whether the third is worth a developer’s hour or a manager’s fee.
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