Google Ads agency in Lyon

The Lyon market sits at an intermediate cost level between Paris and the other regional cities, with wide disparities between sectors. B2B services, recruitment, real estate and the legal professions are highly contested there, while other niches remain affordable. That reality means calibrating the budget from local data rather than from national averages that do not reflect the situation in Lyon.

On the media budget, there is no universal figure, and you should be wary of agencies that quote one without having studied your market. The right threshold depends on three variables: the average cost per click on your target queries, your observed or estimated conversion rate, and the volume of conversions Google's automated bidding strategies need to learn properly. In practice, a Search campaign needs to accumulate several dozen conversions a month for “Maximise conversions” or “Target CPA” bidding to stabilise. Below that, we favour tighter structures and more tightly controlled bids. On fees, we work with a management fee set during the audit, proportionate to the complexity of the account (number of campaigns, markets, languages, Shopping feeds) rather than a blind percentage of the budget. That approach avoids a classic conflict of interest: an agency paid on a percentage has an incentive to make you spend more, not better. Finally, the budget is never fixed: every month, we reallocate euros towards the campaigns, queries and areas that generate the best margin, and we cut whatever does not pay without a second thought.

To give you visibility, the free audit includes a costed estimate: monthly search volumes on your priority queries, the cost-per-click range observed in your area, and the number of conversions expected at different budget levels. You then decide with full knowledge of the facts, with a cautious scenario and an acceleration scenario. And if the analysis shows that Google Ads is not the most profitable lever for your situation, we tell you so plainly, and point you towards the channel that will bring you more.

Lyon is home to many industrial companies, laboratories, software publishers and service firms whose customers are other businesses. For them, a click does not turn into a sale the same day: the decision cycle involves several stakeholders and can last weeks, even months. Measurement and optimisation have to take this into account, or you end up favouring numerous but poorly qualified contacts.

It is the first thing we check during the audit, because a poorly measured account is a poorly managed account. Google's smart bidding optimises for whatever you ask it to measure: if tracking counts conversions twice, or treats a simple button click as a sale, the algorithm will learn to buy low-quality traffic. We set up or audit tracking through Google Tag Manager and GA4, enhanced conversions that securely use hashed first-party data, and the consent mode required for advertisers targeting the European Economic Area. For companies whose sales close offline, by phone or in a meeting, we import conversions from your CRM so that Google optimises towards the prospects who actually sign, not just those who fill in a form. We track calls from ads and from the site, and assign a different value to each type of conversion. This measurement foundation is included in our service: without it, all optimisation is blind.

Finally, we check that the figures in Google Ads, Analytics and your internal tools are consistent, because large gaps often point to a configuration problem. Every month, a reconciliation between the conversions reported by Google and the sales actually recorded ensures that the algorithm is working on reliable data. This rigour is what separates an account that keeps improving from one that looks good in the interface but whose results never show up in your revenue.

On queries such as “estate agency Lyon”, “accountant Lyon 6” or “restaurant Presqu'île”, advertisers are numerous and often well equipped. Large national brands add their own pressure on the market. The difference is rarely made by raw budget; it comes from the relevance of the message, the precision of the targeting and the quality of the experience after the click.

In a competitive market, outbidding is rarely the right answer: it is the fastest way to push up everyone's cost per click, starting with yours. Instead, we work on the levers that lower the real cost at equal quality. The first is Quality Score: highly relevant ads and fast landing pages, consistent with the query, earn a better position for a lower cost per click. The second is targeting precision: excluding informational queries, scheduling ads around your conversion hours, adjusting by device. The third is the message: a distinctive value proposition, concrete proof and complete ad extensions that take up more space on screen. We also use the Auction Insights report to see which competitors you meet, how often and with what outranking rate. Finally, we look for less contested angles: long-tail queries, outlying areas, neglected time slots. That is often where the cheapest conversions are found.

We also monitor your competitors' ads: their messages, offers, extensions and landing pages. This monitoring reveals the arguments they are not using and lets us position your offer where it genuinely stands out, whether on lead times, guarantees, expertise or included services. Finally, we protect your brand queries, often coveted by competitors, with a dedicated low-cost campaign that ensures customers searching for you by name find you first.

Lyon is home to many online retailers and brands selling across France: fine foods, fashion, equipment, cosmetics. For them, Performance Max and Shopping are often the most powerful levers, provided the product feed is clean, margins are known product by product and the campaign is framed by clear guardrails.

Performance Max runs your ads across all of Google's inventory from a single campaign: Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Maps. It relies heavily on automation, which makes it very effective in some cases and risky in others. It excels for e-commerce with a well-structured product feed and enough conversion history, or for local advertisers who want to drive store visits. Launched without audience signals, brand exclusions or reliable tracking, however, it can cannibalise your brand campaigns and claim conversions that would have come anyway. Our method is to frame it: a clear split between brand and non-brand traffic, asset groups by theme, audience signals drawn from your customer data, account-level keyword exclusions and regular analysis of the insights and placement reports. We generally use it alongside a solid Search campaign, which keeps control of strategic queries, rather than in its place. The product feed, finally, is treated as an asset in its own right: good titles, attributes and images often make the difference.

Before launching a Performance Max campaign, we check three prerequisites: reliable, value-based conversion tracking, enough history for the algorithm to have reference points, and quality creative assets, especially images and videos, because a campaign fed with mediocre images will serve mediocre ads on YouTube and Display. When these conditions are not met, we start with standard Search and Shopping, then introduce Performance Max when it has every chance of succeeding.

In a market as competitive as Lyon, the learning phase is decisive: the first weeks reveal the queries, neighbourhoods and hours that actually convert, and weed out those that consume budget without return. B2B companies in Lyon must add the length of their own sales cycle to that timeframe before judging profitability.

There are three horizons to distinguish. The first is immediate: as soon as your ads go live, they appear, and the first calls, forms or sales can arrive the same day. That is the major advantage of SEA over organic search, which takes several months. The second horizon, between two and eight weeks, is optimisation: we analyse the search terms report, eliminate irrelevant queries, identify winning ads and let smart bidding rely on a sufficient volume of conversions. This is generally when the cost per acquisition drops markedly. The third horizon, beyond three months, is scaling up: expanding to new areas and new formats such as YouTube or Demand Gen, in-depth work on landing pages and use of remarketing audiences. The best-performing accounts are those that were given time to go through all three horizons without being cut off at the first sign of volatility. That is why we set staged, quantified objectives from the outset, to steer with clear benchmarks rather than by intuition.

One point to watch: profitability does not depend on campaigns alone. How quickly your teams call a prospect back, how clear your offer is and the quality of your site weigh as much as bidding. That is why our audit also examines the journey after the click, from the form to the first sales conversation. It is not unusual for a simple improvement to that journey, such as a call button visible on mobile or a shorter form, to lower the cost per acquisition faster than any bid setting.