Arts and culture
What does a paid search account add to a Google Ad Grant?
Conversions the grant cannot chase. Between January and June 2025 a small paid Google account ran alongside Dance City's Ad Grant and returned more than 24 times its spend, against a target of 10.
The brief
Dance City's mission is to make dance accessible to everyone in the North East, whatever their age, background or circumstances, through classes, performances, events and community programmes. Its Centre for Advanced Training (CAT) gives talented young people the chance to train in dance at a high level alongside their school studies. Its Google Ad Grant builds awareness efficiently, but a grant account is built for informational searches and cannot chase bookings. The brief was to keep the grant doing the job it does well while a small paid account handled the transactional searches the grant was never built for. By working alongside it rather than replacing it, every part of the marketing budget did what it was best suited to do.
What we planned
We planned a paid Google Search and Performance Max account for local searches from people ready to book, within 20 miles of Newcastle. Rather than one broad account, separate campaigns were built for classes and workshops, for events and performances, and for the CAT programme, each with its own copy and its own landing page, so that a search for a children's class led straight to a children's class page, not a generic homepage.
How it ran
Keywords were grouped into tightly themed ad groups, each carrying tailored ads and a matched landing page. Duplicates and irrelevant terms were removed so that smart bidding could work efficiently rather than spread across mismatched searches. Google Analytics was configured to track events, transactions and revenue for the first time, giving Dance City an ongoing, campaign-level view of what was converting.
What the reporting showed
Between January and June 2025 the paid account returned more than 24 times its spend, against a target of 10x, and 21% of sales came from newly created accounts, ahead of a 20% target, evidence that the campaigns were bringing Dance City new customers. The work was named Best Low Budget Campaign at the Northern Digital Awards 2026.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Return on ad spend | More than 24x, against a target of 10x |
| Conversions | More than 7,000 |
| Sales from new account creations | 21%, against a 20% target |
| Recognition | Winner, Best Low Budget Campaign, Northern Digital Awards 2026 |
Source: Google Ads and Google Analytics, January to June 2025, as submitted to the Northern Digital Awards 2026.
We appointed Route because they demonstrated a deep understanding of the intricacies of online marketing. They didn't just throw a generic strategy our way; they took the time to understand our offering, our target audience, and the unique goals we had.
...Not only have we seen more clicks, but more importantly, we saw a significant increase in qualified leads, which has translated directly into more bookings.
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