Campaign Management
Free PPC Audit
A PPC audit shows where your Google Ads money goes before it turns into an enquiry, and ours is free. You give us read-only access to the account, we go through it by hand, and on a 20 minute call we show you what we found and what we would change first.
Free 20 minute call with Richard, who runs the campaigns. No lock-in contracts.
- Your account, your card
- You pay Google or Meta directly and keep full access to the ad account. If you leave, it stays yours.
- Tracking before spend
- Nothing goes live until calls and form enquiries are counted, so every report is in enquiries, not clicks.
- One published fee
- The management fee is on the Campaign Management page, worked out from your monthly ad spend.
What we usually find
- Calls and form enquiries are not counted, or something else is counted in their place, such as clicks for directions on the Business Profile.
- Search campaigns also run on Google's Display network, which sends cheap clicks from apps and websites.
- Location targeting reaches people interested in the area as well as people in it.
- Broad searches run without exclusion lists, so the search terms report is full of jobs, DIY and competitor names.
- Auto-applied recommendations are switched on and change the account without anyone deciding to.
- The newest ad is more than six months old and every ad sends people to the home page.
What the audit checks
- Conversion tracking: which actions count, which are marked primary, and whether calls and forms reach the account at all.
- The search terms report for the last 90 days, with the spend on searches that could never have booked.
- Location, schedule and network settings, including Display network opt-ins and reach outside your area.
- Bids and budgets against Google's first-page estimates, and whether you are losing auctions to rank or to budget.
- Ads and landing pages: age, match to the search, speed on a phone, and how easy it is to call.
- Ownership and access: whose name the account is in, who can see billing, and who can make changes.
What a PPC audit should tell you
Three things: how much of the spend reached searches that could turn into work, whether the account can see the enquiries it causes, and what to change first. An audit that lists forty issues without an order is a sales document.
What we found in our own Google Ads account
When we reviewed our own campaign in October 2026, two problems from this page were ours. Business Profile direction clicks were being counted as conversions, and the page our biggest ad group sent people to had no enquiry form. Searches for buying lead lists and for competitor names were also getting through, and we added sixteen exclusions in one sitting.
None of that showed in the account's headline numbers. It only showed by reading the conversion settings and the search terms line by line, which is why we audit by hand.
Google Ads audit checklist
If you want to look before you book, start here. In the conversions settings, check which actions are marked primary: only calls, forms and bookings should be. In each Search campaign's settings, check whether the Display network is ticked and whether location targeting says people in or regularly in your locations.
Then open the search terms report for the last 90 days, sort by cost, and read the top fifty. Every search that could never have become a job is money you can stop spending this week.
What happens after the audit
You get the findings on the call and a short written summary afterwards. Fix them yourself, hand them to your current agency, or ask us to. There is no obligation, and if the account is in good shape we will say so.
Already running ads? We will look at the account before the call and tell you what we find.
Book a free callQuestions we get asked
- Is the PPC audit free?
- Yes. It is the first step of working with us, and you are under no obligation to go any further.
- What access do you need?
- Read-only access to your Google Ads account, which you grant from the account's access settings using our email address. Read-only means we can see everything and change nothing, and you can remove it after the call.
- Do you audit Facebook and Instagram ads too?
- Yes, with view-only access to your Meta ad account. We check the same things: what counts as a result, where the money goes, and whether the ads and the page match.
- We already have an agency. Can you still audit the account?
- Yes. Many audits are second opinions. We will not contact your agency, and what you do with the findings is your decision.
- How long does it take?
- We go through the account before the call, usually within a few working days of getting access. The call itself takes 20 minutes.
Other ways we run paid ads
All sectors or read how Campaign Management works.
Want to know what your ad spend is bringing in?
Book a free call. Tell us what you spend now and we will tell you what we would change first.