This is the cold email plan we'd run for a Google Ads agency that serves one industry. Search ads are public. Anyone can search a firm's name and see who is bidding on it and where the firm's own ads send people.
Your market is every firm in your industry that wins clients from people searching on Google. That includes firms already spending on ads and firms whose competitors are.
Two groups matter. Firms already advertising have a budget and a problem you can see. Firms not advertising have competitors taking the searches they should be winning.
Search the firm's own name on Google. A rival's ad sitting above their listing is the most personal signal on this page. People looking for them get offered someone else first.
Google Ads Transparency Center shows the ads a company runs. Click one. A paid visitor landing on a general homepage has to go looking for what the ad promised.
Search their main service and their city. Competitors filling the ads while this firm never appears means those searches go to someone else.
Read their ads in the Transparency Center. Copy that could belong to any firm in the industry is copy nobody has tested in a while.
Semrush shows the estimated cost per click for a search. In industries where a click costs a lot a sloppy account burns real money.
A job post for a digital marketing or paid search role means they know the ads need attention and nobody is on it yet.
Lead with a screenshot of the rival's ad above their name.
Lead with the ad and the page it sent you to.
Lead with the competitors who show up for their main search.
Lead with how many ads they run and one thing you'd change.
Personal injury searches and estate planning searches cost wildly different amounts. Split them so the numbers in the email fit.
Search their company name and screenshot each competitor ad that appears. Add the monthly searches for their brand name from Semrush.
It works because it shows them losing people who were already looking for them. The next step is protecting their name and that is an account you run.
Their top ad and the page it sends people to with the changes worth testing marked on a screenshot.
It works because the problem fits in one image and the fix is your work.
Rebuild one campaign in their account for their most valuable service. New keywords and new ads and a landing page that matches. They keep paying Google for the clicks and pay you nothing for the work.
It works because they see the new numbers in their own account. The rest of the account is the retainer.
Have it live within ten days of getting access.
Hi {{first_name}},
Searched "{{company}}" on Google this morning. {{competitor}} had an ad above your own listing.
People looking for you get offered them first. It's usually a quick fix.
Want the screenshot?
{{sender_first_name}}
Hi {{first_name}},
Clicked {{company}}'s Google ad for "{{keyword}}". It dropped me on the homepage.
We run Google Ads for {{industry}} firms only. I marked up the page with what I'd change first.
Should I send it?
{{sender_first_name}}
Hi {{first_name}},
We run Google Ads for {{industry}} firms and nothing else.
{{proof_line}}
Worth a look at {{company}}'s account?
{{sender_first_name}}
Swap {{proof_line}} for one real result of your own. A cost per lead you brought down or calls you added. If there is no result yet then leave the line out.
At small firms the owner or the managing partner signs off on ad spend. At bigger ones it is the marketing director.
Results depend on the offer and the list. Three outbound agencies that publish their own numbers land between one booked meeting per 1,000 people contacted and one per 2,000. One of them also tested 650,000 cold emails with a plain offer and got about 3 to 6 interested replies per 10,000 people.
Those are other people's numbers and not a promise about your market. Your market's number only comes from testing it.
We build and run this campaign for one agency per industry.
Thirty minutes on your market and how we'd reach it.