Search ads,
run right.
Google and Microsoft Ads managed by the person actually in the account.
Paid search buys you position while organic visibility is still being built. It is the fastest way to put your business in front of someone who is searching for your service right now. It is also the fastest way to waste money if nobody is watching the account. I run these campaigns myself, on Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, for the same businesses I do search work for.
Runs on its own. Compounds with everything else.
I take paid search as a standalone engagement. What I turn down is work that cannot succeed: a budget too small to learn anything from, traffic pointed at a page that does not convert, or an account with no tracking behind it. That is a floor, not a bundling rule. Ads amplify whatever the business already communicates, so when the offer is unclear or the landing page is weak, paid spend buys an expensive answer to a question you could have answered for free. If that is where you are, I will tell you before taking the work, and fixing it usually comes first.
Landing pages are part of what I build now rather than a prerequisite I hand back to you. That is what makes standalone paid work worth doing, where it used to mean managing an account into a page I had no control over.
Where paid does its best work is next to the rest of it. It captures demand immediately while SEO compounds underneath, and what converts in paid tells me where to point the organic work. The loop runs both directions: paid gives fast signal on messaging and offers, organic gives durable position on the terms that signal identifies as worth owning. Most clients end up here, but it is not a condition of working together.
See how the services connectWhat I run, and what I don't
The scope is narrow on purpose. Two platforms, a handful of campaign types. Everything here is search-intent driven or supports a search-intent campaign.
Google Ads search
Campaign structure, keyword and match-type strategy, negative keyword management, ad copy and assets, bidding, location and schedule targeting, landing page alignment. The core of the work.
Microsoft Advertising search
The same discipline on Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. Lower volume, frequently lower cost per click, and an audience that skews older and more desktop-heavy. For a lot of service businesses that is the buyer. It gets built as its own account, not a careless import.
Display and remarketing
Display placements and remarketing audiences to stay in front of people who already visited but did not book. Longer decision windows and competitive metros are where this earns its budget. It is a support layer for search, not a standalone play.
Local Services Ads
For businesses eligible for the Google Guaranteed badge, LSA sits at the top of the results and bills per lead rather than per click. Google runs it inside the Google Ads interface now, so it is a campaign type here rather than a separate service. Screening, badge eligibility, and lead dispute handling are part of the work.
Tracking and attribution
Conversion tracking, call tracking, and GA4 alignment before spend starts. Without it you are not managing a campaign, you are funding one.
What I don't run
No social advertising. No Meta, no LinkedIn, no TikTok, no programmatic display networks outside Google and Microsoft. Those are different disciplines with different buying logic, and pretending otherwise would make me a worse operator on the surfaces I actually know.
How the account gets managed
Structure before spend. Campaigns get built around how people actually search for the service, not around a keyword export. Tight ad groups, deliberate match types, and a negative keyword list that starts populated instead of getting discovered through wasted budget.
Tracking first. Conversion actions, call tracking, and form attribution are configured and verified before the account goes live. If we cannot tell which click produced which job, the reporting is decoration.
Search terms, weekly. The search terms report is where paid accounts are actually won or lost. Reviewing it and acting on it is most of the ongoing work, and it is the part that gets quietly skipped by whoever is managing forty accounts.
Landing page alignment. The ad and the page it lands on have to make the same promise. Where I am also doing the site work, this is a single decision instead of a negotiation.
Reporting against jobs. Cost per lead, cost per booked job, and return on spend. Not impressions, not click-through rate as a headline number, not a screenshot of the platform dashboard.
What this gets you
- Position on high-intent searches from day one
- Spend controlled to your service area and your capacity
- Clear cost per lead and cost per booked job
- Fast signal on what messaging and offers actually convert
- A feedback loop that sharpens the organic work
When this makes sense
Paid search rewards businesses that can absorb the volume it produces. Here's how to know if that's you right now.
This is for you if
- You have capacity for more work right now and margins that support paying for acquisition
- Your service and pricing are clear enough that a stranger can act on them
- You have enough monthly budget to get through a learning period rather than starve the account
- You want to capture demand while organic position is still being built, or you want it running on its own
- You are willing to put real tracking in place
This is not for you if
- You are shopping for the cheapest management fee you can find
- You cannot handle more lead volume today
- Your positioning or messaging is the actual problem. Ads will make that more expensive, not better
- You want the budget spread across social platforms too
- You want to run it without conversion tracking
Your account stays yours
Campaigns run in a Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising account that you own. I manage them through my manager account, which means I have access to do the work and you have the asset. If the engagement ends, access is removed and the account, its history, and its learnings stay with you. No rebuilding from zero somewhere else. No holding an account hostage as a retention strategy.
Ad spend is paid by you directly to the platform. I do not mark it up or bill it through. Management is a separate fee, so what you spend on media and what you spend on management stay legible to you.
Let's see if paid
makes sense for you.
A short call. We go through your capacity, your margins, what you are already doing in search, and whether paid belongs in the mix right now. Sometimes the answer is that your money is better spent elsewhere first. I will tell you that.