PPC that pays for itself.

A good ppc agency does far more than write ads and set budgets. The real work is deciding which searches you should pay for, which you should block, how each lead gets counted, and where the next unit of budget will do the most good. At Unified, paid media sits inside our advertising practice, run by the same in-house team that builds websites, tracking and CRM, so nothing falls between vendors.

Most accounts we inherit from another PPC agency are not broken in obvious ways. The ads run, the clicks come in, the monthly report shows a cost per conversion. The problem hides one layer down: conversions that count page views as leads, broad match keywords spending on job seekers, and nobody checking which calls became customers. Fixing that layer is what separates management from babysitting.

What you should expect from a PPC agency every month

• Search term reviews at least weekly in the first 90 days, with new negatives added from real queries, not a template list.
• Conversion tracking you can audit: a written list of what counts as a lead, where it fires, and how calls are measured.
• Budget moves with a reason: every shift between campaigns or platforms tied to cost per qualified lead, not clicks.
• Creative and landing page tests running at all times, one variable at a time, so you learn something each cycle.
• A plain-language report that names what worked, what did not and what changes next month.

Our Google Ads management page covers search, Performance Max and Shopping in detail, and paid social covers Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn. This guide is the buyer's view across all of them: which platform fits which job, how we structure an account, what an audit usually finds and how to judge any agency before you sign.

Pay-per-click is not one channel. Each platform reaches a different mindset, bills differently and needs different tracking. The table is how we decide where a new budget starts. Any PPC agency you hire should be able to explain why your budget starts where it does. Most local service businesses begin with Google Search and add the others once tracking proves which leads turn into revenue.

Microsoft lets you import campaigns directly from Google Ads, which makes it a low-effort second channel once Google is profitable. We still rebuild bids, negatives and ad copy for that audience instead of copying blindly. Local Services Ads bill per lead rather than per click, per Google Local Services Help, which changes how you manage them; our Local Services Ads guide walks through setup and disputes.

A rule we use: do not add Performance Max until Search has at least a few weeks of conversions you trust. Our Performance Max guide explains how to keep control once you do.

Structure is the first thing a PPC agency should fix, because it decides what you can control. When every service sits in one campaign, the cheapest service eats the budget and you cannot set a different target for each. We build campaigns around how your business makes money: one campaign per service line or margin tier, tight ad groups by theme, and locations set by where you actually take jobs.

How we structure a PPC account

1. Campaigns by service and value. Emergency repair and planned installs get separate campaigns and budgets, because their lead value is different.
2. Ad groups by intent theme. Each group has keywords that share one landing page and one message.
3. Keywords by match type on purpose. Exact and phrase for proven terms, broad only with Smart Bidding and a trusted conversion signal.
4. Shared negative lists. Account-wide lists for jobs, free, DIY and competitor names, plus campaign-level negatives to stop internal overlap.
5. One landing page per theme. Matching the search to the page raises relevance; our Quality Score guide explains why it matters.

Negative keywords: the part most accounts get wrong

Google's own negative keyword documentation carries a detail many advertisers miss: negative keywords do not match close variants. Blocking "job" does not block "jobs", and blocking "free" does not block "freebie". You have to add plurals, misspellings and synonyms yourself. Google also warns that too many negatives can shrink reach, so we add them from real search terms rather than giant downloaded lists.

Pair structure with landing pages built for the click. A generic homepage loses people the ad just won. Our landing page design team builds pages per campaign theme, and our Google Ads for small business guide shows a lean starter structure if you are spending carefully.

Bidding algorithms optimize toward whatever you tell them is a conversion. Google's Smart Bidding documentation describes how the system learns from conversion data, so bad data produces confident, wrong decisions. That is why every engagement starts with measurement. Our analytics and reporting team sets up GA4 key events, Google Ads conversions and the CRM connection before we touch bids.

Phone calls deserve special care. Google lists five ways to track call conversions, from calls on ads to calls imported from a CRM, and many accounts only count taps on a phone number, which says nothing about whether a real conversation happened. Our call tracking guide compares the methods. UnifiedIQ, our own platform, tracks every call and form back to its source and can send offline conversions to Google Ads, so bidding learns from leads that turned into customers.

Google's offline conversion import works by storing the click ID with each lead and sending it back when the sale happens. Google now recommends enhanced conversions for leads over the older method, and it is moving uploads to its Data Manager API, so check that whoever runs your account is current on the setup.

What our PPC agency audits find again and again

If you want the full picture before hiring any PPC agency, a marketing audit covers ads, tracking, site and SEO in one pass, with a written list of fixes ranked by impact.

Ask any PPC agency to show how it measures, not just what it reports. For Nusbaum Medical Centers, a medical weight loss and aesthetics group in New Jersey, the tracking we built recorded 1,645 inquiries in the past 12 months, each tied back to its source. For Aces Airboat Tours in the Everglades, we built 5 Google Ads campaigns alongside a 334-page site that logged 369 booking-button clicks in its first 2 months.

Regulated categories need extra care. For HonestyInsure.com, a health insurance site, we built 144 indexed pages and guides and 31 state pages, the kind of landing page depth a regulated category needs before any paid traffic is sent, because ad platform policies there are strict. If you are in medicine or insurance, our healthcare marketing page covers those rules.

Questions to ask any PPC agency

1. Who owns the ad account, and will I keep full admin access if we part ways?
2. Exactly which actions count as a conversion, and how are phone calls measured?
3. How often do you review search terms, and can I see the negative lists?
4. Who works on my account day to day, and how senior are they?
5. How do you connect ad clicks to what happened in my CRM?
6. What would make you recommend spending less?

Red flags when hiring a PPC agency

• The agency creates the account under its own name and will not hand over admin access.
• Reports show clicks, impressions and click-through rate, but never cost per qualified lead.
• Every client gets the same campaign template regardless of industry.
• Promises of first-position ads or fixed results before anyone has seen your data.

Industry matters too. A home services account lives on calls and emergency intent, while an ecommerce account lives on feeds and return on ad spend. When you are ready, talk to us and we will review your current account and tell you plainly what we would change first.