PPC built for JOBURG auctions

Johannesburg is South Africa's most competitive paid-search market. Finance, property, legal and B2B keywords tied to Sandton and the CBD attract heavy bidding, so cost per click runs higher than in Cape Town or Bloemfontein. That makes disciplined management matter more, not less. In an expensive auction, tight targeting, strong negative keywords and accurate conversion tracking are what keep cost per lead sane. We manage Johannesburg accounts to protect budget from auction pressure rather than simply spending into it.

It depends on how your buyers decide. High-intent service and B2B searches from Sandton corporates favour Google Search; retailers and Fourways lifestyle brands often do well on Google Shopping and Meta; logistics and mining suppliers around Midrand frequently lean on Search plus LinkedIn for procurement-led buyers. Many Johannesburg businesses put everything on one platform out of habit. We assess your customers and recommend the mix that returns most across Gauteng, then manage budget between the channels.

Our management starts from R6,000 per month, separate from ad spend, which is paid straight to Google and Meta and never marked up by us. Ad budgets in Johannesburg tend to run higher than smaller centres because the auctions cost more; many Gauteng businesses spend R8,000 to R25,000 a month across platforms, and more in finance, property and legal. Our fee covers strategy, build, optimisation and reporting. A useful guide is that monthly spend should roughly equal the value of one to three new customers.

Yes, those are core Johannesburg categories. Finance, insurance, property and professional-services auctions in Sandton and Rosebank are among the most expensive in the country, and Google's automation will happily spend into them if left unchecked. We structure tightly, exclude the wrong intent, and optimise to booked leads and qualified enquiries rather than raw clicks, so a high-CPC category still returns. For longer B2B cycles we track down-funnel actions, not just form fills.

In Johannesburg's expensive auctions a handful of broad keywords can burn a month's budget in days. We are ruthless with negative keywords, audience exclusions and match-type control, and we set conversion tracking so every rand is judged on cost per lead by channel, not impressions. We also watch competitor and brand-term bidding, which is aggressive in Gauteng. Cutting waste is usually the fastest way to lift a Johannesburg account's return before adding any new spend.

Often, yes. We start by auditing the existing account to find where budget leaks: broad match with no negatives, tracking that counts the wrong action, or campaigns competing against each other. Many Gauteng accounts turn profitable simply by fixing structure and measurement before any new spend. We will tell you honestly what is worth keeping and what is better rebuilt, then run it transparently with spend billed directly by the platform.