What we find in almost every inherited account
There is a depressingly consistent shape to a neglected Google Ads account, and it is rarely the fault of the person running it. It is what happens when an account is set up once and then left to accumulate.
Broad match with a thin negative list.Google is doing what you told it to: finding loosely related searches. So a plumber pays for “plumber salary”, “plumbing courses” and “how to fix a tap yourself”, three searches with precisely zero purchase intent, all billed at the same rate as a customer with a flooded kitchen.
Conversion tracking that flatters. A tag firing on page load instead of on form submission. A thank-you page counted twice. A phone call tracked as a conversion the moment someone taps the number, whether or not it connects. The account looks like it is working. The bank account disagrees, and the bank account is right.
Every ad pointing at the homepage. Someone searched for one specific, urgent thing. They arrived somewhere that talks about everything. They left. You paid for that.
None of this is exotic. All of it is fixable in weeks. What it needs is someone to open the search terms report and read it honestly.
Four reports we open before we touch anything
You see the waste before you commit to anything.
The search terms report
Not your keywords, the actual queries that triggered your ads. This is where the waste hides, and it is the first report we open. Broad match plus a thin negative list is the most reliable way to spend money on nothing.
Conversion tracking integrity
If tracking is double-counting, firing on page load, or counting a form view as a form submission, every optimisation decision made from that data has been wrong. We check this before anything else, because everything else depends on it.
Landing page match
An ad for emergency drain unblocking that lands on a generic homepage is a paid bounce. The gap between what the ad promised and what the page delivers is usually the single cheapest thing to fix.
Where the budget is actually going
Brand terms you would have won for free. Competitor terms that never convert. Display network placements on mobile games. Half of a typical account is often defensible; the other half needs an explanation.
Spend less, then spend better, then spend more
Audit first, and we will show you the waste before you commit
We go through the Google Ads account and produce a document: what is converting, what is not, what tracking is broken, and how much is being spent on terms that will never buy. Doing this before touching bids is simply the only responsible order.
Fix tracking before touching bids
Optimising against broken conversion data actively makes the account worse, you are teaching Google to find you more of the wrong people, confidently. Tracking gets fixed and verified first, every time.
Tighten before scaling
Negative keyword lists, match type discipline, cutting placements that never convert. The first month is usually about spending less, not more. It is a strange thing for an agency to lead with and it is nearly always right.
Land the click somewhere that deserves it
Ad copy and landing page written as a pair. If the page has to change to make the ad honest, the page changes. We build the page, that is the advantage of it being the same team.
Then, carefully, scale
Once the account converts predictably and the tracking is trustworthy, more budget produces more customers instead of more clicks. That is the only point at which scaling is anything other than a way to lose money faster.
Why we do not charge a percentage of ad spend
It is the industry default, and it quietly puts the agency and the client on opposite sides. If our fee rises with your budget, then every honest recommendation to spend less costs us money. That is not a temptation worth building a business on.
We charge a flat monthly fee based on how complex the account is to run. When we tell you to cut a campaign, you can be confident it is because the campaign is not working, not because it is safe advice for us to give.