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Most immigration consultancies open the same account. One campaign, the word “visa agent”, RM 40 a day, homepage as the destination. Three weeks later the budget is gone and the enquiry log is full of people asking where to download a form.
The problem is not the platform. It is that “visa” covers a RM 900 student pass renewal and a RM 35,000 MM2H engagement in one word. This guide covers Google Ads for visa consultants the way the work splits — MM2H buyers reading from Seoul at 2am, HR managers beating a pass expiry, parents chasing a student pass before intake, and rejection cases that call within the hour.
Paid search suits this trade because the buyer already knows the pass they need. What they do not know is who to trust with it. The wider digital marketing guide for visa consultants covers the trust side, and the organic side covers the slower half.
ZenWeb is a Google Partner running paid search for 500+ Malaysian businesses, advisory firms among them. Four original data sets follow.
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Start with how the account should be split.
Source video: Immigration Lawyer Google Ads PPC Case Study on YouTube
Quick Answer: Split by pass type first, then by who pays. A student pass renewal and an MM2H engagement differ thirtyfold in fee, so a properly split account structure stops cheap enquiries swallowing the budget meant for expensive ones.
A mid-sized consultancy runs five campaigns:
Most advice says split by country. That suits an outbound travel agency. Here the dividing line is who signs the engagement letter — an HR manager, a retiree overseas, a worried parent. Lump them together and Google spends where conversions come easiest, which means student pass enquiries every time.
Quick Answer: Start with your brand and your rejection-and-appeal terms, not “visa agent Malaysia”. Head terms attract people who want a form, while a refused applicant already has a problem worth paying to solve. Keyword research for this trade sorts by urgency, not volume.
Order the spend in four layers:
One caveat. A new consultancy has almost no brand volume, so a glowing brand return measures recognition you already had, not new demand. Read it separately.
Quick Answer: “Visa” and “permit” pull in form-downloaders, jobseekers and people looking for a government portal. Without a proper negative keyword list, a consultancy account spends most of its first month answering questions nobody intends to pay for.
Five families belong on the list from day one:
Then read search terms weekly for two months. The list roughly doubles by month three, because applicants phrase one pass a dozen ways in three languages.
Quick Answer: Name the pass, name your licence, name a fee band. Applicants have been warned about visa scams their whole lives, so ad copy that states verifiable facts outperforms copy that promises outcomes — and it keeps you inside Google’s policies.
Most consultancy ads here say the same four things: fast approval, experienced team, hassle-free, WhatsApp us now. None of it separates you from the unlicensed operator two listings down, and “fast approval” promises something you do not control.
Say the specifics instead. “MM2H Silver applications. MOTAC-licensed agent. Fee from RM 18,000, quoted upfront.” That answers the three questions every cautious applicant asks before typing a passport number anywhere.
Quick Answer: On the page for that exact pass, never the services menu. An Employment Pass search that lands on a page listing eleven visa types asks the visitor to sort your business out for you, which is why generic landing pages leak leads in advisory work.
Four things must be visible without scrolling twice:
Most consultancies resist the fee band. Publishing it feels like losing leverage. It is the cheapest filter you own — it removes the RM 800 applicant before they take an hour of a consultant’s afternoon.
Quick Answer: Two rules matter. You cannot advertise services you are not licensed to deliver, and you cannot promise an approval you do not control. Both sit inside Google’s Misrepresentation policy, and both cause the suspensions that leave consultancies chasing a disapproved account mid-campaign.
Google’s Misrepresentation policy bars advertisers from offering services they cannot deliver, including not having the right licences or qualifications, and treats it as an egregious violation — suspension on detection, without warning. For MM2H that is not theoretical: MOTAC publishes its register of licensed MM2H companies, so the qualification either checks out or it does not.
The second rule catches the copy. Google’s unreliable claims rule bars enticing users with an improbable result as the likely outcome. “Guaranteed approval” is exactly that.
Quick Answer: A WhatsApp tap is not a client. Visa enquiries die at the eligibility check constantly, so offline conversion tracking must follow the enquiry to the engagement letter and first payment.
Four events are worth counting:
Because engagements sign weeks after the click, value each stage rather than waiting. Feeding weighted conversion values back teaches the bidding that one MM2H eligibility call outranks fifty student enquiries.
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Quick Answer: Half your best buyers sit in Seoul, Dhaka or Dubai. That inverts the usual advice, because location targeting here needs “presence or interest” for MM2H and student work, and presence-only for corporate passes.
Run the two settings as separate campaigns — one account-wide choice cannot serve both.
Exclude the countries you cannot serve. Immigration search draws heavy volume from nationalities your firm has never handled, and those clicks cost the same.
Quick Answer: Brand clicks run RM 1.60 to RM 3.10, student pass terms RM 2.40 to RM 4.90, Employment Pass terms RM 7.40 to RM 14.60 and MM2H terms RM 9.80 to RM 21.40. That thirteen-fold spread is why a single industry CPC average tells a visa consultancy nothing useful.
| Keyword group | Typical CPC | Share of clicks | Engagement intent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Own firm name | RM 1.60-3.10 | 6% | Very high |
| Tourist and outbound visa terms | RM 1.80-3.60 | 19% | Low |
| Student pass and EMGS terms | RM 2.40-4.90 | 14% | Medium |
| Work permit and foreign worker quota | RM 4.60-9.20 | 12% | High |
| Visa rejection and appeal | RM 5.20-10.30 | 10% | High |
| Employment Pass and expatriate services | RM 7.40-14.60 | 15% | Very high |
| MM2H agent terms | RM 9.80-21.40 | 13% | Very high |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026.
Look at the second row. Tourist visa terms take the largest share of clicks and the lowest intent on the list. That line explains most of the waste here.
Quick Answer: A signed engagement costs about RM 13 from brand search, RM 122 from dependant pass search, RM 435 from Employment Pass search and RM 1,608 from MM2H search. On cost alone the best campaign looks like the worst, which is why cost per lead by channel means little without the fee attached.
| Campaign type | Cost per enquiry | Enquiry to signed | Cost per signed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand search | RM 6.20 | 48% | RM 12.90 |
| Dependant and spouse pass search | RM 31.60 | 26% | RM 121.50 |
| Rejection and appeal search | RM 38.40 | 21% | RM 182.90 |
| Student pass search | RM 22.80 | 12% | RM 190.00 |
| Employment Pass corporate search | RM 74.00 | 17% | RM 435.30 |
| Performance Max without guardrails | RM 17.90 | 3% | RM 596.70 |
| MM2H search | RM 96.50 | 6% | RM 1,608.30 |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026. Signed is counted at engagement letter plus first payment.
The MM2H row is the one to sit with. RM 1,608 looks indefensible next to RM 12.90 until you remember the fee behind it runs five figures. The costliest campaign usually pays for the other six.
Quick Answer: Over a quarter of wasted consultancy spend goes to DIY applicants hunting free forms, and another 18.2 per cent to clicks from countries the firm cannot serve. Both are settings problems, which makes wasted clicks the fastest saving in the account.
| Where the money went | Share of waste | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| DIY applicants hunting free forms | 26.7% | Negative keywords |
| Clicks from countries the firm cannot serve | 18.2% | Country exclusions |
| Jobseeker and agent-recruitment searches | 13.5% | Negative keywords |
| People looking for a government portal | 12.9% | Tighter match types |
| Wrong visa direction (outbound vs inbound) | 11.4% | Split campaigns |
| Enquiries nobody answered within a day | 9.8% | Ad schedule and auto-reply |
| Fee shoppers who never had the budget | 7.5% | Publish fee bands |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026. First-90-day audits of inherited accounts.
Quick Answer: A rejection case signs in a median of four days. MM2H takes 118, with 79 per cent of signings landing after day 60. Any account judged on 30 days will report MM2H as a failure, which is why your attribution window matters more here than in most trades.
| Service line | Enquiry to signed | Median days to sign | Signed after day 60 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rejection and appeal | 21% | 4 days | 6% |
| Dependant and spouse pass | 26% | 11 days | 14% |
| Work permit and quota | 19% | 27 days | 33% |
| Employment Pass (corporate) | 17% | 34 days | 41% |
| Student pass | 12% | 46 days | 55% |
| MM2H | 6% | 118 days | 79% |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026.
Two consequences follow. Set the conversion window to 90 days at minimum, and stop switching campaigns off in month two because the sheet says zero. March’s enquiries sign in July.
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Quick Answer: Licensing is a conversion asset, not paperwork. MM2H applications go through MOTAC-licensed agents; corporate work goes through employers registered with the Immigration Department’s Expatriate Services Division. Saying which you hold answers the question every applicant is silently asking.
The rules moved again this year: the revised Employment Pass salary policy took effect on 1 June 2026, with new thresholds across all three EP categories. Ads quoting the current rules read as current expertise. Ads quoting old thresholds read as a dormant firm.
Four assets carry the proof:
Quick Answer: One campaign for every pass, no negative list, promising approval, hiding fees, and judging results on a 30-day window. Each shows up in the first audit, and each belongs to the same family of budget-wasting mistakes found across Malaysian SME accounts.
Three moves carry most of the result. Split by pass type, so a student renewal stops eating the MM2H budget. Build the negative list, because a quarter of wasted spend goes to people who only wanted a form. Then widen the window to 90 days and count signed engagements, valued by fee.
Do those three and Google Ads for visa consultants stops being a lottery on the word “visa” and becomes a tap on the service lines you want more of.
Ready to win the cases worth winning?
We map your service lines, fee bands and real signing lag, then build the campaigns around your engagements rather than a template.
A single-service firm works from RM 2,000 to RM 4,000 a month in media spend. A firm running MM2H, corporate and student work together needs RM 8,000 to RM 15,000.
No. Google bars advertising services you are not licensed to deliver, and MOTAC’s licensed agent register is public. Advertising unlicensed risks permanent suspension.
Usually the negative list. “Visa” pulls in form-downloaders and portal searches. Add self-service and portal negatives, then publish a fee band.
Both, in separate campaigns. MM2H and student buyers search from abroad; Employment Pass work is filed by HR teams here.
Rejection cases can sign within a fortnight. Corporate passes take about five weeks and MM2H around four months, so use a 90-day window.
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