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PPC Management in Australia

PPC management means planning your paid search campaigns, building them, running them and improving them week after week so that every dollar of ad spend has a job to do. For most Australian businesses that means Google Ads first, then Microsoft Ads, Google Shopping and paid social once the search campaigns are stable. It is not a set-and-forget job. Auction prices move, competitors change their ad copy, search terms drift, and a campaign structure that worked in March can quietly start burning budget by June.

BoltClicks is a one-specialist agency. The person who audits your Google Ads account is the person who builds the campaigns, writes the ad copy, watches the search terms report and sends you the weekly report. There is no account manager relaying messages to a media buyer you never meet.

We work with businesses across Australia — Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast — as well as the UK and US. What we do not do is promise a position, a cost per lead or a return on investment before we have read your account. Any PPC agency quoting those numbers cold is quoting someone else’s account.

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What PPC management actually covers

“PPC management” gets used loosely, so here is the plain version. Pay per click advertising means you bid in an auction, your ad shows against a search query, and you pay when someone clicks. PPC management is everything that surrounds that: keyword research, campaign structure, bidding strategies, ad copy, landing pages, conversion tracking, negative keywords and the reporting that tells you whether any of it worked.

The recurring work

Week to week, PPC campaign management is mostly search terms analysis, negative keyword additions, bid management, budget pacing across campaigns, ad copy testing and checking that conversion tracking still fires. Google Ads changes its own defaults regularly, and Performance Max in particular will quietly expand where your ads appear unless someone is watching.

The periodic work

Every quarter the deeper work matters more: campaign structure review, audience and placement exclusions, landing page testing, competitor ad copy review, and a proper look at cost per lead and return on ad spend by campaign rather than by account.

What is included in PPC management with BoltClicks

Every account starts with an audit, because we will not change bidding strategies in an account we have not read.

Account audit and setup

Account structure, conversion tracking, keyword research, search terms history, negative keyword lists, ad extensions, geographic targeting, device performance and landing page relevance. If the tracking is broken, that gets fixed before anything else.

Ongoing campaign management

Building and restructuring campaigns and ad groups, writing and testing ad copy, managing bidding strategies, adding negative keywords, adjusting budgets between campaigns, and reviewing search terms so the account keeps getting more relevant rather than less.

Landing pages

Sending paid traffic to a slow or vague page is an expensive habit. We will tell you when the landing page is the problem, and we build landing pages when that is the fix. Quality Score is partly a landing page experience score, so this is not cosmetic.

Google Ads campaign performance dashboard on a laptop
Campaign performance is only as honest as the conversion tracking underneath it.

What a Google Ads audit looks at

Before we quote a management fee we read the account. An audit is not a PDF of screenshots — it is a list of what is costing you money and what we would change first.

Measurement first

Are conversions actually conversions? We check Google Tag Manager, GA4, the conversion actions themselves, whether phone calls and form submissions are both counted, whether duplicates are inflating the numbers, and whether any offline conversions or qualified leads are being imported back into Google Ads. If Smart Bidding is optimising towards a broken signal, nothing downstream can be trusted.

Where the money went

Search terms report across the last 90 days, wasted spend by match type, spend by campaign and ad group, device performance, geographic targeting against your actual service area, and dayparting. This is usually where the obvious savings sit.

Structure, ads and pages

Campaign structure and naming, keyword overlap between ad groups, ad copy relevance and ad extensions, Quality Score components, and whether the landing page matches the promise in the ad. A high cost per click is often a landing page experience problem wearing a bidding costume.

How PPC management pricing works in Australia

There are three common pricing models in the Australian market, and it is worth knowing which one you are being quoted.

Percentage of ad spend

A management fee set at a percentage of ad spend, commonly 10–20%. It is simple, but it rewards the agency for spending more of your money, which is an awkward incentive.

Fixed monthly fee

A flat management fee agreed in writing before the work starts. Costs are predictable and the incentive is to improve results rather than to increase spend. This is what we do.

Performance-based

A base fee plus a share of results. It sounds fair and occasionally is, but it depends entirely on both sides agreeing what counts as a conversion, and on attribution nobody disputes.

What PPC management costs

Australian PPC management fees vary widely because the work varies widely. A single-location service business with one search campaign is not the same job as a national ecommerce catalogue running Google Shopping across thousands of SKUs.

Our fees are fixed monthly and agreed in writing before any work begins, starting from £650 per month. We invoice in GBP or USD. Your ad spend is separate and always stays in your own Google Ads account, on your own card — we never take control of your budget, and we never mark it up.

What actually drives the number

Number of campaigns and channels, whether Google Shopping or a product feed is involved, how many locations and service lines need separate campaign structures, whether conversion tracking exists or needs rebuilding, and whether landing pages are part of the scope.

What we will not do

We do not take a percentage of ad spend, we do not lock you into a twelve-month contract, and we do not guarantee positions or a specific cost per lead before we have seen the account. Anyone who guarantees a number before reading your search terms report is guessing.

The first 90 days

Paid search gives you data faster than SEO does, but it still needs a run-up before the numbers mean anything.

Weeks 1–2: audit and repair

Full account audit, conversion tracking rebuilt where needed, negative keyword lists applied, obvious waste stopped, and a baseline recorded so we can show what changed.

Weeks 3–6: structure and testing

Campaign structure rebuilt where it needs to be, ad copy variants live, bidding strategies set deliberately rather than left on defaults, and landing page issues flagged or fixed.

Weeks 7–12: optimisation

Budget moved towards the campaigns and search terms that convert, weaker segments paused, audience and placement exclusions tightened, and the first genuine read on cost per lead and return on ad spend by campaign.

PPC reporting on a tablet with printed reports showing an Australia map
Reporting should say what changed and why — not just what the dashboard already shows.

Reporting you can actually read

You get a written report every week, in plain English. Not a dashboard link, not an automated PDF of Google Ads screenshots.

What is in it

What was changed and why, what the ad spend bought, cost per lead and conversion rate by campaign, which search terms were added or excluded, and what happens next week. If something went backwards, it says so.

Access and ownership

The Google Ads account stays yours. We work through partner access, so you can see every change in the account history and you can remove our access at any time without losing the account, the data or the campaigns.

Who this suits — and who it does not

PPC management with a one-specialist agency suits Australian businesses that want the person doing the work to be the person they talk to. It suits service businesses, professional services, trades and small ecommerce catalogues where the buying decision is real and measurable.

Trades and local service businesses

Plumbers, electricians, pest control, removalists and similar trades usually live or die on cost per lead and call volume. The work is location targeting done properly, call tracking that actually attributes, negative keywords to keep job-seekers and DIY searches out, and ad scheduling around when the phone can be answered. Local Services Ads are worth testing alongside search campaigns in the larger capitals.

Professional services and B2B

Longer sales cycles mean the conversion you optimise towards is rarely the sale. Enquiry quality matters more than enquiry volume, so offline conversion imports and lead scoring do more good than another round of bid tweaks. Microsoft Ads and LinkedIn Ads tend to earn their place here.

Ecommerce

Google Shopping and a clean product feed do most of the heavy lifting. Feed quality — titles, product types, GTINs, availability — moves performance more than bidding strategies do. Performance Max can work well for ecommerce, provided brand traffic is excluded so it is not taking credit for sales you already had.

It probably is not for you if

You want a large team with separate strategists, media buyers and account managers. You want a guaranteed cost per lead in writing before an audit. Or your monthly ad spend is small enough that a management fee would swallow most of the budget — in that case we will say so rather than take the work.

Taking over an existing account

What we ask for

Partner access to Google Ads, view access to GA4 and Search Console, admin on Google Tag Manager, and Merchant Center access if you sell products. No passwords change hands.

What we do not do

We do not delete campaigns to start clean. Historical performance data, conversion history and learning are worth keeping even when the structure is poor. We rebuild alongside and migrate spend as the new campaigns prove themselves.

The handover if you leave

Everything stays in your account. Remove our partner access and you keep the campaigns, the ad copy, the negative keyword lists, the conversion actions and the full history. There is nothing to transfer because nothing was ever ours.

What we need from you

At the start

Partner access, a clear picture of which services or products actually make money, your average deal value and close rate if you know them, your service areas, and any locations, seasons or customer types you would rather not attract.

Every month

Ten minutes to read the report and tell us whether the enquiries were any good. That single piece of feedback — enquiry quality, not enquiry count — is worth more than every dashboard metric combined, and it is the thing agencies most often fail to ask for.

When something changes

Price changes, stock issues, new services, staff shortages, a van off the road, a promotion the sales team invented on Friday. Paid search reacts in hours; it just needs to be told.

Choosing a PPC agency in Australia

Whether or not you work with us, these questions separate a competent PPC agency from an expensive one.

Ask about ownership

Who owns the Google Ads account? Who owns the conversion data, the campaigns and the historical performance? If you leave, do you keep them? An agency that builds in its own MCC and will not release the account is holding your ad spend history hostage.

Ask about the fee

Is it a fixed management fee or a percentage of ad spend? Is the ad spend marked up? Are there setup fees, minimum terms, or exit fees? Ask for the number in writing before the work starts.

Ask who does the work

Will the person in the pitch meeting be the person in the account? Is the work done in-house or outsourced offshore? How many accounts does one specialist handle? These questions tell you more about campaign performance than any case study will.

Ask what happens when it goes wrong

Every account has a bad month. What does the agency do about it — pause and diagnose, or quietly move budget and hope? The answer says everything.

Should you manage Google Ads yourself?

When in-house makes sense

If you have someone with the time to sit in the account weekly, a simple offer, one location and a modest budget, running it yourself is entirely reasonable. Google’s own onboarding is decent, and the Skillshop certifications are free. The risk is not incompetence — it is that the account becomes nobody’s actual job and quietly drifts.

When it stops making sense

Multiple locations, several service lines, a product feed, seasonal swings, or spend high enough that a 20% efficiency gain pays a management fee several times over. At that point the question is not whether you can do it, but whether it is the best use of your week.

The hybrid

Some businesses keep the day-to-day in-house and buy a quarterly audit and strategy session instead, which we run as a smaller retainer. That is a legitimate arrangement and we are happy to work that way where it genuinely suits.

Google search open on a tablet on a desk
Google Ads carries most Australian search demand, but it is rarely the only channel worth running.

Google Ads carries most Australian search demand, so that is where we start. But it is rarely the only channel worth running.

Google Search and Google Shopping

Search campaigns for high-intent queries, Google Shopping for ecommerce catalogues, and Performance Max only where it earns its place and can be given proper asset groups, audience signals and brand exclusions.

Microsoft Ads

Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) is smaller but often cheaper per click, and the audience skews older and more desktop-based. For professional services and B2B in particular it is worth importing campaigns and testing rather than ignoring.

Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads

Paid social works differently from paid search — you are interrupting rather than answering. We run Meta Ads for demand generation and remarketing, and LinkedIn Ads where the buyer is genuinely defined by job title and company size.

Remarketing and the Display Network

Remarketing is the cheapest audience you will ever buy, because those potential customers have already been to your website. Display ads and YouTube work for brand awareness and for bringing back abandoned enquiries, but they are a supporting act — we would not build a paid advertising strategy on display campaigns alone, and we would not let them take credit for conversions that search campaigns earned.

Search

Text ads matched to search queries. Highest intent, easiest to attribute, and where almost every account should begin. Responsive search ads with pinned headlines where the message must not move, plus sitelink, callout, structured snippet, call and location assets.

Shopping and Performance Max

Shopping campaigns pull titles, images and prices from a Merchant Center product feed. Feed optimisation — accurate product titles, product types, brand, GTIN, availability and sale price — usually outperforms bid tweaking. Performance Max layers automation across every surface and suits retailers with a healthy feed and enough conversion volume to train it.

Demand Gen, Video and Discovery

YouTube and Demand Gen campaigns build awareness at the top of the funnel. They are measured on assisted conversions and view-through, not last-click, so judging them on the same dashboard as search campaigns will always make them look like a failure.

Local Services Ads

For eligible trades and home services in the major cities, Local Services Ads sit above the search ads and charge per lead rather than per click. Google Guaranteed badging requires background and licence checks, which is a barrier and also a moat.

How PPC fits with the rest of your marketing

Paid search rarely operates alone. Understanding where it sits stops you paying twice for the same customer.

PPC and SEO

Search engine marketing covers both. SEO services — technical SEO, local SEO, content marketing — build a compounding asset that keeps producing after you stop paying. PPC advertising buys visibility in the search results immediately and stops the day you switch it off. The useful trick is to run Google Ads campaigns first, find which keywords genuinely convert, then point your SEO strategy at those rather than guessing.

PPC and paid social

Facebook Ads, Instagram and LinkedIn Ads generate demand; paid search captures it. If nobody is searching for what you sell yet, social media marketing has to create the awareness before search campaigns have anything to catch. For established categories, the reverse is true and paid media budget belongs in search first.

PPC and your website

Website design and landing page quality set the ceiling on everything else. You can improve campaign performance with better ad copy and audience targeting, but if the page loads slowly on mobile, buries the phone number and asks for eleven form fields, conversion rates stay low no matter how good the campaigns are.

Why Australian businesses waste ad spend

Most of the wasted spend we find in a Google Ads audit comes from the same handful of causes, and none of them are exotic.

Broad match with no negative keyword list

Broad match keywords with automated bidding and no negative keywords is the fastest way to pay for search terms that were never going to convert. A plumber in Brisbane paying for “plumbing apprenticeship” is not a hypothetical.

Conversion tracking that is not measuring conversions

If your conversion tracking counts page views, form loads or phone number clicks that nobody completed, then Smart Bidding is being optimised towards the wrong signal. Fixing measurement before touching bids is usually the single highest-value change in an account.

One campaign carrying every product and every location

A single campaign covering Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and the Gold Coast, with ten unrelated services in it, cannot be budgeted or bid on sensibly. Campaign structure is not tidiness for its own sake — it is how you control where the money goes.

Common Google Ads mistakes we see

Leaving everything on default

The Search Partners network switched on without testing, Display Network expansion enabled inside a search campaign, automatically applied recommendations turned on, auto-applied ad suggestions rewriting your ad copy, and location targeting set to “presence or interest” so you pay for clicks from other states.

Brand and non-brand in one campaign

Brand traffic converts cheaply and makes every average look good. Mixed into the same campaign as cold prospecting, it hides poor performance and inflates reported ROAS. Split them, always.

Changing too much at once

Rewriting ad copy, changing bidding strategies, restructuring campaigns and moving budget in the same week means you learn nothing. Change one variable, give the learning period time, then read the result.

Judging too early

Smart Bidding needs conversion volume before it settles. Pausing a campaign after nine days because the cost per acquisition looked high is how accounts end up permanently in a learning phase.

Conversion tracking done properly

Measurement is the part most accounts get wrong, and it is the part that decides whether everything else is guesswork.

The tracking stack

Google Tag Manager to fire the tags, GA4 for behaviour and attribution, and Google Ads conversion actions for the numbers that drive bidding. Consent Mode matters for Australian visitors under the Privacy Act, and enhanced conversions recover some of the signal lost to browser restrictions and ad blockers.

Counting the right things

Form submissions, phone calls over a minimum duration, live chat enquiries, quote requests, bookings and, for ecommerce, purchases with revenue values attached. Newsletter signups and PDF downloads are worth tracking but should not be the conversion Smart Bidding chases.

Closing the loop offline

For anything with a sales cycle, the enquiry is not the outcome. Offline conversion imports push the qualified leads and closed deals from your CRM back into Google Ads, so bidding optimises towards revenue rather than form fills. It is the single biggest improvement available to most lead generation accounts, and almost nobody does it.

Writing ad copy that earns the click

Say the specific thing

Generic headlines — “quality service”, “trusted professionals”, “affordable prices” — cost the same per click as headlines that actually say something. Suburb names, response times, price ranges, licence numbers, warranty length and genuine differentiators all outperform adjectives.

Match the search intent

Somebody typing “emergency electrician near me” at 11pm wants availability, not a company history. Somebody typing “electrician quote” wants a price signal. The same ad group serving both is compromising on each.

Use the assets

Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call assets, location assets, price assets, promotion assets and image assets all increase the physical size of your ad in the search results. More space means more attention, and the assets themselves are free.

Test properly

Run at least three responsive search ads per ad group, pin only what genuinely must not move, and read the asset-level performance ratings before deciding a headline failed. Statistical patience beats weekly rewriting.

Landing pages that convert paid traffic

Message match

The headline on the landing page should repeat the promise in the ad. If somebody clicks an ad for emergency plumbing and lands on a generic homepage listing bathroom renovations, the click is wasted regardless of how well the campaign was built.

Speed and mobile

Most Australian paid search traffic is mobile. Core Web Vitals, image compression, render-blocking scripts and third-party tags all cost you conversions before anyone reads a word. A one-second delay is measurable in your conversion rate.

Friction

Short forms, a visible phone number, obvious trust signals, pricing guidance rather than “contact us for a quote”, and one clear call to action per page. Every extra field is an invitation to leave.

Testing

A/B testing headlines, offers, form length and social proof teaches you more about your market than any keyword report. Test one element at a time and give each variant enough traffic to mean something.

Proof that reads as real

Australian buyers are sceptical of stock photography and unnamed testimonials. Named clients, real project photos, an ABN, a licence number, genuine Google reviews and clear service areas do more for conversion rates than another trust badge. If you have measurable results you are allowed to publish, publish them — and if you do not yet, say what you do instead of inventing a statistic.

Audiences, attribution and the quieter levers

Audience segments

Customer Match uploads your existing customer list so you can bid differently on people who already bought. Similar segments extend that reach. In-market and affinity audiences let you layer observation data onto search campaigns without narrowing them, which tells you who is converting before you decide who to target.

Bid adjustments

Device, location, ad schedule, audience and demographic adjustments still matter even under automated bidding, because they shape the signals the algorithm learns from. Mobile converting at half the rate of desktop is a landing page brief, not just a bid adjustment.

Attribution models

Last-click attribution flatters brand campaigns and starves everything upstream. Data-driven attribution spreads credit across the path, which changes what looks profitable. Whichever model you choose, keep it consistent — half the arguments about channel performance are really arguments about attribution windows.

Automation and scripts

Google Ads scripts can flag broken landing page URLs, alert on budget overspend, catch disapproved ads and monitor Quality Score drops overnight. Automation is useful for detection. Decisions still need a person.

Setting a realistic budget

Start from the maths, not the wallet

Work backwards: what is a customer worth, what share of enquiries close, and what cost per lead still leaves a margin? Multiply out and you have a monthly ad spend that makes sense, rather than a number picked because it sounded safe.

Give the account enough data

A budget so small that a campaign gets a handful of clicks a week will never produce a reliable signal. It is usually better to run one tightly focused campaign properly than five campaigns starved of budget.

Keep budget for the landing page

If the choice is between more ad spend and a better landing page, the page usually wins. Improving conversion rate lifts every campaign at once; more spend only buys more of the same result.

The numbers worth reporting

Leading indicators

Impressions, click-through rate, average cost per click, impression share and search terms quality tell you whether the campaigns are healthy. They move quickly and they warn you early.

Lagging indicators

Cost per lead, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend and lifetime value tell you whether the money was well spent. They move slowly and they are the ones your accountant cares about.

The metrics that mislead

Impressions on their own, clicks on their own, average position (which no longer exists), and any conversion count that includes duplicates or micro-conversions. A rising click volume with a flat enquiry count is not growth.

What we check every month

The monthly rhythm is deliberately boring, because boring is what keeps an account healthy.

Spend and structure

Budget pacing by campaign, spend by ad group, impression share lost to budget, impression share lost to rank, auction insights against competitors, geographic targeting versus your service area, device bid adjustments, ad scheduling, and whether any campaign is quietly eating the account.

Keywords and search terms

New search terms, wasted spend by search query, match type performance, keyword overlap between ad groups, negative keyword list hygiene, keyword research for new opportunities, and search volume shifts driven by seasonality.

Ads, assets and pages

Ad copy performance, headline and description testing, ad extensions and sitelinks, asset group quality in Performance Max, Quality Score movement, landing page speed on mobile, form completion rate and call tracking accuracy.

Reading the competition

Auction insights

The auction insights report shows which domains you share impressions with, their impression share, overlap rate, position above rate and outranking share. It is the fastest way to find out whether a new entrant is bidding up your terms or whether an old rival has quietly withdrawn.

Ad copy and offers

Reading competitor ad copy tells you what the market is promising: free quotes, same-day service, price guarantees, finance options, no call-out fee. If everyone says the same thing, the opportunity is to say something specific and true instead.

Landing page teardown

Look at where competitors send the click, what their form asks for, whether they show pricing, and what proof they use. You are not copying — you are working out what the searcher has already been shown three times before they reach you.

B2B and B2C run differently

B2C

Shorter consideration, higher volume, and conversions that happen in-session. Optimise for cost per acquisition and return on ad spend, watch the shopping campaigns and the product feed, and expect weekends and evenings to carry real demand.

B2B

Longer sales cycles, smaller search volume, higher value per customer and enquiry quality that varies enormously. Business hours ad scheduling, LinkedIn Ads for role-based targeting, offline conversion imports to teach Google which enquiries were real, and patience with a cost per lead that looks alarming until you divide it by deal value.

Seasonality in the Australian market

Australian search demand has its own rhythm, and pacing budget without accounting for it wastes money.

End of financial year

The lead-up to 30 June drives genuine demand for equipment, vehicles, professional services and anything with a tax deduction attached. Competition and cost per click both climb, and budgets set in April are usually wrong by June.

Retail peaks

Black Friday and Cyber Monday now matter as much here as overseas, followed by Christmas trading and Boxing Day sales. Shopping campaigns need feed accuracy, stock availability and budget headroom before the peak, not during it.

Seasonal trades

Air conditioning, pool servicing, roofing and pest control all swing hard with the weather. Ad scheduling and budget pacing should follow the demand curve rather than sitting flat across the year.

Public holidays and school terms

State-based public holidays and school holiday periods move search behaviour differently in each state, and a national campaign averaged across all of them hides that. Travel, education, childcare and home services all shift with the school calendar, and the smart move is to check your own historical data by state rather than trust a generic seasonality chart.

Policy, compliance and the awkward bits

Australian Consumer Law

Claims in ad copy have to be substantiated. “Cheapest in Australia”, “guaranteed results” and “number one” are the kind of statements the ACCC takes an interest in, and they are also the kind of statements that get ads disapproved. We write claims you can back up.

Restricted categories

Healthcare, finance, gambling, alcohol and legal services all carry extra Google Ads policy requirements, and some need verification or certification before ads can run at all. Getting this wrong means suspension, not a warning.

Ad disapprovals and account suspensions

Most disapprovals are trivial to fix once you can read the policy reason. Suspensions are harder, and the appeal process rewards precise, evidenced submissions rather than repeated resubmission. It is a large part of what we do on the Meta Business Manager side as well.

Tools we actually use

Google’s own stack

Google Ads Editor for bulk changes, Keyword Planner for volume and forecasts, Merchant Center for product feeds, Search Console for organic context, Google Analytics 4 for behaviour, Google Tag Manager for tag deployment and Looker Studio for reporting.

Third-party

A third-party rank tracker for keyword research and competitor visibility, and call tracking where phone enquiries matter more than form fills. We do not resell software licences or bundle tool costs into the management fee.

A note on AI, automation and what has actually changed

What the automation genuinely does well

Smart Bidding reads signals no human can process at auction speed — device, time, location, browser, historical behaviour — and prices each auction individually. Broad match with strong conversion data now finds queries that exact match lists would never have contained. This is real progress, not marketing.

What still needs a person

Deciding what a conversion is worth. Deciding which customers you do not want. Reading a search terms report and recognising a category of query that will never convert. Writing something specific and true. Telling a client their landing page is the problem. None of that is automated yet.

AI Overviews and the changing search results

AI Overviews and AI Mode are reshaping how many people click through from organic search results, which pushes more attention towards the paid positions. It also makes the informational content that used to attract organic traffic less reliable as a lead source. For most Australian businesses that increases, not decreases, the case for a properly managed paid search account.

PPC terms, in plain English

Paid search has a lot of jargon. Here is what the terms on your reports actually mean.

Cost and bidding

Cost per click (CPC) — what you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Cost per lead (CPL) — total ad spend divided by enquiries. Cost per acquisition (CPA) — the same idea, measured to a sale. Bidding strategies — the rules Google uses to bid for you, from manual CPC through to Target CPA, Target ROAS and Maximise Conversions. Bid management — the ongoing work of choosing and adjusting those rules.

Performance

Return on ad spend (ROAS) — revenue divided by ad spend. Return on investment — profit rather than revenue, which is the number that actually matters. Conversion rate — the share of clicks that become enquiries or sales. Click-through rate (CTR) — the share of impressions that become clicks. Impression share — how often your ads showed out of how often they could have.

Structure and quality

Campaign structure — how campaigns and ad groups are organised so budget and bids can be controlled. Quality Score — Google’s 1–10 rating of expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience. Negative keywords — terms you block so your ads stop showing for them. Match type — how loosely Google matches a search query to your keyword: broad, phrase or exact.

Channels and formats

Search campaigns — text ads in the search results. Google Shopping — product listings driven by a product feed. Performance Max — a single campaign type that spans Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Display ads — banner placements across the Google Display Network. Remarketing — ads shown to people who already visited your website.

Related reading: ads in AI Overviews and what they are doing to Shopping ad CTR, how AI Overviews are changing organic clicks, and the UK PPC page for the same service run for British businesses.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I spend on Google Ads in Australia?

Enough for the account to gather data. Cost per click varies enormously by industry — legal, trades and finance sit far above retail — so the honest answer is that we look at the auction insights and keyword costs for your terms before recommending a number.

How long before PPC works?

You will see clicks immediately and useful data within a few weeks. Reliable read on cost per lead and return on ad spend usually takes 60–90 days, because Smart Bidding needs conversion volume before it stabilises.

Do I need SEO as well as PPC?

They do different jobs. Paid search buys visibility now and can be switched off; search engine optimisation compounds slowly and keeps working. Most businesses eventually want both, but starting with paid search tells you which keywords actually convert before you invest in ranking for them.

Can you work with my existing Google Ads account?

Yes, and we prefer to. The account history, the search terms report and the conversion data are worth keeping. We request partner access rather than asking you to hand over your login.

Is there a lock-in contract?

No. Fees are paid monthly in advance and you can cancel with notice. There is no lock-in period and no exit fee.

Who pays for the ad spend?

You do, directly to Google. Your ad spend sits in your own Google Ads account on your own payment method. We are never in the middle of it, so there is nothing to reconcile and no mark-up to argue about. The management fee is the only thing you pay us.

What is a good conversion rate for Google Ads?

It depends far more on the offer and the landing page than on the campaign. Comparing your conversion rate to an industry benchmark you read somewhere is less useful than comparing this month to last month in your own account, on the same campaigns, with the same tracking.

Should I use Performance Max?

Sometimes. It can find demand that search campaigns miss, particularly for ecommerce with a healthy product feed. But it needs brand exclusions, deliberate asset groups and audience signals, and honest reporting — otherwise it absorbs budget from campaigns that were already working and reports their conversions as its own.

Which industries have the highest cost per click in Australia?

Legal, insurance, finance, cosmetic and dental typically sit at the expensive end, because a single client is worth a great deal. Hospitality, fitness and general retail sit lower. High cost per click is not automatically bad — it is only a problem when the margin cannot carry it.

Can PPC work alongside Local Services Ads and organic listings?

Yes, and it often should. Appearing in the Local Services Ads block, the search ads and the local pack at once is not wasteful duplication — it is three chances at the same searcher, and the incremental cost is usually lower than the incremental enquiries.

What happens to my campaigns during a quiet season?

We reduce spend rather than switch off. A paused campaign loses momentum and re-enters the learning phase when it restarts, which costs more than simply running lean through the quiet months.

Do you require a minimum ad spend?

No fixed minimum, but we will say plainly when a budget is too small for management to be worth paying for. Sending you away is cheaper for both of us than taking a fee that eats the results.

How is this different from a big agency?

Scale, mostly. A large agency brings more people, more process and more capacity for enterprise accounts. A one-specialist agency brings direct access, faster decisions and no layer between you and the account. Neither is better in the abstract — they suit different businesses.

Do you work with businesses outside the capital cities?

Yes. Paid search does not care whether you are in Sydney, Adelaide, Newcastle, Geelong or a regional town — it cares whether there is search demand for what you sell and whether your geographic targeting matches your service area. Thin search volume is a real constraint in some regional markets, and we will tell you if that is the case for your terms.

Talk to the person who will run your account

If you want a straight read on your Google Ads account — what is working, what is wasting spend, and whether PPC management is worth paying for at your current budget — send it over. You will get an honest answer, including “your account is fine, save your money” if that is the truth.

What the audit covers

A written review of your account structure, wasted ad spend, conversion tracking accuracy, keyword and search term quality, ad copy relevance and landing page fit — plus the three changes we would make first and what we would expect them to do. No obligation, no sales call required, and you keep the document whether or not you work with us.

How to start

Send through partner access to your Google Ads account, or just the account ID and we will send the request. If you are starting from scratch with no account yet, tell us what you sell, where you sell it and what a customer is worth, and we will tell you whether paid search is the right first channel — or whether your money is better spent elsewhere for now.

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