Reach people already searching for what you offer, with tracking in place before money starts going out.
Google Ads management — what agencies often call PPC or SEM management, and what plenty of people still call AdWords — is the ongoing work of running your ad account: choosing the keywords, writing the ads, gating waste with negative keywords, and tracking which clicks turn into real enquiries. I'm Nathan Schram, an independent Google Ads consultant in Melbourne. That's the work I do for small businesses here and across Australia: one specialist you deal with directly, not an agency with an account-manager layer.
I make sure the basics are in place before money starts going out — so the spend goes where it's working, and you've got a clear read on whether the ads are bringing in real enquiries or just clicks. Google Ads first, Microsoft / Bing layered in when the audience supports it. Flat monthly management fee; ad spend goes to the platform directly, never bundled into mine.
45 minutes · Google Meet · free Health Check included
// Recognition
Usually because something stopped feeling right about what the ads are actually doing — and it tends to look like one of these:
The monthly ad invoice keeps arriving, but the picture of what it's actually bringing in hasn't caught up.
An agency that hasn't sent a real report in months is running the account on whatever Google's auto-applied recommendations suggested last week.
Paid search worked once, two years ago, and now nobody's quite sure what's running underneath.
It shouldn't take a digital-marketing background to know whether the ads are working. Plain answers about what's currently spending, what's converting, what's wasting money, and whether the foundation underneath is set up cleanly — without the agency-deck theatre — is usually enough.
// Before anything
Before any ad spend goes out, this is the kind of thing I'm looking at. The list is here so you can see the craft up front — not because you're expected to action any of it yourself.
Is tracking firing? Whether conversion tracking is actually firing on every form submission, every phone-click, every "book a call" button. If it isn't, the campaign data is decorative — it can't tell you what's working.
Where money leaks. Whether negative keywords are doing their job, or a chunk of every month's spend is going to searches that were never going to convert.
What's hidden. Whether the account is on Performance Max by default, with the underlying campaign architecture hidden where you can't inspect what's running.
Who's making changes. Whether auto-applied recommendations are turned on — the setting where Google can change keywords, bidding, and ad copy without asking.
Lost impression share. What search-impression-share you're losing, and whether it's to budget (you'd need to spend more) or to rank (the campaigns are uncompetitive on quality).
Is structure clean? Whether the account has a clean structure with separate ad groups for separate search intent, or every keyword has been thrown into one bucket.
Foundation underneath. Whether the SEO and analytics foundation is in place underneath — without it, the conversion-tracking work has nothing to attach to.
Does the page answer? Whether the landing page the ads send to is actually built to answer the question the searcher just typed.
The free Basic Digital Health Check covers the public-side picture across these. The deeper checks — the ones that need account access — are part of the In-Depth version.
// The work itself
Paid search works because it captures intent — someone is actively looking for what you sell, in the moment they need it. The job is pointing that intent at the right keywords, writing ads that match what people are searching for, gating wasted spend with negatives, and reporting in language that tells you whether the money is working.
Campaign architecture, ad-group separation, match-type discipline. New accounts built clean; inherited accounts get the cleanup pass first so you can actually inspect what's running.
Built around the queries that real buyers use when they're ready to enquire, not the broad-and-curious questions content is better suited to.
Responsive search ads with multiple headlines and descriptions, tested against what's actually driving enquiries.
Manual CPC, target CPA, target ROAS, or maximise conversions — picked based on how much conversion data the account has and how mature the campaigns are. Not blindly Performance Max.
Reviewed weekly to monthly. The single biggest leak in most accounts I audit is missing negatives — and clearing them out usually does more than any bid adjustment.
Every form, every phone-click, every booking — tested end-to-end before any campaign goes live. If conversion tracking breaks mid-engagement, campaigns pause until it's fixed. That's a hard rule.
Lower competition on Bing can deliver cheaper conversions for B2B and Australia-specific niches; not added by default, but it's there when the case is real.
Merchant Center setup, product-feed cleanup, and Shopping campaigns for retailers — quoted as part of setup when the product catalogue justifies it, not switched on by default.
What was spent, how many enquiries it brought in, what each one cost, what's working, what isn't, what's changing next month.
Bid adjustments, ad rotation, search-term reviews, landing-page feedback handed back to you.
Google Ads (primary platform) · Microsoft Advertising (Bing, secondary when the audience supports it) · Google Tag Manager (conversion tracking + event firing) · GA4 (conversion attribution + post-click behaviour) · Google Search Console (linked to Google Ads for organic + paid query intel) · Google Merchant Center (when shopping campaigns are in scope) · DataForSEO + the internal Auditor Toolkit (keyword research + competitive intel + monthly reporting data layer) · Google's Ads Transparency Center + Meta Ads Library (competitor ad-copy research, no scraping needed).
// What I don't do
Honest scope. The work below isn't a refusal — it's a stay-in-lane discipline that keeps quality high on what I do build.
If a project sits outside the default scope and there's a real reason to do it — a large shopping-campaigns build, a multi-region account structure, a YouTube engagement that genuinely justifies the add-on, a Display campaign with proper creative behind it — ask anyway. The honest discipline applies on both sides: you have to agree to the scope, and I have to be confident I can deliver it to a standard worth my name. If I'm not, the honest answer is no — and I'll point you toward someone who can take it on if I know one.
// Fit
// Best for
// Skip if
Most of this work is for Melbourne small businesses, though the ads themselves can target anywhere in Australia. If the more pressing gap is being found on Google Maps and in local results rather than paying for clicks, start with Local SEO instead — and if you're weighing ads against organic search, the SEO foundation is usually the first dollar.
// Recent Google Ads work
// Mobile wellness service
A mobile IV business working in Victoria and Western Australia. I built its new website, help people find it on Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT, and run its Google ads.
// Pricing
There are two shapes most paid-search work takes — both quoted on the call against your situation, because the right number depends on platform count, account complexity, and reporting cadence:
// Setup + monthly management
Setup phase: 1–2 weeks (account audit, structural rebuild or fresh build, conversion-tracking verification, first campaigns live). Then monthly management on a rolling basis.
Quoted
// Audit-only deep-dive
Booked through the free Basic Digital Health Check + the In-Depth version. A written Google Ads audit + walkthrough call; you take the recommendations and run with them yourself, or come back for execution. The full detail is on the Google Ads health check page.
Quoted
// How the money flows
// Minimum ad spend, per platform
That's the floor for the ad spend itself, not my fee. Below it, paid search has too few signals to optimise from cleanly — reporting becomes statistically noisy and the management fee swallows too much of the value.
// My flat management fee
Flat monthly — never % of spend. Quoted on the call, separate from ad spend. Percentage-of-spend pricing pays me more when you spend more, which is the wrong incentive — so it isn't on offer.
// Your ad spend
Paid direct to the platform. Goes straight to Google or Microsoft, never bundled into my fee. Quoted separately so you can see what each one is buying.
45 minutes · Google Meet · no obligation
// Pacing
Paid search runs on Google's learning periods, not on the calendar. The honest timing:
Audit, structural build, conversion-tracking verification, first campaigns live.
A clean account takes 2–4 weeks of running before Google's bid algorithms start optimising sensibly. The first month is often a "feed it data so it can learn" month, not a "already winning" month.
Real ROAS or cost-per-conversion stability usually emerges. From there it's ongoing optimisation under monthly care.
Anyone selling guaranteed leads in the first 30 days is either lucky on a specific account or not telling the full story. Paid search rewards a clean setup, patience through the learning phase, and honest reporting on what's actually moving.
// Shipping
Before any paid-search engagement is called shipped, I run the work through the same four checks — and no engagement is signed off until they pass:
Tracking verified. Conversion tracking is verified end-to-end across every action that matters.
Account inspectable. The account is structured so you can actually inspect what's running.
Waste gated. Negatives are gating obvious waste before it eats into the budget.
Reporting useful. The reporting tells you something useful in plain language, not vanity metrics.
// Journey
A plain-English audit of any existing Google Ads account plus the measurement and search foundation underneath. You get a solid base to start from, instead of guessing — and the PDF is yours to keep, whether you work with me afterwards or not.
If paid search looks like the right next move, the usual sequence is the foundation first — conversion tracking, GA4, the measurement layer — then a setup project on top, either Google-only or with Microsoft / Bing layered in. When the broader digital direction needs more clarity before any of this gets locked in, a Strategic Digital Roadmap sits in between.
Once setup has shipped, ongoing monthly care (the Looked After plan) covers what comes after — monthly optimisation, reporting, account hygiene, periodic strategy reviews. Optional; the setup stands on its own without it.
// FAQ
Is $20 a day enough for Google Ads? The maths for 21 Melbourne searches
// Start
Wondering whether your paid search is set up properly — or whether it's worth starting at all? Book a 45-minute call. I'll run a free Basic Digital Health Check on your existing account beforehand (or, if there's no account yet, on the measurement and search foundation that paid search would need underneath) and walk you through it on the call.
45 minutes · Google Meet · no obligation
Every call ends with one — a plain-English read on your ad account and the search foundation underneath. No charge, no catch.
The PDF is yours to keep regardless.
// Last updated: 1 October 2026
