Google Ads Management — Spend Less on Clicks That Were Never Going to Convert

Find out where the money is going before you change anything.

I go through the account the way a new manager should: what is running, what it is matching, what it is counting and what it has cost. Most audits turn up spend nobody had noticed — a paused-and-restarted campaign, an old ad group matching rubbish, a conversion counted twice.

• Spend breakdown by campaign and ad group
• Search terms report review
• Conversion action and tracking check
• Structure, match type and negative list review
• A written list of fixes in priority order

An account you can actually read.

Campaigns split by what you sell and where you sell it, ad groups tight enough that the ad matches the search. Structure is not tidiness for its own sake — it is how you control budget and how you spot the part of the account that is losing money.

• Campaign and ad group architecture
• Location, language and schedule settings
• Search, Display, remarketing and video separated properly
• Naming conventions you can follow later
• Ad extensions and assets set up per campaign

Pay for the searches that come from people ready to act.

I build keyword sets around what someone is trying to do, not around search volume. Match types are chosen deliberately: exact where intent is clear and clicks are expensive, broader where you genuinely need discovery and have the negatives to control it.

• Keyword research grouped by intent
• Match type decisions per ad group
• Commercial and branded term separation
• Competitor term assessment, with the costs made clear
• Estimated cost per click by term group

Stop paying for searches that were never going to become work.

This is the least glamorous job in Google Ads and the one that saves the most money. Free, jobs, DIY, cheap, courses, a town you do not cover, a product you do not sell — every account collects these, and they keep arriving.

• Search terms report reviewed regularly
• Account and campaign level negative lists
• Shared lists applied across campaigns
• Ad group level negatives to stop internal overlap
• A running record of what was excluded and why

Ads that say what you do, where you do it and what happens next.

Responsive search ads still need writing properly — headlines that match the search, a real offer, and a reason to choose you rather than the three results above. I test in a way that produces a readable answer instead of changing six things at once.

• Responsive search ad headlines and descriptions
• Sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets
• Call and location assets where relevant
• Copy matched to landing page wording
• Tests run one variable at a time

Numbers you can act on, checked rather than assumed.

Tracking is set up through Google Tag Manager and verified against Google Analytics 4 and the Ads interface. Then I test it myself — submit the form, make the call, place the order — and confirm the conversion lands once, in the right place, with the right value.

• Conversion actions defined and prioritised
• Tag Manager triggers and tags built
• Duplicate and inflated conversions removed
• Call tracking and form tracking checked
• Live test submissions to confirm it works

Bidding matched to the data the account actually has.

Automated bidding works when it is fed clean conversion data and enough of it. When it is not, it is an expensive way to be wrong quickly. I pick the strategy that suits the account today and change it when the evidence supports the change, not on a schedule.

• Bid strategy chosen per campaign
• Budget split across campaigns and priorities
• Sensible transition from manual to automated bidding
• Device, location and schedule adjustments
• Monitoring after every strategy change

Shopping performance starts in the product feed, not the campaign.

Titles, product types, GTINs and images decide which searches your products show for. I work through Google Merchant Center first, clear the disapprovals, then structure Shopping campaigns so your best margin products are not competing with your worst.

• Merchant Center account and feed review
• Disapprovals and warnings resolved
• Product title and attribute improvements
• Shopping campaign structure and priorities
• Product-level search term and negative work

Give the automation good inputs and keep the parts you can still control.

Performance Max hands a lot of decisions to Google, so the assets, audience signals, feed and exclusions matter more, not less. I keep brand traffic where it can be measured separately, and I check what the campaign is actually spending on rather than accepting the summary.

• Asset groups built around real themes
• Audience signals and feed configuration
• Brand exclusions and negative lists applied
• Placement and search category reporting reviewed
• Clear separation from standard Search campaigns

The page has to finish the job the ad started.

I look at the page a click lands on the way a stranger would: does it answer my search, does it load, is it obvious what to do next. Where the page is the bottleneck I will say so, and give you the specific changes rather than a vague note about conversion rate.

• Message match between ad and page
• Page speed and mobile behaviour checked
• Form length and friction review
• Call, enquiry and checkout paths tested
• Session recordings reviewed where useful