Ads: managed Google Ads service

A managed Google Ads service means a team runs your ad account for you: structure, keywords, ads, bids, tracking and reporting. You pay for the work on top of the media budget that goes to Google.

Most agencies describe this work in the same terms. The real differences sit elsewhere: how changes reach your account, what protects your budget, and whether your sales data reaches the bidding algorithm. La Boétie runs Ads as a managed service built on its own operator tooling, so every campaign starts as a reviewed definition in code.

Google and Meta share the same mutation gate. On Meta, the tooling covers the engine and offline conversions, and account work depends on your setup.

Most ad accounts change through clicks in an interface, so nobody can later say who changed what or why. In this service, every change is prepared and reviewed before it applies, and campaigns start only once tracking is confirmed.

Every write to your account follows the same protections.

Google's published rules let a campaign spend up to twice its daily budget on one day, and they cap the month at about 30.4 times that budget. A daily budget of 50 euros can therefore reach 100 euros in a day, and 1,520 euros in a month. The daily setting alone is a weak limit for a small account.

The service adds a hard monthly stop that lives inside your account, so it keeps working even if the studio's own systems go down. Campaigns your team paused by hand stay paused.

Search volume alone is a poor guide, because a high volume keyword can bring readers who will never buy. The tooling pulls Keyword Planner data and classifies each term by intent.

Negative keywords stop your ads from showing on searches that waste budget. They often do more for a small account than a new keyword.

Google decides whether a search matches your keyword according to the match type.

Broad match relies on signals from your conversion data. An account with few conversions gives it little to learn from, and search term reviews become essential. The studio sets a match type per keyword in the definition, so the choice stays visible.

Bidding sets what you pay in each auction.

CPA means cost per acquisition. Automated bidding optimises toward the conversion you give it, so tracking quality affects results more than the choice of strategy.

A responsive search ad holds up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90 characters. Google tests combinations and shows the ones it expects to perform. Each ad group can carry several ads.

Quality Score is Google's 1 to 10 estimate of how well your keyword, ad and landing page fit one another. It has three parts: expected click rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Clicks that land on a generic home page tend to convert poorly, so each ad group should point at the page that answers its search.

A strong landing page for paid traffic has these parts:

• A heading that repeats what the visitor searched
• One action, visible on a phone without scrolling
• Proof that fits the offer, such as real work or real reviews
• Fast loading on a mobile connection
• A form that captures the click identifier with the lead

The studio also builds sites, so it can change the page and the campaign together when a brief covers both. Basis builds a site from a chat conversation for a business that has none.

Each language gets its own campaign, with its own keywords, ads and landing page. Mixing languages in one ad group blurs the data and sends people to pages they cannot read. The one live account behind this service runs in Hebrew, English and French from a single definition, which keeps the structure consistent across all three.

A click on a form says little about revenue. A lead can look good on the website and turn out worthless on the phone. Offline conversion tracking sends the real outcome back to the ad platform: the lead qualified, the deal closed, the contract signed.

The tooling uploads those outcomes to Google and to Meta. Smart bidding then learns from sales and stops optimising for form fills.

The setup needs three things from your side.

1. A way to capture the click identifier with each lead.
2. A CRM or sheet that records the outcome.
3. A regular export or an API connection.

Each stage of your sales process can become one conversion action.

Automated bidding needs volume, and two signed deals a month give it little data. Most small accounts should upload qualified leads.

The upload pairs each outcome with the visitor's Google click id. Hashed email and phone values can improve matching. The Meta side uses its own offline conversion path.

Check your consent setup first. Click identifiers and customer data are personal data in Europe, so your privacy policy and consent flow must cover them.

A report that arrives once a month shows a problem four weeks late. The daily report compares each campaign with the rest of the account and flags any campaign whose cost per lead runs over twice the median. The report reaches your team each morning.

Five numbers tell you most of what you need.

Set up tracking before the first campaign starts.

1. Decide what counts as a lead: a form, a call, a booking.
2. Create the conversion action in the account.
3. Place the tag on the confirmation step.
4. Store the click id with each lead in your CRM or sheet.
5. Send a test lead and confirm it appears.
6. Mark form views and page views as secondary, or remove them.

A common fault is a conversion counted on page load, so each refresh counts twice. Another is a tag that fires on the form view. Compare the leads in Google Ads with the leads in your inbox for the first week.

Agencies usually charge in one of three ways.

Ask for the fee and the media budget as separate lines, and check that the account belongs to you. The studio quotes each engagement after reading the brief, and has no public price list.

Review the search terms report every week in the first months. These groups often appear for service businesses.

Check each word against your offer before adding it. A training company must keep "course".

A useful test needs enough clicks to show a pattern. Start from your numbers.

These figures illustrate the sum. Keyword Planner gives estimated bids for your own market. If the budget cannot reach about 30 leads in a month or two, narrow the campaign to one service and one area.

Open the account and look for these.

1. Search terms show many queries unrelated to your offer.
2. Conversions count page views or button clicks in place of real leads.
3. One campaign mixes several services, so one ad serves them all.
4. Ads send every visitor to the home page.
5. Nobody can say who made the last change.
6. The reported cost per lead has no link to what sales sees.
7. Spend passed the planned amount in a recent month.

Items 2 and 6 cost the most, because automated bidding then spends toward the wrong goal.

Most service businesses should start where demand already exists, which usually means search. Meta becomes useful once you can tell a good lead from a poor one, because offline conversions give it the signal it lacks.

1. You send a brief with your market, budget and current numbers.
2. The studio reads your account, or plans a new one, and proposes a structure.
3. Conversion tracking goes in first, including the click identifier on your forms.
4. The definition goes through a dry run, and you can read the report.
5. Campaigns go live in a paused state, then start once tracking is confirmed.
6. The daily report and search term review begin.

Keep ownership of your Google Ads account and your conversion data. When an agency owns the account, leaving it can cost you the history your campaigns learned from. With this service, the account stays yours and the agency access is a link you can remove.

1. Who owns the account and the data?
2. How do you test a change before it goes live?
3. What stops a budget overrun, and where does that stop run?
4. Do you upload offline conversions?
5. How often do you review search terms?
6. Which number do you report as success?
7. What happens to the campaigns if we stop working together?

This report shows what people typed before they clicked. Read it with four questions.

Work through the terms with the most spend first. Decide on terms with several clicks and no lead first.

Demand moves through the year. Compare with the same period last year where you have data, and use Keyword Planner trends where you do not. Adjust budgets ahead of each seasonal change, since automated bidding takes time to react. Tell the team about promotions and closures, so ads never promise something you cannot deliver.

Count a call as a conversion only past a minimum length, so wrong numbers stay out of your leads.

Stop or rework a campaign when its cost per qualified lead stays above what a customer is worth to you, after you have fixed tracking, search terms and the landing page. Work out that figure first.

The example is illustrative. Use your own numbers before you set a target.

1. Confirm that conversions still fire.
2. Compare leads in Google Ads with leads in your CRM.
3. Read search terms and add negatives.
4. Pause keywords with spend and no qualified leads.
5. Read ad performance and replace the weakest lines.
6. Check landing page speed on a phone.
7. Review budget against the coming month.

Some businesses should wait. A very low search volume in your area leaves little to buy. A sale worth less than your likely cost per lead cannot pay back. An offer that people do not yet search for usually needs content or social first. Fix these before you spend on clicks.

1. Which service earns the best margin?
2. Which towns or regions do you want to win?
3. Who answers calls and forms, and how fast?
4. What counts as a qualified lead in your business?
5. What is the most you can pay for one?
6. Which claims are you allowed to make in your sector?

A written answer to each saves weeks of testing, and it gives the team one shared target.

Most small service businesses should start with Search. Other types work better once tracking holds up and you know what a good lead looks like.

Use numbers you can prove. Repeat the searcher's words in a headline, and give one clear action. Claims need support on the landing page, and Google can reject an ad that makes one the page cannot back.

Test messages one at a time: price against speed, guarantee against experience. Replace the weakest line every few weeks, and keep notes on what won.

Bidding on a rival's brand name is allowed in many markets, though using their trademark in your ad text can be restricted. These clicks tend to cost more and convert less, since the searcher wanted someone else. Test it on a small budget with an honest comparison page, and stop if the cost per qualified lead runs high.

Remarketing shows ads to people who already visited your site. It suits long decisions, such as renovation or professional services. It needs consent in Europe, enough visitors to fill a list, and a frequency limit, since a repeated ad annoys people.

1. How many qualified leads did we get, and at what cost?
2. How many became customers?
3. What did we learn from search terms?
4. What changed in the account, and why?
5. What will we test next month?

A short written answer to these five tells you more than a long report.