Industry: Online Education - B2B Professional Upskilling Services Delivered: Google Ads Management · Search Campaign Restructure · Landing Page Audit · Conversion Tracking Setup Engagement Duration: 4 Months
The Client
The client is a B2B online education platform offering professional certification programs in data analytics, project management, and digital marketing. The platform sells directly to working professionals and to HR teams at mid-size companies looking to upskill employees. Founded in 2019, the company had grown primarily through referrals and organic search in its first two years, before beginning to invest seriously in paid acquisition.
By the time the engagement with Arihant Global began, the platform was spending approximately ₹3.8 lakh per month on Google Ads services with a dedicated internal marketing manager overseeing the account. The campaigns were generating leads but the cost per lead had climbed steadily over eight months, the sales team was flagging that lead quality had declined, and the CPL of ₹1,840 made the unit economics of paid acquisition marginal at best.
The Challenge
Rising CPL with No Clear Cause
The internal team had made multiple attempts to reduce cost per lead pausing underperforming ad groups, adjusting bids, switching from manual CPC to Target CPA. None of it made a sustained difference. What was missing was a structural diagnosis. The problem was not the bidding strategy; it was the account architecture beneath it.
Broad Match Spend Without Negative Keyword Control
A full search term report audit covering the previous 90 days revealed that approximately 31% of total ad spend over that period had matched against queries with no commercial intent. A professional certification platform was paying for clicks on queries like ‘free data analytics tutorial YouTube’, ‘what is project management Wikipedia‘, and ‘digital marketing salary freshers’. Broad match keywords with no negative keyword infrastructure had been accumulating this spend for months with nobody reviewing the search term reports at sufficient frequency.
Landing Pages That Did Not Match Ad Intent
Three separate ad groups were driving traffic to the platform’s homepage rather than to course-specific or program-specific landing pages. A user clicking an ad for ‘PMP certification course online India’ was landing on a general homepage and being asked to navigate from there to the relevant program. The message match gap was significant, and the conversion rate data confirmed it. homepage-destination campaigns were converting at 0.9%, while the one ad group already pointing to a dedicated program page was converting at 3.1%.
Conversion Tracking Gaps
The account was tracking a single conversion event a contact form submission. Phone call conversions, demo booking completions, and WhatsApp enquiry button clicks were not tracked. This meant the bidding algorithm was optimizing toward one conversion type while the sales team received leads from three other sources that were invisible to the campaign’s performance data.
The Approach
Phase 1 Month 1 — Audit and Structural Rebuild
The first month was spent entirely on diagnosis and restructuring before touching budgets or bids. Search term reports from 90 days were reviewed line by line. A negative keyword list of 340 terms was built and applied across all campaigns immediately. this alone reduced irrelevant click spend by 38% within the first 30 days. Campaigns were restructured into tighter, intent-specific groups: brand terms, competitor terms, specific certification program terms, and generic professional development terms each ran as separate campaigns with their own budgets and bid strategies.
Phase 2 Months 2–3 — Landing Pages and Conversion Architecture
Dedicated landing pages were briefed and built for the three highest-spend program categories. Each page led with program-specific benefits, included a visible fee and duration breakdown that the homepage lacked, and had a single above-the-fold CTA (a free demo class booking form). Conversion tracking was expanded to cover four events form submissions, demo bookings, phone call clicks, and WhatsApp button clicks. With the full conversion picture now visible, Smart Bidding was reintroduced on the two campaigns with sufficient volume this time with real data to work from.
Phase 3 Month 4 — Bid Strategy Refinement and Scaling
With CPL now tracking at ₹1,180 by week 10 and conversion rate improved to 4.8% across search campaigns, budget was incrementally increased on the two highest-performing program campaigns. Ad copy was A/B tested on the certification and analytics campaigns with a focus on outcome-specific messaging ads emphasizing salary growth and employer recognition outperformed feature-led copy (which had been the default) by 31% on CTR. A monthly search term review cadence was formalized as a non-negotiable recurring task.
The Results
BEFORE COST PER LEAD AFTER COST PER LEAD
WE INCREASED Monthly Lead Volume BY +67%
3.1X CONVERSION RATE INCRESED THROUGH GOOGLE ADS
“The leads coming in after the restructure were different. Sales was spending less time disqualifying and more time closing. The CPL number tells one part of the story. the quality improvement tells the rest.” Founder, B2B Online Education Platform
Key Takeaways
- Negative keyword architecture: Eliminating irrelevant search term spend is the fastest CPL reduction lever in most mismanaged accounts no creative, no landing page, no bidding change is as immediate.
- Message match matters more than budget: Three ad groups were losing money daily due to homepage destination. A dedicated landing page for each program category was the single highest-leverage change.
- Conversion tracking completeness: An account optimizing on one of four actual conversion types is running on partial information. Smart Bidding with incomplete tracking is worse than manual CPC. it optimizes toward the wrong signal.
Conclusion
Reducing cost per lead wasn’t about cutting the budget. it was about making every click more relevant. By rebuilding campaign structure, improving landing pages, and tracking the right conversions, Arihant Global helped this B2B education platform generate better-quality leads while maintaining the same ad spend. Looking to improve your Google Ads performance? Partner with Arihant Global for data-driven campaigns that deliver measurable business growth.
Disclaimer
This case study represents results achieved for one client under specific business conditions. Performance depends on budget, competition, industry, audience behaviour, and implementation. Individual outcomes may vary.
