The routine
How a Birmingham account is run here
Ninety days in four phases, then the same week every week
Every account, whatever the sector or the spend band, runs to the same routine: fourteen days to build or repair, a fortnight to cut the waste, a month to feed the bidding clean data, and a month to judge the result and decide. After that the weekly read and the monthly report repeat until you stop them. The 3-month minimum exists because the routine takes that long to produce a number worth trusting, and no longer.
The first ninety days
Four phases, each with a job and a thing you see at the end of it
The phases are the same whether the account is new or inherited from another Birmingham agency; an inherited account simply has more to remove in the second phase.
Days 0 to 14
Build, or repair
The structure is agreed with you in writing before anything spends: campaigns by goal and budget, ad groups by intent, keywords at phrase and exact match. Tracking is installed and proved with a real test call and a real test form. Negatives are seeded for the sector and for the West Midlands towns outside your patch. Ads are written for every ad group and you approve them. Every setting is checked against your business rather than Google's defaults. You see: the plan, the test results, the live ads.
Days 15 to 30
Cut the waste
The first fortnight's search terms are read line by line and the searches that could not buy are excluded. The schedule is moved to the hours somebody answers. The location option is confirmed as people physically in the area. Bids stay on Maximise Clicks or manual while the conversion data builds. You see: a short note if anything needs your decision, and the change history filling up.
Days 31 to 60
Feed the bidding
With clean conversions arriving, bidding moves to Maximise Conversions and, where the numbers justify it, a target cost per enquiry. The landing page is changed where the data points: a heading, the form length, the position of the number. The first written report arrives at the end of the month, with the worth line waiting for your answer. You see: the report, and the first cost per enquiry.
Days 61 to 90
Judge, and decide
Cost per enquiry against what an enquiry is worth to you, campaign by campaign. Impression share says whether more budget would buy more enquiries or just more expensive ones. The report at day ninety recommends one of three things in plain words: spend more, spend less, or stop. You see: the decision, with the numbers that made it.
Every week after that
The read that never finishes
Google Ads does not stay fixed. Close variants let new searches in every day, competitors change bids, a website update quietly breaks a form, and Google switches settings back on with a notice nobody reads. So once a week the search terms report is read and the negatives grow; the conversion actions are checked against what actually arrived in your inbox; the budgets are checked for share lost to budget or to rank; and Google's recommendations are read and, mostly, declined in writing.
Anything changed is in the change history under our name. Anything that needs your decision comes as a short message, not a meeting.
Every month
The report, section by section
- Money
- Spend against budget, our fee, and where the spend went by campaign and by postcode area.
- Enquiries
- Calls over a minute, forms that arrived, orders with values. Cost per enquiry by campaign, with last month beside it.
- Worth
- Which enquiries became customers and what they were worth, from you. The return on spend plus fee follows from it.
- Changes
- Negatives added, bids moved, ads rewritten, pages changed, each with the search terms or the numbers that caused it.
- Declined
- Google's recommendations we did not apply, one line each, so you can see what a percentage-fee agency would have accepted.
- Next
- One change for next month and the number it is meant to move.
Refused
Things we will not do to an account, whoever asks
- Leave auto-apply recommendations on. They are written to increase spend and reach, and several of them do exactly that without a matching increase in customers.
- Run Performance Max as the only campaign. It hides which searches spent the money, and on a small budget it starves the Search campaign that would have told you.
- Use the location option that includes people merely interested in Birmingham. It shows your ad to someone in Spain reading about the Bullring.
- Bid on your own name by default. If nobody else is bidding on it you already win the search for nothing.
- Report impressions and clicks as if they were the result.
- Hold the account inside our manager account so that leaving means starting again.
- Take a second Birmingham business in the same sector and area.
Asked of you
Three things, and none of them takes long
- Approve ads within a working day
- Ad copy with a claim in it, a price or a regulated line, waits for you. A day's delay is fine; a fortnight's holds the campaign.
- Answer the worth question monthly
- Which enquiries became customers, roughly what they were worth. Ten minutes, and it is the line the whole report hangs on.
- Tell us when the business changes
- New hours, a new service, a van off the road, a price rise. The account follows the business, and it can only follow what it knows.
The fee for all of this is on the pricing page; the management page has the Birmingham settings in detail.
Questions about the routine
Why is the third month the first one you judge?
Because the first month removes waste and proves tracking, and Smart Bidding needs a month of clean conversions before its numbers mean anything. By month three the cost per enquiry is a real figure, and the report says whether to grow, hold or stop. Judging month one is judging the state the account was in when we found it.
What do you do every week, exactly?
Read every search that spent money in the last seven days and exclude the ones that could not buy; check that calls and forms are still being counted once; look at where impression share was lost and whether cost per enquiry moved; read Google's recommendations and decline the ones that would spend more without a reason; and re-measure the landing page if anything on the site changed.
How do I know the work is being done?
The change history inside your own account lists every change with a name and a time. A week with no entries is a week with no management. The monthly report refers to that history, and you can read it without us.
What do you need from me each month?
One answer: which of the enquiries became customers, and roughly what they were worth. It takes ten minutes and it is the line that turns cost per enquiry into return on spend. Without it the report says it is incomplete.
What if it is not working by month three?
The report says so, with the reason: the searches are too expensive for the margin, the page cannot convert at any click price, or the phone is not being answered when the ads run. Sometimes the answer is to stop and put the money into search rankings instead, and we will say that too.
Do you ever change something without telling me?
Negatives, bid adjustments and budget moves within the agreed monthly figure are made without asking, because asking would slow the account to a crawl; every one is in the change history and the report. New campaigns, new ad copy with a claim in it, a higher monthly budget and anything touching your website are agreed with you first.
Send the account ID. Within 72 hours you know where last month's money went.
The free check needs your ten-digit Google Ads customer ID and nothing else. Daniel Stoychev reads the account himself and writes back within 72 hours. If you would rather talk first, the phone is answered in office hours by the same person.