Search ads for businesses without an in-house marketer

Where search ads sit in your lead flow

Search ads are the first step. Someone searches, sees your ad, clicks, and lands on a page with a form. What happens after the click matters as much as the ad itself, so search work usually touches two other pieces.

• The page and form people land on. A mismatch between ad and page is one of the most common problems in small accounts. See landing pages and forms.
• The tracking and follow-up behind the form, so a click can be tied to a real request in your CRM. See lead tracking and follow-up.

Search ads management covers the account itself: keywords, negatives, ads, bids, budgets and conversion actions in Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising.

A typical week in a managed search account

Early in the week, the manager opens the search terms report and reads what people actually typed. Irrelevant matches become negative keywords. Good terms that are not yet keywords get added, usually as phrase or exact match.

Midweek is for checking. Is each campaign spending roughly what was planned? Did conversions record yesterday, and does the count line up with the form submissions you received? Has Google pushed any new recommendations that would change settings if accepted?

Later in the week, ad copy gets attention. Assets marked as low performing are swapped out, and a new headline or description may go into a test. Bid strategy targets move only when there is enough data to justify it.

Each change goes into a log you can read.

What drives the cost of search work

Quotes for search ads management vary because the work varies. When comparing them, look at what each one assumes.

The number of campaigns and services matters most. One service advertised nationally is a different job from a dozen services with separate pages. Running Microsoft Advertising alongside Google Ads adds a second account to maintain.

Setup state matters too. An account with broken conversion tracking, years of unused keywords and auto-applied recommendations takes longer to sort out than a clean build.

Then there is cadence and reporting: weekly changes with a written summary take more hours than a monthly check. Ask each provider to describe the routine they are pricing, so you can compare like with like.

Questions about search ads management

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