Campaigns live: Auckland · Waikato · Bay of Plenty · Wellington · Christchurch
Week one was a deliberate calibration phase. We launched all five regional campaigns with conservative opening bids so we could map the market cheaply — who else is bidding, and what the top of Google's first page actually costs for every one of your keywords, region by region.
It worked: for under $20 of spend we now know your true first-page prices and have confirmed the campaigns are matching the right searches. Today we raised your bids to those researched levels and blocked the wasteful searches — so from here your ads start competing on page one for real commercial-cleaning demand.
A brand-new Google Ads account starts as a blank slate — Google doesn't yet know who you are or which searches you should win. Rather than guess a bid and risk overspending, we opened with a low, conservative bid and let the account gather real auction data. Think of it as taking the market's temperature before turning up the heat.
The low opening bid did exactly what a calibration bid is meant to do — it kept spend tiny while the data came in. It also told us, in plain numbers, that at that starting price we were only appearing for about one in ten relevant searches, and only reaching the top of the page on searches for your own brand name (which almost nobody else bids on). To win the competitive money-terms — commercial cleaning, office cleaning, medical cleaning — we needed to bid higher. Now we know exactly how much higher.
Three things came out of the data, and all three are valuable:
Your ads matched the right searches from day one — people looking for commercial cleaningoffice cleaningcommercial cleaning serviceshospital cleanersmedical cleaning and more. That confirms the targeting and keyword structure are sound before we've spent real money on them.
This is the payoff of starting low. With live auction data in hand, here's what Google says it costs to reach the first page for your core searches:
| Search term | Est. first-page bid | Est. top-of-page bid |
|---|---|---|
| commercial cleaning (your biggest term) | $4.81 | $5.76 |
| office cleaning services | $7.76 | — |
| office cleaning company | $4.60 | — |
| small office cleaning | $4.72 | — |
| clinic / medical cleaning | $3.00–3.26 | — |
| office cleaning | $3.08 | — |
Our previous bid was a flat $2.50 — below the first-page price on almost every term above. That single fact explains why we weren't showing on page one for the searches that matter.
Week one also surfaced the searches we don't want to pay for: other cleaning companies' brand names, searches from regions you don't service (for example a Whangārei search landing in the Wellington campaign), and off-topic queries. While bids were low these cost almost nothing — but they would start costing the moment we raise bids. So we've excluded them now, ahead of time.
Two changes went live today, in that order — block the waste first, then turn up the bids.
| Keyword group | Regions | Was | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office & commercial cleaning | All 5 | $2.50 | $6.00 |
| Medical & clinic cleaning | All 5 | $2.50 | $5.00 |
These levels clear the first page on every core term and reach the top of the page on your primary search, commercial cleaning. We deliberately did not chase two outlier searches that cost $26–$68 per click — at those prices they'd drain the budget for very little return. Disciplined, not greedy.
We blocked competitor brand names, out-of-area searches, and off-topic queries (for example commercial laundry and overseas searches) across all five regions. Every dollar of the higher bid now goes toward the right clicks.
Most accounts launch by guessing a high bid and hoping. That burns budget on unqualified clicks before you know what works. We do the opposite — and here's what that discipline buys you: