Google Ads
Google Ads managed against cost per acquisition, not clicks
Account structure, conversion tracking that actually fires, negative keyword discipline and landing pages built to convert the traffic you pay for.
Recognise any of these
What usually brings people here
Spend is up, the dashboard is green, and the phone is not ringing any more than before.
Conversion tracking was set up once, broke during a site change, and has been reporting fiction since.
Half the budget goes to search terms that were never going to buy anything.
Ads point at a homepage rather than at a page about the thing the person searched for.
Deliverables
What the engagement produces
Concrete outputs, not activity. Each of these is something you can point at when the work is done.
Conversion tracking verified end to end
Every conversion action tested with a real submission and confirmed arriving in the account. This is checked first, because every other decision depends on it being right.
Account structure that can be read
Campaigns split by intent and margin, not by whatever the account inherited. You should be able to tell at a glance which part of the account makes money.
A negative keyword program
Search terms reviewed on a fixed schedule and waste excluded. On most inherited accounts this is the single largest immediate saving.
Landing pages built for the ad
Fast, focused pages that match the search term and ask for one action. Sending paid traffic to a homepage wastes a large share of the click cost.
Bidding matched to the data available
Automated bidding needs conversion volume to work. Below that threshold it underperforms manual control, and the switch happens when the data supports it, not on principle.
Reporting in cost per acquisition
Spend, qualified enquiries, cost per enquiry and where possible revenue. Impression share and click through rate are diagnostics, not results.
Process
How the work runs
- 01
Audit and tracking repair
Account review plus a full test of conversion tracking. Broken or double counted tracking is fixed before any budget decision is made.
- 02
Restructure
Rebuild campaigns around intent and margin, consolidate what is fragmented, and stop what has never produced.
- 03
Landing page work
Build or rebuild the destination pages. This is usually where the largest gain is available, and it is the step most agencies skip because it needs engineering.
- 04
Run and prune
Weekly search term review, negative keyword additions, bid and budget adjustments, and ad copy testing against a single variable at a time.
- 05
Scale what clears the target
Budget moves toward the campaigns beating their cost per acquisition target and away from those that are not, reviewed monthly with you.
Most underperforming accounts have a tracking problem
Before touching bids, budgets or copy, conversion tracking gets tested with a real submission from a real browser. It fails more often than people expect.
The usual causes are familiar: a tag left behind after a site redesign, a thank you page that no longer loads because the form now submits without navigating, the same conversion counted twice by two overlapping tags, or a data layer push written incorrectly so nothing fires at all.
When tracking is wrong, everything downstream is wrong. Automated bidding optimises toward a fiction, reporting shows a cost per conversion that does not exist, and budget flows toward whichever campaign happens to be miscounting most generously.
The landing page is part of the ad
The click is where most agencies stop and where most of the money is actually lost. A well targeted ad pointing at a slow, generic page converts badly no matter how good the targeting is.
Landing pages are treated as part of the campaign here: fast, matched to the search term, one clear action, and readable on a phone, since that is where most of the traffic arrives.
Being able to build the page rather than only recommend it is the practical difference. There is no waiting on another vendor to implement a change that is costing money every day.
Performance Max, used carefully
Performance Max can work well, and it can also quietly consume a budget while reporting numbers that look acceptable. The difference is control.
That means brand terms excluded so the campaign is not billing you for traffic you already had, asset groups separated so results are attributable, feeds kept clean where a catalogue is involved, and account level negatives applied properly.
Where a search campaign with proper structure will do the job, that is the recommendation. Automation is used where it earns its place, not by default.
Questions
Google Ads questions we get asked
What is a reasonable Google Ads budget to start with?
Enough to gather data in a reasonable time, which usually means a minimum around fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a month in media spend for a local service business, higher in competitive categories. Below that the account takes too long to learn and every decision is made on noise.
How is management priced?
A flat monthly fee based on account complexity, not a percentage of spend. A percentage fee rewards the manager for spending more of your money, which is the wrong incentive. The initial audit and tracking repair are quoted separately as one off work.
How soon will I see results?
Tracking repair and obvious waste removal show up within the first two weeks. Structural changes need three to four weeks for the algorithm to settle. A fair read on whether the account is working takes about ninety days.
Can you take over an existing account?
Yes, and it starts with an audit rather than a rebuild. Existing accounts carry conversion history that has real value, so the aim is to preserve what works and fix what does not. You keep ownership of the account throughout.
Should I run Google Ads and SEO at the same time?
Usually yes, and they inform each other. Ads reveal within weeks which terms actually convert, and that data makes SEO targeting far more accurate than keyword tools alone. Ads buy immediate visibility while the organic work compounds.
Often paired with
- SEOTechnical repair, content matched to real search intent, and reporting that ties rankings to pipeline instead of to a vanity chart.
- Full Stack DevelopmentCustom web applications and platforms built end to end, from schema design to the interface your customers use every day.
- Business AutomationRepetitive work between your systems mapped, automated and monitored, with alerting so a silent failure never goes unnoticed.