The performance marketing playbook we've settled on for Indian service businesses

We have run paid campaigns for something like sixty Indian service businesses over the past four years. Education, coaching, legal, real estate, healthcare, professional services of various kinds. The industry specifics matter. But across all of them, we have noticed that the accounts performing best share a structure. The ones performing worst are missing one or two specific pieces of that structure.

This is our current playbook. Not the only way to do it. Not perfect. Just what we have found to work more often than not.

The campaign structure we use

For most service businesses with a budget between 30,000 and 2 lakh per month, we run three campaign types simultaneously.

Google Search captures demand that already exists. People searching for "best CA firm in Jaipur" or "immigration lawyer Hyderabad" are expressing a need. These campaigns need tight keyword match types and aggressive negative keyword management. Broad match in India, with our kind of clients and our kind of budget, almost always wastes money fast.

Meta Ads for remarketing and lookalike targeting. We do not use Meta for pure cold lead generation at the start of an engagement. Too expensive for most service categories. We use it for remarketing to website visitors and for lookalike audiences built from existing client lists. At 30,000 a month we would rather put most of it on Google Search and use a small Meta budget for these warmer audiences.

YouTube for brand presence when the budget allows, typically above 1 lakh per month. Short pre-roll ads with a clear hook in the first five seconds. Not for conversion, for recognition.

The landing page mistake that kills most campaigns

The single most common issue we see in accounts that are not performing is traffic going to the home page or a general services page. A home page is not a landing page. A landing page has one job: convert the specific intent that the ad created.

If someone clicks an ad for "website design Bangalore," they should land on a page about website design services in Bangalore, with a contact form or click-to-call above the fold. Not a home page. This sounds obvious. You would be surprised how many accounts we take over where this is the problem.

The tracking setup that has to come before spend

We will not run paid campaigns without conversion tracking configured correctly. Not because we are being difficult, but because without it we are optimising blind. Google Ads needs to know which clicks led to form submissions or calls. Meta needs its pixel firing on the thank-you page. This setup takes half a day. It is not optional.

The number of 5 lakh accounts we have inherited that had no conversion tracking is alarming. The agency or freelancer before us had been spending money with no feedback loop whatsoever. That money was not wasted because the campaigns were bad. It was wasted because there was no way to know what was bad and what was working.