Paid search
ads.
// The ad platforms I run for you
Reach people already searching for what you offer, with tracking in place before money starts going out.
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 min · Google Meet · No obligation
// Recognition
Why people come to me for paid search.
Usually because something stopped feeling right about what the ads are actually doing — and it tends to look like one of these:
Invoice, no picture
The monthly ad invoice keeps arriving, but the picture of what it's actually bringing in hasn't caught up.
Agency gone quiet
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.
Worked once, now unclear
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.
// What I'd check first
What I'd check first.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Who's making changes. Whether auto-applied recommendations are turned on — the setting where Google can change keywords, bidding, and ad copy without asking.
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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).
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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.
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Foundation underneath. Whether the SEO and analytics foundation is in place underneath — without it, the conversion-tracking work has nothing to attach to.
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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 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.
// What you get
What you get.
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.
An account audit and a clean structural setup.
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.
Keyword research focused on commercial intent.
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.
Ad copy written for conversion, not buzzword soup.
Responsive search ads with multiple headlines and descriptions, tested against what's actually driving enquiries.
A sensible bid strategy.
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.
Ongoing negative keyword management.
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.
Conversion tracking that's actually verified.
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.
Microsoft / Bing Ads when the audience supports it.
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.
Monthly reports in plain English.
What was spent, how many enquiries it brought in, what each one cost, what's working, what isn't, what's changing next month.
Ongoing optimisation under monthly care.
Bid adjustments, ad rotation, search-term reviews, landing-page feedback handed back to you.
// For the technically curious — the platforms + tooling behind this
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
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
Who this is best for.
// Best for
- Australian small-business owners running existing Google Ads campaigns with unclear results, no conversion tracking, or auto-applied recommendations they didn't approve.
- Businesses that tried paid ads in the past, lost budget, and walked away — and who want a clean look at whether to try again with the basics in place this time.
- Founders launching a new product or service that needs qualified traffic now while SEO catches up.
- B2B companies where Google's commercial-intent keywords match what their buyers actually search.
- Charities, not-for-profits, and community sports clubs running paid ads (including Google Ad Grants where eligible) and wanting them set up properly without paying agency-deck prices. The 25% ACNC charity rate applies.
// Skip if
- You can't sustain $1,000/month per platform in ad spend. Below that threshold, paid search has too few signals to optimise from cleanly — reporting becomes statistically noisy and the management fee swallows too much of the value.
- The SEO and analytics foundation isn't yet in place — without conversion tracking and the measurement layer underneath, paid search can't be evaluated honestly. Start with a Free Digital Health Check, which covers both.
- The offer itself isn't yet defined clearly enough to advertise — paid search amplifies a clear offer; it can't manufacture one. The Health Check is the right starting point.
- The website the ads send to can't answer the obvious questions a paid visitor will ask — web design work comes first.
// Pricing
What it costs.
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
A setup project, then ongoing 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.
// Audit-only deep-dive
An audit-only deep-dive.
Booked through the Free Digital Health Check + the In-Depth version. Written audit + walkthrough call; you take the recommendations and run with them yourself, or come back for execution.
// 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.
// Pacing
How long things take.
Paid search runs on Google's learning periods, not on the calendar. The honest timing:
- /01
Setup — 1–2 weeks.
Audit, structural build, conversion-tracking verification, first campaigns live.
- /02
Learning month.
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.
- /03
Months 2–3 — Stability.
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
Shipping well.
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:
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Tracking verified. Conversion tracking is verified end-to-end across every action that matters.
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Account inspectable. The account is structured so you can actually inspect what's running.
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Waste gated. Negatives are gating obvious waste before it eats into the budget.
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Reporting useful. The reporting tells you something useful in plain language, not vanity metrics.
// For the technically curious — what's actually in the monthly report
- //Spend, clicks, impressions, CTR.
- //Conversion volume and cost per conversion — the two numbers that matter most.
- //Search-impression-share with lost-IS-rank vs lost-IS-budget broken out.
- //Top-performing and bottom-performing keywords plus ad copy.
- //Search-term review insights — what real queries triggered ads, including candidates for new negatives.
- //What I changed in the account and why. What I'm planning to test next month.
// Journey
What comes next.
Free Digital Health Check
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.
The SEO & analytics foundation
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.
Looked After (optional)
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
Common questions.
What's the minimum ad spend?
Why a flat fee rather than percentage-of-spend?
Do you use Performance Max?
How long until results show up?
What happens if conversion tracking breaks?
Why does the SEO and analytics foundation need to be in place first?
// Start
Get started.
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 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.
- What's working — and what's quietly burning budget
- Your top 3 fixes, in priority order
- Yours to keep, whether you work with me afterwards or not
The PDF is yours to keep regardless.
// Last updated: May 2026