PPC management is the ongoing running of a pay-per-click account once it is built: reading what people actually searched, moving money towards what brings enquiries, testing ads and keeping the tracking honest. Here it means Google Ads, run by me every month for UK businesses that already advertise and have no time to look after the account.
If you are still deciding between search, Performance Max and YouTube, or you have no account yet, my overview of Google Ads services is the better place to start. This page is about the monthly work once an account is live.
What changes when the account is properly managed
An account left to run on its own rarely collapses. It drifts. Search terms wander away from what you sell, the campaign that used to work runs out of budget by lunchtime, and the conversion figures stop matching the enquiries your staff take. Nobody notices, because the account still spends and still reports clicks.
With regular management, each pound has a reason to be where it is. You know what an enquiry or a sale costs from each campaign, which searches bring customers and what will change next month. When something breaks, such as a form that stops recording conversions after a website update, it is found within days instead of at the end of the quarter.
Who it suits, and when you are better off without it
Monthly management makes sense when:
- you have a live Google Ads account with steady monthly spend, and the person who used to run it has left, changed role or run out of time;
- you have ended an agency arrangement and want one person working in the account directly;
- you can tell, even roughly, which enquiries became paying customers, so the account can be judged on business won rather than on clicks.
It is a poor fit when a management fee would swallow a large share of the budget, or the account records only a handful of conversions a month. There is too little happening to manage, and running it yourself with my Google Ads checklist is better value until it grows. With no account at all, the first job is building one, usually starting with Google search campaigns. And if you enjoy running the account and only want a second opinion now and then, a monthly arrangement is more than you need.
What the work covers
Search terms and negative keywords
The search terms report lists the searches that actually triggered your ads, which are often much looser than the keywords you chose. I read it every week, exclude searches that will never buy (jobs, training courses, free templates, places you do not cover) and add keywords where customers phrase things differently from what was expected. Google withholds some low-volume searches from the report, so the share of spend you cannot see is worth watching as well.
Bidding and budgets
Many accounts now run on Smart Bidding, where Google sets the bid for each auction from how likely that click is to convert. It works well with plenty of accurate conversion data and badly without it. My part is setting targets from what a customer is worth to you, giving the strategy room to learn, and stepping in when it buys cheap conversions that never become customers. Budget moves between campaigns on cost per enquiry or return, not on which campaign is newest.
Ads, assets and landing pages
Responsive search ads let Google combine your headlines and descriptions in different ways. I keep them specific to each ad group, test one idea at a time (a price, a response time, a guarantee you can honour) and keep sitelinks, callouts and call assets current. When the ads are fine but the page they land on loses people, I say so; a page built for the campaign often achieves more than another round of bid changes, which is the job of PPC landing page design.
Measurement that stays accurate
Tracking breaks quietly: a website update renames a form, a new cookie banner blocks a tag, a phone number changes. Each month I compare the conversions Google reports with the enquiries you logged. Where you record outcomes in a CRM, I look at sending them back through offline conversion imports, so bidding learns from customers rather than form fills. That passes enquiry data to Google, so the lawful basis and your privacy notice are settled first. Advertising tags load only after a visitor agrees to them, as PECR requires.
How I run the account each month
The work follows a fixed rhythm, so you always know what has been looked at and when.
The first month: understand before changing
I start with the account’s change history, which shows who changed what and when, alongside its settings and the past year of results. Before trusting any figure, I submit a test enquiry and check it arrives as exactly one conversion. Then you and I agree a target: the most you can pay for an enquiry or a sale and still make money. The LTV and CAC calculator gives a maximum cost per customer to start from. Obvious waste goes first. I do not rebuild an account for the sake of it, because a rebuild can throw away what the bidding has learned.
Every week
- Search terms read, with negative keywords added and new keywords considered.
- Spend checked against budget, so no campaign runs dry early or overspends.
- Disapproved ads, policy warnings and broken final URLs fixed.
- Conversion counts compared with the previous week, to catch a tracking fault early.
Every month
- Bid targets and budgets adjusted on a full month of results.
- Ad tests reviewed: weaker versions paused, a new variant written.
- Landing page results checked by device, because a page that works on a laptop can lose phone visitors.
- Lead quality reviewed with you, using what actually became paid work.
- Your written report, and a call if you want one.
Every quarter
A step back from the detail: whether the campaign structure still matches what you sell, what seasonal change is coming (a heating engineer’s busy autumn is not a garden designer’s spring), what competitors are doing in the auction insights report, and whether a new campaign type such as Performance Max is worth testing with part of the budget.
What I change myself, and what I ask you first
You should not have to approve every negative keyword, and you should never discover a large change from your bank statement. Before work starts, you and I agree where the line sits. A typical split looks like this:
| I change without asking | I ask you first |
|---|---|
| Negative keywords, and new keywords for services you already sell | Raising the total monthly budget |
| Bids and targets within the agreed cost per enquiry | Adding a campaign type, a new service or a new area |
| Pausing ads and keywords that spend without converting | Switching the bid strategy on a main campaign |
| New ad variants using claims you have already approved | Any new claim, price or offer in the ads |
| Moving budget between campaigns within the agreed total | Changing what counts as a conversion |
Claims need your sign-off because you answer for them. Paid search ads fall under the CAP Code, which the Advertising Standards Authority enforces, so a line such as “cheapest in Leeds” or “same-day call-out” has to be true and backed by evidence. Google’s own suggestions get the same treatment: auto-apply stays off, and each recommendation is accepted or dismissed on its merits.
Problems I look for in an inherited account
Beyond the setting errors that catch new accounts, these build up over months when nobody is watching:
- Brand searches flattering the figures. When people searching for your business name share a campaign with people searching for the service, cheap brand conversions hide what a new customer really costs.
- Sales values that include VAT. If an online shop passes order totals with VAT to Google, return on ad spend looks 20% better than it is on standard-rated goods, and bidding aims at the wrong target.
- The best campaign capped by its budget. A campaign marked “Limited by budget” while weaker ones spend freely is money sitting in the wrong place.
- Ads running when nobody can answer. Call ads shown late at night or across a bank holiday weekend, with the phone going to voicemail.
- Copy that has gone out of date. Old prices, finished offers, discontinued services and sitelinks to pages that no longer exist.
- Regulated sectors set up wrongly. Most UK financial services advertisers must pass Google’s financial services verification, which requires FCA authorisation, and healthcare has its own restrictions. Skipping these leads to disapproved ads or a suspended account.
What you receive
- A monthly report in plain English. Spend, enquiries or sales and the cost of each, by campaign, against the previous month and the same month last year where there is history. Then what I changed, why, and what comes next.
- A change log with reasons. Google records what changed; my log records why, so anyone who looks after the account later can follow the decisions.
- Warnings between reports. If tracking stops, ads are disapproved or spend jumps, I tell you when I find it rather than at the month end.
- An account that stays yours. It remains in your business’s name, and I work in it as a user you can remove at any time.
How the management fee works
There are two costs. Ad spend goes straight to Google on your own billing and never passes through me. My fee covers the monthly work, and I quote it in writing after looking at the account, because the effort varies: how many campaigns and campaign types there are, whether the tracking needs repair first, and how often you want to talk.
Management fees are usually either a flat monthly amount or a percentage of ad spend. A percentage can reward spending more rather than spending well, so whoever you hire, ask how the fee is worked out. The ROAS and ROI calculator includes management fees, so it shows the return needed to cover both the ads and the person running them.
Next step
Send me your website, roughly what you spend each month and what worries you about the account. If you add me with read-only access first, I will look before the call, so the conversation is about your account rather than Google Ads in general. Book a consultation about your Google Ads account and I will reply with what I would look at first.