Google Ads puts your business in front of people at the moment they search for what you sell, and on search campaigns you pay only when someone clicks. Run carefully, it can bring enquiries within days of launch and show you what each one cost. Run carelessly, it is one of the quickest ways for a small business to spend money with nothing to show for it.
I plan, build and run Google Ads campaigns for UK businesses, from a single search campaign for a local firm to a mix of search, Performance Max and YouTube for a business selling nationally. This page explains what the work covers, which part you need, how I run it and what it costs.
What a well-run Google Ads account gives you
Most owners who look for outside help are not short of clicks. They are short of answers about which searches bring customers and whether the spend pays for itself.
- Spend you can trace. Every form, call and sale that matters is recorded as a conversion, so you see the cost of an enquiry for each campaign rather than only the cost of a click.
- Ads shown for the right searches. Budget goes to people looking to buy, in the areas you serve, and not to job seekers, students or someone at the other end of the country.
- Bids that follow profit. Once the tracking can be trusted, bidding is set by what a customer is worth to you, not by the suggestions Google shows in the interface.
- An account your business owns. The account sits in your company’s name and I work in it through manager access, so the history and the data stay with you whoever runs it next.
Who Google Ads suits, and who it does not
Google Ads works best when people already search for what you offer. A boiler engineer in Croydon, a commercial cleaning firm in Manchester, a packaging supplier selling to other businesses, a solicitor handling employment disputes: in each case the buyer types a specific need into Google and is ready to make contact. If that sounds like your customers, search ads are usually the first thing to consider.
It is a weaker fit when hardly anyone searches for your product yet, because there is little demand to catch; social ads that build interest usually do better there. It also struggles on a budget too small to record conversions in any number, since Google’s automated bidding learns from them. And no account can fix an enquiry process where calls go to voicemail or forms sit unanswered for days. I would rather say so on a first call than take a fee for ads that cannot work.
Which Google Ads service you need
The right starting point depends on what you sell and the state of any account you already run. Here is how the usual situations map to the work.
You want enquiries from people searching right now
Start with Google search campaigns. Text ads on the results page, built around the services you offer and the places you cover, are the most controllable part of Google Ads and the easiest to measure. For most service businesses this is where the first pound of budget belongs.
You already spend on Google Ads but cannot tell what it returns
That is usually a measurement and structure problem before it is a bidding problem. Monthly PPC management starts by putting the tracking right and tidying the structure, then covers the ongoing running of the account, with reporting in plain English.
You sell products online
Performance Max campaigns use your product feed to place ads across Shopping, Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Display Network from one campaign. They suit online shops with clean product data and accurate sales tracking, and they waste money for shops without either, so I check the feed and the tracking before any budget moves.
You need people to know your name before they search
YouTube advertising reaches people by interest, life event or the kind of searches they have made on Google, which makes it useful for something people need to see before they go looking for it. It rarely wins on last-click sales, so it is judged on what happens to branded searches and enquiries in the weeks that follow.
You have an app to promote
Google app campaigns promote an Android or iOS app across Google Search, YouTube, Google Play and partner apps, aiming either at installs or at actions inside the app such as a sign-up or a first purchase. Paying for installs alone tends to buy people who never open the app again, so the in-app event you optimise for matters more than the install count.
Your ads get clicks but the page does not convert
Sending paid traffic to a home page or a crowded service page wastes much of it. A landing page built for the campaign repeats the promise the ad made, answers the questions a buyer has at that point and makes calling or enquiring easy on a phone.
How I run Google Ads work
Whichever service you start with, the order of work stays the same. It is arranged so that the budget never grows on anything that cannot be measured.
- Understand the business. What a customer is worth to you, your margins, which enquiries turn into paid work and which waste your time, and the areas you genuinely cover. Targets come from these figures, not from industry averages.
- Check and fix measurement. Each form submission, phone call and sale should be recorded once, as the right conversion, and only after the visitor has agreed to cookies where consent is required. I test it with a real enquiry before relying on it.
- Build around what people search. Campaigns and ad groups follow the words buyers use and the services you sell, with negative keywords to keep out irrelevant searches, ads written for each group and location settings checked by hand.
- Launch with tight controls, then automate as data builds. New campaigns start narrow. Once there are enough conversions to learn from, Google’s automated bid strategies take over the bidding and I watch what they do with your money.
- Review, report and adjust. Search terms, budgets, ads and landing pages are reviewed on a regular cycle, and you get a short written report on what changed, what it cost and what I plan to do next.
Common Google Ads mistakes worth ruling out
These problems cost money quietly, because the account still looks busy. They are worth checking in any account, whoever built it.
- Location targeting that reaches too far. Google’s default location option, presence or interest, includes people who have only shown interest in your area. A kitchen fitter in Leeds can end up paying for clicks from someone abroad who once read about Leeds. For most local businesses, targeting people located in the area is the safer setting.
- Conversions that count the wrong thing. A goal that fires every time someone views the contact page, or counts one enquiry twice, tells automated bidding it is doing better than it is, and it will chase more of the same.
- Display and search partners left on in search campaigns. A new search campaign can include the Display Network and search partner sites unless you untick them. That traffic behaves differently and muddies the results you are trying to read.
- Broad match with nobody reading the search terms. Broad match can find useful searches, but without regular checks of the actual queries and a growing negative keyword list, spend drifts towards loosely related ones.
- Recommendations applied automatically. Auto-apply can add keywords, broaden match types or switch bid strategies without anyone deciding to. Each recommendation deserves a decision rather than a default.
- Tags that ignore cookie consent. Under PECR, advertising cookies need the visitor’s consent, and Google’s EU user consent policy covers visitors in the UK too. Tags that load before consent are a compliance risk. Tags that are blocked with no Consent Mode in place leave the conversions of everyone who declines unrecorded, which starves bidding of data.
Google Ads, SEO or social media ads
Google Ads catches demand that already exists. Social media ads create it, by putting an offer in front of people who were not looking. SEO earns a place in the unpaid results without a cost per click, but takes months to build.
They work together more often than they compete: plenty of businesses run search ads while organic rankings grow, and the search terms report from the ads shows which phrases bring customers, which is useful evidence when deciding what pages to write. If you are choosing between paid channels, the deciding question is whether your buyers already search for what you sell; if they do not, paid social usually reaches them sooner.
What Google Ads costs
There are two separate costs, and it helps to keep them apart.
Ad spend is paid straight to Google on your own card or invoice. You set a daily budget for each campaign, and the price of each click is decided in an auction against other advertisers bidding on the same searches in the same places. On a busy day Google can spend up to twice the average daily budget, but it keeps the monthly charge within 30.4 times that daily figure. For typical UK costs per click and per lead by sector, see my UK Google and Meta ad benchmarks.
My fee covers the planning, the build and the ongoing work. I quote it once I understand the scope: how many campaigns and campaign types are involved, whether the tracking needs rebuilding, whether landing pages are needed and how often you want reports. You have the figure in writing before any work starts.
Where to start
If you want a view on an account you already run, or you are starting from nothing, send me your website, what you sell and where, and roughly what you spend on ads now. I will reply with what I would look at first.
If you would like a written view first, request a free Google Ads audit of the account. If your customers also search on Bing, read how I approach Microsoft Ads management; an existing Google Ads campaign can usually be imported there as a starting point.