Paid search and paid social campaigns, run as one part of your wider marketing function. Your fractional CMO sets the plan and the team ships the work, and every pound is reported against meetings booked and pipeline you can see.
Search advertising
Paid social campaigns
Landing pages that convert
Conversion tracking
Pipeline reporting
Recruitment and search only
Every account we run belongs to a firm that hires people
Led by a fractional CMO
A marketing director sets the plan, not an account manager
Your accounts stay yours
We work inside your ad accounts, and you keep them either way
Reported against pipeline
Every pound tracked to meetings booked, not clicks bought
The Short Answer
PPC, or pay per click, means buying a place at the top of the results when someone searches. You pay only when they click. For a recruitment firm it is the fastest way to be visible to a company that is looking for an agency today, rather than waiting for search rankings to build.
We run it for the client side of your business: the searches a hiring director makes when they need a firm like yours. That means every campaign is judged on the briefs it brought in, not on traffic.
Sound Familiar
These are the six issues we find in almost every recruitment ad account we audit. If more than two of them describe yours, the budget is not the problem.
Broad keywords bring in students, jobseekers and rival agencies researching you. We rebuild the keyword list around commercial intent and add the negative keywords that stop you paying for the rest.
The commonest problem in recruitment PPC. If the campaign does not separate the two audiences, your client form fills with applications. We split the campaigns and write ads that pre-qualify before the click.
Ad platforms report form fills; your fees live in the CRM. We connect the two so a signed mandate points back to the campaign, the keyword and the ad that started it.
A homepage has to speak to everyone, so it converts nobody. Each campaign gets a page written for that specific search, with one clear action on it.
You will not outspend the job boards or the global firms on the broad terms. You can own the specific ones: your sector, your seniority, your city, the searches they do not bother to target properly.
Costs drift, competitors change their bids and the winning ad goes stale. Accounts need weekly attention. We review search terms, pause what is wasting money and move budget to what is booking meetings.
What We Run
Six campaign types, run together rather than sold separately. Most recruitment firms start with paid search and tracking, then add remarketing once there is enough traffic for it to pay.
The core of most recruitment accounts. Ads against the terms a hiring director types when they have a vacancy and no agency lined up, targeted by sector, seniority and location.
Professional network advertising aimed by job title, company size and industry. Slower to convert than search but it reaches the buyers who are not searching yet, which search alone can never do.
Every campaign gets a page written for that search, with the proof, the sector language and one clear action. Sending paid traffic to a homepage is the single most expensive mistake in recruitment PPC.
You will not win the broad national terms. You can own your city and your specialism, where the competition is thinner, the clicks are cheaper and the enquiries are far better qualified.
Most people who read your service page leave without enquiring. Remarketing puts your firm back in front of them while the vacancy is still open, at a fraction of the cost of the first click.
Call tracking, form tracking and CRM integration, so spend is reported against booked meetings and signed mandates rather than clicks. Set up first, before any budget goes live.
Ad Examples
Each channel does a different job, so we run all three together. Paid search picks up the buyers already looking for a firm like yours. The professional networks get you in front of senior people who are not searching yet, by job title and seniority. Paid social brings back the warm ones who came close and stalled, then we point the whole budget wherever it is booking meetings. One spend, one strategy, owned by the CMO who runs your whole plan.
Channel
Paid search
Senior Executive Hires in 8 Weeks | Your Firm
Boutique search firm placing senior commercial leaders across B2B and tech. Fixed fees, retained mandates only, ten years on the desk.
Captures buyers actively searching for a senior search firm.
Channel
Your firm
11,420 followers · Promoted
The five questions your next Head of Commercial should be answering on the second interview. A short read from our managing partner.
Reaches senior buyers by job title and seniority.
Channel
Paid social
Your firm
Sponsored
Hiring a Head of Commercial in Q1? Our latest market report covers salary bands, hiring timelines, and the signals that separate the finalists from the rest.
Retargets warm prospects across Instagram and Facebook.
Ad Testing
Each campaign launches with five to seven variants, every one written against a clear hypothesis about what your buyer actually responds to. The data then retires the weak ones, and the budget moves behind whatever is booking meetings.
Find Your Next Head of Commercial in 8 Weeks
Retained search for senior commercial leaders. Fixed fees.
Click through
4.8%
Your Firm | Executive Search London
A boutique London search firm placing senior leaders.
Click through
1.4%
Hire Senior Leaders Without the Six Month Search
Researched shortlists in four weeks, not six months.
Click through
3.2%
The Search Firm Founders Actually Recommend
Eleven of our last twelve mandates came through referrals.
Click through
2.9%
Stop Paying Retainers for Recycled Shortlists
We map the whole market, then shortlist purely on fit.
Click through
2.1%
London Executive Search Firm | Your Firm
Senior commercial leadership placements. Get in touch.
Click through
0.9%
The Economics
An illustrative campaign, built the way we run client paid media. £4,200 of media spend in the month, 240,000 impressions, 28 meetings booked. Every conversion rate is measured and defended in front of you, the same way the rest of your marketing function is reported.
Impressions
0
Clicks
0
Landing visits
0
Form fills
0
Meetings booked
0
Media spend, monthly
£4,200
Client media spend, separate from your Limivex fee
Cost per meeting
£150
Pipeline value generated
£384k
Return on ad spend
91.4x
Tracking and Reporting
Most agencies hand you click reports. You get a closed loop, where every pound is traced from impression to meeting and each meeting points back to the campaign that earned it. What we learn feeds next month’s spend, so it sharpens as it runs. This is the same evidence-led reporting your fractional CMO holds across the whole function.
Step 01
Ad Spend
Budget allocated across paid search and paid social against the campaign hypothesis.
Step 02
Click
Buyer clicks an ad, tagged with the source campaign, keyword and creative variant.
Step 03
Enquiry
Form fill captures every tag and writes it straight into the CRM record.
Step 04
CRM
Lead routed to the right sales owner with the full source trail attached.
Step 05
Meeting
Discovery call booked, outcome logged, value flowed back against the source campaign.
Step 06
Insight
Monthly read out scores creatives, keywords and channels on cost per meeting.
How We Work
We go through your existing account: where the money went, which search terms triggered your ads, what was tracked and what was not. You get the findings whether or not you go ahead with us.
Before any budget goes live we connect form submissions, phone calls and your CRM, so a booked meeting can be traced back to the campaign that produced it. Without this step the rest is guesswork.
We work out which terms your buyers actually use, what each click costs and which ones you can realistically win. Terms that will not pay back against a placement fee get left out.
Campaign structure, ad copy in several variants, negative keyword lists, and a landing page written for each campaign. Nothing points at your homepage.
Weekly review of search terms, bids and budgets: pause what is wasting money, add negatives, move spend behind the ads booking meetings, and test a new variant against the current winner.
A monthly report showing spend, enquiries, booked meetings and the mandates they turned into, with what we are changing next month and why. Presented, not just emailed.
Where It Fits
Most recruitment firms run several of these at once, and they do different jobs. We run the client side: paid search, paid social and the search rankings behind them. Job boards and candidate advertising stay with you, and we will tell you when your money is better spent there.
Client side, what we run
Candidate side, not us
Client side, paid
Client side, organic
Beyond Recruitment
Recruitment is one of the most expensive, most contested places to buy clicks, which makes it a hard school. The discipline it forces, tight match types, offer-led landing pages and attribution that follows a click all the way to a signed brief, is what a B2B PPC agency should bring to any long-cycle sale.
So while recruitment and search firms are our home ground, we run the same paid programme for B2B companies in other hard niches, planned alongside B2B SEO so paid and organic learn from each other rather than compete for budget.
What You Get
One monthly fee covering the whole account. Your ad spend is separate and paid directly by you to the platforms, so you always see exactly what went on media and what went on management.
Book a discovery callWho We Build It For
A temp desk and a retained search practice are buying completely different searches at completely different prices. The campaign structure changes, and so does the point at which paid stops paying back.
Specialist desks competing for the same briefs. Paid search puts your firm in front of a hiring manager at the moment they decide to use an agency, on the sector and city terms the national players do not target properly.
PPC for recruitment agencies
Board level searches are rare and expensive, so broad campaigns waste money fast. We buy the narrow, high-intent terms and defend your firm name, then judge the spend on mandates rather than enquiries.
PPC for executive search firms
Long cycles and buying committees mean paid rarely closes on its own. It earns its place by getting you onto the shortlist early and staying visible to every stakeholder while the tender is written.
PPC for RPO providers
Volume desks need employers on the phone this week. Local campaigns aimed at companies that need people on site quickly, with tracking on the calls as well as the forms.
PPC for staffing agencies
You cannot advertise for discreet mandates, but you can appear when a company searches for a firm like yours, and you can stop a competitor buying your name. That is where paid earns its keep.
PPC for headhuntersOur Clients
We hold the ad accounts, the landing pages and the conversion tracking for specialist recruiters, executive search firms and staffing businesses across the UK, the US and the Middle East. In most cases paid search started as one channel and grew into the whole marketing function.
Clear Recruitment, Meyrick Consulting, Adastrum Consulting, Quay Group, SmartChoice International, Nicholas Alexander.
Our Work
Where paid sits inside a wider marketing function we hold, rather than running on its own. The case study sets out the brief, what we built and what it returned.
IT and Workspace Solutions
We stepped in as QICO's fractional CMO and the team behind it: a 50-page strategy, a new brand, a website built to convert, and the demand programme to run it. Organic traffic rose by 2,600% in the first three months, and lead conversions by 40%.
Why Firms Choose Us
We know what a placement is worth, how long a mandate takes to sign and which searches bring in students rather than buyers. That is the difference between a campaign that pays back and one that quietly burns a retainer.
Every account is built under your business and your billing. You keep every campaign, every conversion record and every learning, even if you leave. No agency-owned account holding your history hostage.
If your website will not convert the traffic, or a placement is not worth what the clicks cost, paid will not work and we say so before you commit. Fixing the page first is often the cheaper answer.
Your fractional CMO decides where paid belongs against search, content and outreach, so campaigns fill the gaps the other channels cannot rather than duplicating them.
What Clients Say
2,600%
Organic traffic growth for QICO
26+
Finalised Projects
98%
Client satisfaction rate
01 / 04
“Limivex now controls our entire sales and marketing activity across Europe and the US, and I'm having calls every week with my ideal clients.”
“Daniel transformed my social media presence and messaging in a short space of time. I only wish I'd met him 10 years ago.”
“Limivex was instrumental in the successful launch of 83DATA. Their creative design capabilities are beyond anything we've used before.”
“Limivex supported us with branding, web design, even a radio ad. Their knowledge of sales and marketing is second to none.”
PPC Advertising FAQ
Or, email us at Email us
A PPC agency plans, builds and manages your paid search and paid social campaigns: keyword and audience research, ad copy, landing pages, bidding and budget management, and reporting against leads and revenue. Limivex runs PPC as part of a wider marketing function, so paid traffic lands on pages built to convert rather than burning budget on clicks that never become enquiries.
PPC has two costs: the ad spend you pay the platform, and the management fee to run it. For recruitment and B2B firms, meaningful campaigns usually start from around £1,000 to £2,000 a month in media plus management, though it depends on your market and competition. We only recommend it when the maths works against the value of a placement or mandate.
Google Ads runs on an auction, so there is no fixed price, but UK B2B clicks commonly cost anywhere from £1 to £15 or more depending on how competitive the keyword is. What matters is not cost per click but cost per booked meeting, which is why we build tightly targeted campaigns and measure spend against pipeline, not traffic.
They do different jobs. PPC buys visibility immediately and is ideal for testing demand or filling a short-term gap, while SEO compounds into durable, lower-cost traffic over months. For most recruitment firms the answer is both: PPC for speed, SEO for the long game, planned together so they reinforce rather than duplicate each other.
PPC is worth it when a single client or placement is worth far more than the cost of acquiring it, which is usually the case in recruitment. It is not worth it as a standalone tactic pointed at a weak website. We assess whether paid will pay back before recommending it, and if it will not, we say so.
Look for an agency that reports on leads and revenue rather than clicks and impressions, gives you full ownership of the ad accounts and data, and understands your market. Avoid anyone locking you into their accounts or hiding the spend split. We run campaigns in accounts you own, with transparent reporting you keep if we ever part ways.
Ads can be live within a week or two of the tracking being set up, and the first enquiries usually arrive in the first month. Expect the first six to eight weeks to be a learning period while we cut the search terms that waste money. Paid is the fastest channel to start, which is exactly why it suits firms that need enquiries now rather than in six months.
Because the campaign is not separating the two audiences. Terms that look commercial to a machine, such as a sector and a city, are searched by jobseekers as well as employers. The fix is splitting client and candidate campaigns, writing ads that pre-qualify before the click, and building negative keyword lists that stop your client ads showing on job searches.
No. We run the client side: the searches a company makes when it needs a recruitment agency. Candidate attraction usually belongs with your job boards and your own careers pages, which are built for it and cost less per application. If your budget is better spent there, we will tell you rather than take it.
Improve the website first, in most cases. Paid traffic magnifies whatever your pages already do, so sending it to a site that does not convert simply loses money faster. If your service pages are weak we would rather fix those, then turn paid on against pages that earn their clicks.
Yes, and it is how most engagements start. We audit what is there, keep the campaigns and history that are working, and rebuild the rest. Because the account stays under your ownership there is no migration to negotiate and no gap in delivery while we take it on.
Yes. Every account is built under your business and your billing, and you keep full ownership of every campaign and piece of data, always. We manage it as a delegated user, your team has full read access throughout, and on day one of an exit we hand over the keys clean. No locking you into an agency owned account.
From The Journal
What a fractional CMO costs in the UK: day rates of £700 to £1,500, monthly fees of £3,000 to £12,000, what moves the price, and our own published ladder.
A practical guide to building a recruitment website in the UK: what to budget, what to build, why AI generated sites all look the same, and what a marketing agency adds that a template cannot.
How to win recruitment clients in a shrinking market: building a target list, what to say when you reach a hiring manager, the UK outreach rules nobody mentions, and how to turn a first vacancy into a lasting relationship.
AI tools now answer the question your clients used to type into a search box. Here is how generative engine optimisation works, what the research says moves the needle, and what recruitment firms should do about it.
A practical comparison of outsourced marketing and an in-house marketing team, covering the real cost of each, the skills you get, the risks nobody mentions, and how to work out which one your firm actually needs.
LinkedIn impressions are the most watched and least understood number on the platform. Here is what an impression actually counts, why yours have probably fallen, and what to do about it.
Attracting candidates as an agency is not the same as an employer doing it. Here is what actually works: your niche reputation, your consultants' profiles, job adverts worth answering, a real candidate experience and a talent pool you keep warm.
Email is the least glamorous channel a recruitment agency has, and one of the most profitable. Here is how to make it win briefs and keep candidates warm.
Get in Touch
Tell us where you are, where you'd like to be, and what's stood in the way. We'll come back within a working day with thinking you can use, whether we end up working together or not.
Keep Exploring
