This is one-to-one or small-team Google Ads training for UK business owners and in-house marketers who want to run their own campaigns. We work inside your real Google Ads account, on your real budget, so by the end you have a campaign you built yourself and understand line by line.
It is not a course in passing an exam, and it is not a set of slides. The aim is narrower and more useful: you should be able to set up a search campaign, keep it clean week to week, and tell from the numbers whether it is earning its money.
Who the training suits, and who it does not
The people who get the most from it usually fall into one of these groups:
- Owners of small UK businesses spending their own money on search ads and unsure where it goes.
- Marketing executives who have inherited an account from an agency or a former colleague and now have to answer for it.
- In-house teams bringing paid search back from an agency and wanting one or two people able to manage it properly.
- People who have read the basics and set up a campaign, but cannot tell whether it is working.
It is the wrong choice when nobody will have an hour or two a week to look after the account afterwards. A Google Ads account drifts quickly when it is left alone: new irrelevant searches creep in, automated suggestions get applied, and budgets go to the wrong places. If that describes your business, paying for monthly PPC management is usually cheaper than training someone who will not have time to use it.
What the sessions cover
The order matters. A lot of wasted spend in Google Ads accounts comes from doing these steps in the wrong order, usually by launching ads before measurement is in place.
Measurement first
Before a single ad goes live, we set up conversion tracking for the actions that matter to you, such as an enquiry form, a phone call or a sale, and test that each one records correctly. For UK traffic we also look at how your cookie banner and consent settings affect what Google can measure, because an account that cannot see its conversions cannot be judged or optimised.
Account and campaign structure
You will learn how campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads fit together, and how to group keywords so that each ad group answers one kind of search. We go through the settings that catch people out on new campaigns: location targeting set to people interested in the UK rather than people in it, the Display Network ticked inside a search campaign, and automatically applied recommendations switched on without anyone noticing.
Keywords and the searches you actually pay for
We cover keyword match types and what each one lets Google do with your budget, then build a first list of negative keywords before launch. The most useful habit you will leave with is reading the search terms report, which shows the real searches behind your clicks and is where most savings are found.
Ads, assets and landing pages
You will write a responsive search ad with headlines that stand on their own, add sitelinks, callouts and call details, and check that the page each ad sends people to answers the search. Where your landing page is the weak point, I will tell you, because no amount of ad work fixes a page that does not convert.
Budgets, bidding and reading results
We look at how to set a daily budget you can afford for long enough to learn something, when to start on manual or simple bidding and when Smart Bidding has enough conversion data to be trusted. Then we read the account together: cost per conversion, conversion rate, impression share and what each one tells you to change.
What you will be able to do afterwards
- Build a search campaign from an empty account, with tracking tested before launch.
- Choose keywords and match types deliberately rather than accepting the defaults.
- Review search terms each week and add negatives in a few minutes.
- Decide which of Google’s recommendations to accept and which to dismiss.
- Tell whether the account is paying for itself, using your own margins rather than Google’s metrics alone.
- Brief an agency or freelancer properly, and check their work, if you later hand it over.
How I run the training
- A short call first. We talk through your business, what you sell, your budget and what you have tried. If training is not the right answer, I will say so.
- Account review before the first session. With read access to your account and analytics, I look at what is already there so we spend the sessions on your real problems rather than generic examples.
- Hands-on sessions. You do the work in your own account while I explain and check. Nothing goes live until you are happy with it.
- Notes and a later review, if you want them. Whether you receive written notes after the sessions, and whether we look at your progress again once you have had time to practise, is agreed before work starts.
If you want to read ahead, my step-by-step Google Ads guide follows the same order as the sessions, and the Google Ads checklist is the routine I will ask you to use afterwards.
Format and fees
Sessions suit one person or a small team working on the same account. The format, length and number of sessions are agreed with you before work starts.
Each quote is written in GBP after a free first call and agreed in writing. Your ad spend is paid by you directly to Google and is separate from the training fee.
If you want a formal credential, Google runs its own free certification exams through Skillshop. These sessions are about the day-to-day work of running your account.
Next step
If you would rather have the account run for you, see my Google Ads services instead. If you want to learn to run it yourself, book a free 30-minute call and tell me what you are advertising, what you spend and what is going wrong. I will tell you plainly whether training makes sense for you.