Google Ads & analytics
The budget goes out every month and nobody can say what came back.
Usually the campaigns are not the problem. The problem is that nothing downstream was ever set up to tell you which click became a customer — so every decision after that is a guess with a dashboard attached.
From $625 · for the build; management 15% of spend, min $750/mo
First
Tracking comes first, and it is not optional
Ads without conversion tracking is a machine for spending money at speed. If the platform cannot tell which clicks turned into enquiries, it cannot optimise toward them — it optimises toward clicks, which you are paying for either way.
So the first work is always the same: analytics configured properly, the conversions that matter to your business defined and firing, phone and form tracking connected, and the reporting built so the number you look at is booked work rather than impressions.
This is unglamorous and it is where most of the value is. It is also why I would rather fix tracking on your existing campaigns than rebuild campaigns on broken tracking.
The work
What I do
- Campaign build. Structure, keywords, negatives, ad copy, landing-page recommendations. Built to be understood, not to look busy.
- Conversion tracking and analytics. Analytics, event and conversion configuration, and connecting the Google tools that should have been connected already.
- Ongoing management. Search terms reviewed, waste cut, budget moved to what is working, reported in plain language.
- Strategy before spend. Which campaigns are worth running at all — including telling you when paid search is the wrong channel for what you sell.
From $625 · for the build; management 15% of spend, min $750/mo. You always pay Google directly for the media. I never sit between you and your ad budget, and I never mark it up.
The site
Ads expose whatever the site does badly
Paid traffic is the fastest way to find out that your site does not convert. You are buying visitors at a known price and watching them leave, which makes every weakness measurable within days rather than quarters.
That is genuinely useful — it is the cheapest research you will ever run. It also means that when the numbers are bad, the fix is often not in the ad account. If that turns out to be your situation I will say so, even though the account is the part I am being paid for. See redesign or the audit.
Limits
When paid search is wrong for you
- Anyone who wants me to front the ad spend. You pay the platform directly. Always.
- Budgets under roughly $1,000/month in media. Below that the management fee eats the result and neither of us is happy.
- Anyone wanting pure pay-per-lead. It sounds like shared risk and turns into arguments about lead quality. A real fee plus clean tracking serves you better.
- Businesses with nothing to measure. If nobody can tell me what a good outcome looks like, no amount of tracking will invent one.
Reporting
Reporting you can take to someone else
The industry standard is a dashboard full of impressions, clicks and a click-through rate. None of those are money. If the report cannot be read by whoever signs the cheque, it is not a report, it is a screenshot.
- Monthly, in plain language — what was spent, what came back, what changed and why.
- Measured in enquiries and booked work, not impressions. That requires the tracking above to be right, which is why it comes first.
- Cost per enquiry, tracked over time, so you can see whether it is improving rather than taking my word for it.
- What I got wrong — campaigns that did not work appear in the report. Anything else is marketing your own performance to you.
- Direct access to the account and the analytics whenever you want it. Nothing is behind a portal only I can open.
The difference
The unglamorous work that decides whether the spend pays
Paid search rewards attention to detail more than cleverness. The account maintenance that most budgets quietly stop receiving after month two:
- Conversion tracking is verified end to end before a dollar is spent — a campaign optimising toward a conversion that never fires is spending your money to learn nothing.
- Search terms are reviewed against what you actually sell — broad match will find you traffic for jobs you do not want and cannot do.
- Negative keyword lists are built and maintained — the cheapest performance gain in any account is not paying for the wrong clicks.
- Landing pages are checked before the campaign, not after — buying traffic to a page that does not convert is the most expensive way to find that out.
- The account stays in your name and your billing — an account held by the agency turns your own performance history into their leverage.
- Campaigns that are not working get named as such — you are paying for judgement, and judgement includes the parts that did not go well.
Evidence
Accounts run like this
Accounts where the tracking was built before the campaigns, so the reporting means something.
More leads than they could process — the owner asked to switch ads off for some services while the team caught up. And the site's simple structure has since become the standard competitors copy.
Licensing services are bought through a Google search, and every competitor bids on the same clicks. Whether the ad spend comes back as leads is decided by the page the click lands on.
People who would have picked up the phone started making contact through the site instead — and the build has since moved off a dying stack without losing any of that.
An established provider whose site was not being found by the people already searching for what they sold.
The advertising is what got them into the niche, and kept the work coming while the business established itself.
Quartz countertops in Toronto is a trade people buy once a decade and choose by showroom. A new entrant has no reputation to be found by and nobody looking for them by name.
The advertising got the business off the ground, and they run the account and the site themselves now.
A new business trying to establish itself in a competitive Toronto niche, with no demand of its own to draw on yet.
Questions
Questions worth asking
Can you just audit what we have?
Yes, and it is often the right first step. Account structure, wasted spend, whether tracking is telling the truth. Frequently the finding is that the campaigns are fine and the measurement never worked.
Who owns the account?
You do. Your account, your billing, your data, your history — I get access to it. Agencies that run ads inside their own account are holding your performance history hostage, and you find out when you try to leave.
How much should we spend?
Depends on what a customer is worth and what a click costs in your market. That is a calculation, not a package, and it is worth doing before you commit to a monthly number.
Do you do social ads too?
Search is where I am strongest, because intent is already there. If your buyer is actually on social I will say so and help you find someone who lives in that channel.
Is there a contract or minimum term?
No minimum term. Month to month, cancel with notice. A retainer that survives only because leaving is painful is not a relationship I want.
What if the ads do not work?
Then we find out quickly and say so. Some businesses should not run search ads — the intent is not there, or the click price makes the maths impossible. I would rather tell you that in month one than bill you through a year of it.
Start with a review of what you have
Send me access to the account, or just tell me what you spend and what you think you get. You will hear where the waste is and whether the tracking is telling you the truth.
Start with what you have
Your site and roughly what you spend a month. You will hear where the waste is and whether the tracking is telling you the truth.
Goes straight to me. No list, no automated sequence — see the privacy policy.