Search,PMax,YouTube,doneright.
Bottom-funnel intent capture with margin-aware ROAS, not vanity clicks. 5+ years a Google Premier Partner managing $61M+ in spend.
The realities behind the channel.
Highest-intent traffic on the internet
Buyers searching for what you sell. Bottom-funnel CPCs are expensive, but every other channel feeds back into Search's pipeline.
Performance Max isn't optional anymore
Google's algorithm runs across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Discovery, and Display by default. You either harness it or it harnesses you, and the first fork is Performance Max vs standard Shopping.
Quality Score is the silent killer
Bad Quality Scores raise CPCs 30-200%. Most accounts have leaks here their agency never mentions.
Every lever inside the channel.
Search campaigns
Intent-tested keywords, single-keyword ad groups where it matters, RSAs tuned by asset performance, negatives cleaned weekly.
Performance Max
Brand-exclusion always, which is how you fix PMax brand cannibalization, plus asset group structure by margin tier, signal sufficiency thresholds, and when to break PMax apart entirely.
Google Shopping
Feed audit (23-field health check), custom labels by promotability, bid segmentation by AOV tier.
YouTube Ads
Top-funnel discovery for cold audiences. Skippable in-stream for retargeting. Bumpers for brand recall.
Local Services Ads (LSA)
For law firms, home services, healthcare, where LSA vs Google Ads for lawyers is usually a both answer. Verification, review-velocity strategy, real-time suspension monitoring.
Conversion tracking
Server-side GTM, enhanced conversions, offline conversion imports, and for stores the Shopify and Google Ads purchase values that make value bidding work. The signal you need long after cookies are gone.
Four steps from audit to scale.
47-point account audit
A Google Ads strategist maps every dollar of wasted spend, every Quality Score leak, every missing conversion signal, before touching a single bid.
Architecture rebuild
Campaign structure, keyword segmentation, match types, audience layering, built around your margin tiers, not Google's recommended defaults.
Signal infrastructure
Server-side GTM, enhanced conversions, offline import. The tracking foundation every downstream optimization depends on.
Compounding optimisation
Weekly bid reviews, creative A/B rotation, negative keyword hygiene. Small gains compounding to the 697% lifts in our case files.
The leaks we find in 9 of 10 audits.
- Letting PMax cannibalize Shopping
- Targeting industry-average ROAS without checking margin
- Running broad match without strong negatives
- Trusting in-platform conversion data without server-side validation
- Ignoring Quality Score on top-spend keywords
- Forgetting to add brand exclusions in PMax
697% conversion lift in 90 days
McEldrew Young Purtell · Personal Injury Law
How we compare.
| What we optimise | Typical agency | iClick |
|---|---|---|
| Negative keyword cadence | Quarterly review | Weekly sweep + real-time alerts |
| Quality Score optimisation | Rarely actioned | Core of every account audit |
| PMax brand exclusion | Often skipped | Day 1, always |
| Conversion tracking | Browser pixel only | Enhanced + server-side GTM |
| ROAS targets | Client-set, rarely revisited | Margin-calculated, quarterly re-baseline |
| Reporting | Dashboard access | Raw data + written interpretation |
How much do you need to spend on Google Ads to see results?
There is no universal floor, but there is a practical one: enough monthly conversions for the bidding model to learn from, which in most accounts means 30 or more in a 30-day window. Below that, Smart Bidding is guessing and you are paying tuition. For a lot of businesses that lands somewhere around a 5K Google Ads strategy, not because the number is magic, but because it is usually the point where a single tightly-scoped campaign can gather enough signal to compound instead of thrash.
Should you run Google Ads in-house or hire an agency?
It depends less on budget than on whose full-time job it is. An account left to someone with other responsibilities drifts, and drift is expensive at Google Ads CPCs. If you have that person, how you can manage Google Ads in-house is a real option and often the cheaper one. If you do not, the honest comparison is freelancer vs agency for Google Ads: a freelancer is cheaper and single-threaded, an agency costs more and brings a bench. Neither beats the other on paper; they fail differently.
Google Ads or social ads first?
Search captures demand that already exists; social creates it. If people are already typing what you sell into Google, start there, because you are paying to meet intent rather than manufacture it. If nobody is searching for your category yet, Search has nothing to harvest and paid social does the heavier lifting. Most accounts eventually run both, and the Google Ads vs social media ads question turns into a budget-split question. Ad copy is not the differentiator it once was either, since how to write Google Ads using AI is now table stakes rather than an edge.
Common questions.
Channels that compound each other.
See what your account is leaving on the table.
47-point written audit. Five business days. No sales call.
