Trusted Growth Partner For Visa Consultancies
2,929 Schengen Visa Enquiries in 12 Months at £3.72 Each, Built From Zero
How we built the entire acquisition system for a new UK visa consultancy, from landing page to automated follow-up, and delivered nearly 3,000 leads on under £11,000 in ad spend.
A brand-new business with no acquisition system in place.
This was not an optimisation project. There was nothing to optimise. Every layer of the system had to be built and tested from zero.
Service
Schengen visa consultation and document preparation for UK-based applicants. Covering all Schengen zone destinations.
Starting Position
No landing page, no ad account, no CRM, no follow-up process, and no conversion tracking. Zero digital acquisition infrastructure.
Operational Capacity
The founding team had the knowledge and process to handle visa applications. What they lacked was a reliable way to put enquiries in front of them at scale.
The Brief
Build everything needed to take this business from zero enquiries to a stable, scalable flow of Schengen visa consultation requests. On a controlled budget.
Three structural gaps that had to be fixed before any ad spend made sense.
Launching paid traffic without these in place would have meant paying for clicks that had nowhere to go and no system to handle them when they arrived.
No landing page
The business had no web asset designed to convert a visitor into an enquiry. Without this, running paid traffic would mean sending clicks into a dead end. The landing page had to be built before any campaign could launch.
No ad account or history
Starting a Google Ads account from scratch in a competitive vertical means no quality score history, no conversion data for smart bidding to learn from, and no baseline to optimise against. Everything had to be built and tested from zero.
No follow-up system
In visa services, applicants often enquire with multiple providers simultaneously. A slow or missing response means losing the applicant to whoever replies first. Without a CRM and automation layer, even a good campaign would leak the leads it generated.
We treated this as a full-system build, not a campaign launch.
The landing page, the ad campaigns, and the follow-up automation were designed together so that each part supported the others from day one.
Landing page built for how this audience actually behaves
The page was structured around the questions a first-time Schengen applicant actually has: which countries are covered, what documents are needed, how long the process takes, and what the consultancy handles versus what the applicant does themselves.
Schengen applicants range from confident professionals who want to submit a form, to first-time travellers who want to ask on WhatsApp before committing to anything. We built conversion paths for both.
Google Ads campaign built around high-intent city-specific terms
We launched with a single, tightly structured Target CPA campaign focused on the highest-intent Schengen keywords: city-specific terms where the searcher had already decided to travel, knew they needed a visa, and was looking for help. Not researchers. Applicants.
The decision to start with Target CPA rather than Maximise Conversions was deliberate. With no conversion history in the account, we needed a bidding strategy that would respect a cost ceiling while the system accumulated data.
GoHighLevel automation handling every enquiry within two minutes
Every enquiry, whether it came through the form, WhatsApp, or a phone call, entered the same pipeline with a defined status and follow-up sequence. The gap between "I submitted a form" and "someone actually contacted me" was closed to under two minutes.
Follow-up sequencing ran over 48 hours for leads that did not respond. Each message added something useful: a document checklist, or a note on current processing times.
Consultation form
For applicants who had read the page and were ready to provide details. Tracked as a conversion action in Google Ads.
Direct WhatsApp link
For first-time travellers who wanted to ask a quick question before committing. Tracked. Not discarded.
Click-to-call
For applicants who preferred to speak directly. All three paths entered the same GoHighLevel pipeline.
Three things the GoHighLevel system handled automatically.
No manual memory. No leads going cold because someone was busy. Every enquiry processed the same way regardless of how it arrived.
Immediate response under two minutes
Every form submission triggered an instant confirmation with a clear next step: what documents to have ready, what to expect from the consultation, and when someone would be in touch. The response gap where applicants go looking for alternatives was closed.
48-hour follow-up sequence
Leads that did not respond to the first contact received a structured sequence. A WhatsApp message, then an email, then a final check-in. Not aggressive. Each message added something useful rather than just repeating the original prompt.
Full pipeline visibility
The client could see at any point how many enquiries were new, how many were in consultation, how many were waiting for documents, and how many had completed. No guessing. No leads falling through because nobody remembered to follow up.
We ran a phrase match test, then made the conservative call.
Not every test needs to keep running. The decision to consolidate was right for the budget at the time.
Phrase match test campaign
Maximise Conversions bidding · Paused after 49 clicks
- 49 clicks, 13 conversions at £3.47 CPA
- Promising signal, but volume was not there
- Running two campaigns on a modest budget risked splitting learning data
- Paused and budget consolidated into the TCPA campaign
TCPA primary campaign
Target CPA bidding · Ran for 12 months
- City-specific, high-intent Schengen keywords only
- Conservative target CPA set while the account accumulated data
- Allowed to scale once conversion history was established
- Delivered 2,929 enquiries at £3.72 CPA over 12 months
From zero infrastructure to steady lead flow in 12 weeks.
| Week | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Landing page designed, built, and tested. Conversion tracking configured across form, WhatsApp, and call actions. |
| 2 to 3 | GoHighLevel pipeline, automations, and follow-up sequences built and tested before any traffic was sent. |
| 3 | Google Ads account created. TCPA campaign launched with city-specific Schengen keywords. |
| 4 to 6 | Campaign learning phase. Bids adjusted as conversion data accumulated and smart bidding found its footing. |
| 7 to 8 | Phrase match test campaign launched, monitored, and paused after 49 clicks. Budget consolidated into the TCPA campaign. |
| 8 to 12 | Ongoing optimisation. Search term refinement, negative keyword build-out, ad copy testing. |
| 12+ | Campaign running at steady state. Consistent lead flow established and maintained for the full 12-month period. |
12 months. Under £11,000 in total spend. Nearly 3,000 enquiries.
All figures cover the full 12-month period from May 2025 to May 2026. Industry benchmark for Google Ads CPA in UK visa services typically sits between £15 and £40 per form lead.
In their words.
"We had the service but no way to get clients through the door. Within three weeks we had a system running, enquiries coming in daily, and a process to handle every single one. Twelve months later it has not stopped."
Founder, name withheld by request
Two things we would change if we ran this engagement again.
Push harder on conversion tracking granularity from week one
The campaign tracked forms, WhatsApp clicks, and calls as conversion actions, but all three carried equal weight in the bidding algorithm. In reality, a form submission from someone who read the full page and filled in their travel details is a higher-quality signal than a speculative WhatsApp message. Weighting these differently from the start would have given the TCPA algorithm better data to optimise against.
Run the phrase match test for longer before pausing it
Thirteen conversions on 49 clicks at £3.47 CPA was a strong early signal. With a larger budget, running it longer to test whether it could find additional volume at a similar CPA would have been worth doing. The conservative call to consolidate was right for the budget at the time, but with more headroom the additional data would have been valuable.
This was a zero-to-one build.
No existing ads, no landing page, no CRM, no follow-up process. The result came from building every layer of the system together rather than launching ads into an empty pipeline. The Google Ads campaign performed well because it had something to perform into: a landing page built for this specific audience, conversion paths that matched how applicants actually behave, and an automation layer that responded before the applicant moved on to the next provider.
If your intake path has the same gaps, request the free audit.
You answer a short set of questions about your current capture-to-booking path. We return a written report with the clearest leak and one concrete first fix. No sales call until after you have read it.