What Should a PPC Agency Actually Do Each Month?

What does a PPC agency do each month?

Good ongoing PPC management normally follows a continuous process:

1. Monitor

   Keep an active eye on spend, performance, tracking and anything that looks unusual.

2. Analyse

   Understand what the data is actually saying rather than reacting to isolated numbers.

3. Optimise

   Make evidence-led changes where there is a clear reason to act.

4. Test

   Compare useful ideas with a clear commercial question behind the test.

5. Learn

   Use the outcome to improve future campaign decisions.

6. Report

   Explain performance and management work in plain English.

7. Plan

   Set the next priorities based on the evidence and wider business needs.

The exact work depends on the account.

A local service business spending £1,000 a month on Google Ads should not be managed in exactly the same way as an ecommerce retailer spending £30,000 across Search, Shopping and Performance Max.

The rate at which an account generates useful data matters too.

An account producing hundreds of conversions each month gives an agency much more information to work with than one generating five.

That’s why rigid statements such as “your agency should rewrite ads every month” or “bids should be changed every week” aren’t particularly useful.

What you should expect is regular oversight, commercial thinking and clear reasoning behind the decisions being made.

Good PPC management vs activity for activity’s sake

One of the easiest mistakes to make when assessing an agency is assuming that more changes automatically mean more work and therefore better management.

They don’t.

1. Start with the business result, not the Google Ads dashboard

One of the first things your PPC agency should assess is whether the campaigns are helping achieve the reason you started advertising in the first place.

That sounds obvious, but reports can easily become dominated by platform metrics.

Clicks increased.

Impressions increased.

Click-through rate improved.

Average CPC fell.

Those numbers can all provide useful context.

But they don’t automatically mean the business is getting a better result.

For a lead-generation business, more useful questions might include:

• How many enquiries did PPC generate?
• How many were genuinely relevant?
• What did each lead cost?
• Which services generated the strongest opportunities?
• Are those enquiries becoming customers?
• Are we attracting the type of customer the business actually wants?

For ecommerce, the focus may be different:

• Revenue.
• Orders.
• Cost per acquisition.
• Return on ad spend.
• Conversion rate.
• New-customer acquisition.
• Profit or margin where available.

Imagine a local heating company running Google Ads for boiler installations and servicing.

Its click-through rate falls slightly during one month, but the cost per qualified boiler-installation lead improves by 30%.

Trying to recover the old CTR simply because the number has fallen could make the campaign worse commercially.

2. Check conversion tracking before trusting the numbers

Before an agency optimises around conversions, it needs confidence that those conversions are being recorded correctly.

Depending on the business, that might include:

• Contact forms.
• Calls.
• Quote requests.
• Bookings.
• Purchases.
• Revenue.
• Demo requests.
• Other meaningful website actions.

Tracking shouldn’t be configured once and then forgotten forever.

Websites change.

Forms get replaced.

Thank-you pages change.

Analytics setups are updated.

Cookie-consent implementations change.

Something that worked six months ago may not work exactly the same today.

An agency should therefore investigate unusual movements.

If conversions drop from 40 per month to two while traffic and user behaviour remain broadly unchanged, it would be sensible to check measurement before restructuring the campaign.

The same applies in reverse.

A sudden doubling of conversions sounds great until you discover the same event has started firing twice.

3. Review what people are actually searching for

For Google Search campaigns, search-term analysis is one of the most important ongoing management tasks.

There is an important distinction between a keyword and a search term.

A keyword is something the advertiser targets.

A search term is what somebody actually typed into Google.

They aren’t necessarily identical.

Suppose our local heating company is targeting boiler and central-heating searches.

The account might start appearing for queries such as:

• boiler engineer jobs
• boiler repair course
• gas engineer apprenticeship
• DIY boiler repair
• boiler servicing training

Those searches contain relevant words.

The intent is completely wrong.

Someone looking for an apprenticeship is unlikely to become a boiler-installation customer.

An agency should identify this kind of wasted spend and use appropriate negative keywords and targeting adjustments to reduce it.

But negative-keyword management shouldn’t become a competition to build the longest possible list.

Over-restricting an account can block valuable searches too.

The objective is better relevance, not maximum restriction.

Search-term reviews can also reveal opportunities.

Potential customers don’t always use the terminology a business expects.

You may discover new:

• Commercial search phrases.
• Questions.
• Service terminology.
• Product terms.
• Local searches.
• Problems customers are trying to solve.

That information can influence keywords, ads and even landing-page content.

4. Review campaign, keyword and targeting performance

Search terms are only one part of account management.

An agency should also assess how existing targeting is performing.

That may involve reviewing:

• Campaigns.
• Keywords.
• Ad groups.
• Product or service categories.
• Locations.
• Devices.
• Audiences where relevant.
• Search themes.
• Days and times.
• Brand and non-brand activity.
• Match types.
• Campaign settings.

The agency should be looking for meaningful patterns.

Which campaigns are spending the most?

Which are producing the best results?

Are certain services generating much stronger enquiries?

Is one region performing particularly well?

Are some keywords spending heavily without producing meaningful outcomes?

Is an important campaign restricted by budget while weaker activity continues to spend?

Good judgement matters here.

Pausing a keyword because it generated three clicks without a conversion isn’t sophisticated PPC management.

But allowing an obviously irrelevant area of spend to run for months under the excuse of “waiting for more data” isn’t good management either.

The specialist’s job is to understand when enough evidence exists to act.

5. Monitor where the budget is going

Your agency should know how the advertising budget is being used and whether the current allocation still makes commercial sense.

Budget management can include:

• Monitoring spend against the agreed budget.
• Identifying unexpected overspend or underspend.
• Reviewing how spend is split between campaigns.
• Accounting for promotions.
• Adjusting for seasonality.
• Prioritising commercially important products or services.
• Identifying campaigns constrained by budget.
• Reducing spend where performance doesn’t justify it.

One important distinction is:

Ad spend is the money paid to the advertising platform.

PPC management fees cover the agency’s time, expertise, analysis, optimisation, testing, reporting and strategy.

The objective shouldn’t automatically be to spend every penny available.

There may be situations where additional budget can capture profitable demand.

There may also be situations where spending more simply buys more inefficient traffic.

A good agency should be able to explain the difference.

You can see how we structure our own services and fees on our digital marketing pricing page.

6. Review bidding without constantly interfering with it

Modern PPC management doesn’t necessarily mean manually changing individual keyword bids every few days.

Many Google Ads accounts now use automated bidding.

That doesn’t mean the agency has nothing left to do.

It changes the type of oversight required.

The agency may need to assess:

• Whether the bidding strategy suits the campaign objective.
• Whether conversion data is accurate.
• Whether targets are realistic.
• Whether the campaign has enough useful data.
• Whether budget constraints are affecting performance.
• Whether campaign structure supports the strategy.
• Whether a recent change has had enough time to settle.

Frequent major changes can make results harder to interpret.

An agency isn’t paid based on the number of bid adjustments it makes.

It’s paid to decide whether an adjustment is actually needed.

7. Test ads and commercial messaging

Your ads are often the first thing a potential customer sees from the business.

The agency should therefore review whether the messaging remains relevant and persuasive.

Potential areas to test include:

• Headlines.
• Descriptions.
• Offers.
• Benefits.
• Calls to action.
• Pricing messages.
• Promotional messages.
• Proof points.
• Ad assets.

But a useful test starts with a question.

Will highlighting “no long-term contracts” generate more qualified enquiries from SMBs than generic messaging about expert PPC management?

That test has a purpose.

Simply replacing “professional” with “expert” and listing it as an optimisation doesn’t tell you much.

Not every test needs to produce a winner either.

Discovering that a new message performs no better than the current one is still useful information.

8. Look at what happens after somebody clicks

An agency can manage the advertising campaign.

It cannot control every part of the customer journey.

If the right users are clicking the ads but very few are enquiring or purchasing, changing keywords repeatedly may not solve the actual problem.

Potential landing-page issues might include:

• Poor message match.
• An unclear offer.
• Weak calls to action.
• Slow pages.
• Poor mobile usability.
• An unnecessarily long form.
• Confusing navigation.
• Missing pricing information where customers expect it.
• Out-of-stock products.
• Complicated checkout steps.

Return to the heating-company example.

Imagine the ads target “new boiler installation”, users are searching with clear commercial intent and the campaign is driving relevant traffic.

But the landing page gives no indication of:

• Installation areas.
• Finance options.
• Expected process.
• Why someone should choose the company.
• How to request a quote.

The PPC account may not be the biggest problem.

9. Understand whether conversions are actually valuable

This is where PPC data needs business context.

Google Ads may report:

25 conversions.

But what does that actually mean?

Suppose those 25 enquiries include:

• Seven sales calls from suppliers.
• Four applicants looking for work.
• Five people outside the service area.
• Six customers looking for a service you don’t provide.
• Three genuine opportunities.

The advertising platform has still recorded 25 form submissions.

The business sees three useful leads.

Those are very different outcomes.

A strong agency-client relationship creates a feedback loop between what the platform reports and what happens once the enquiry reaches the business.

For lead generation, useful feedback might include:

• Lead quality.
• Appointments.
• Quotes.
• Sales.
• Reasons opportunities were lost.
• Services attracting the strongest customers.
• Geographic quality.

For ecommerce, useful commercial context might include:

• Profit margin.
• Returns.
• New versus returning customers.
• Product availability.
• Repeat purchases.
• Customer lifetime value where relevant.

For example, an ecommerce campaign could show a 500% ROAS.

That sounds excellent.

But if most sales come from very low-margin products or customers who were already likely to return, another campaign with a lower headline ROAS might actually be more important for profitable new-customer acquisition.

10. Account for what is happening inside the business

Campaigns don’t operate separately from the company they advertise.

Your agency should know about significant changes such as:

• New products.
• New services.
• Promotions.
• Price changes.
• Seasonal demand.
• Services being discontinued.
• Stock shortages.
• New locations.
• Changes in capacity.
• Margin changes.
• Shifts in business priorities.

Imagine our heating company is fully booked for boiler servicing but urgently wants more installation work.

If the PPC agency continues to optimise purely around whichever campaign has the cheapest lead, it may be optimising towards the wrong business objective.

Or an ecommerce company may have its strongest-performing product campaign aggressively spending while the product is almost out of stock.

What should your PPC agency report every month?

A useful PPC report should do more than export Google Ads metrics into a branded PDF.

You should be able to read it and understand what happened without needing to become a PPC specialist yourself.

A useful reporting framework is:

1. What happened?

What were the important results?

For lead generation:

• Spend.
• Leads.
• Qualified leads where available.
• Cost per lead.
• Conversion rate.
• Sales where available.

For ecommerce:

• Spend.
• Orders.
• Revenue.
• Cost per acquisition.
• ROAS.
• Conversion rate.
• Profit or margin where available.

2. Why did it happen?

This is the difference between reporting and analysis.

Why did cost per lead rise?

Why did revenue increase?

Did demand change?

Did one campaign account for most of the movement?

Did budget allocation change?

Was there a promotion?

3. What changed?

You should understand what management work was carried out.

• Search terms reviewed.
• Negative keywords added.
• Budget reallocated.
• Ads tested.
• Targeting refined.
• Tracking corrected.
• Landing-page recommendation made.

4. What did we learn?

Did a new message perform better?

Did a new keyword theme generate stronger leads?

Did a budget increase produce additional profitable demand?

Did a test show no meaningful improvement?

5. What happens next?

The report should look forwards as well as backwards.

What are the priorities?

What needs testing?

What needs more data?

Does the agency need anything from the business?

A simple PPC reporting example

Question	Example
What happened?	Qualified leads increased from 18 to 25
Why?	More budget went towards the strongest service campaign
What changed?	Search terms cleaned up and budget reallocated
What did we learn?	Boiler-installation enquiries were worth more than servicing leads
What’s next?	Test new installation-focused messaging
What do we need from you?	Feedback on which leads became customers

How can you tell whether your PPC agency is actually managing the account?

If you’re not sure what your agency has done, ask.

A good PPC specialist should be able to explain their work in plain English.

Google Ads also includes Change History, which records many account and campaign changes and can show when changes were made and which user made them.

You shouldn’t need to inspect Change History every week.

A long list of changes doesn’t prove good management either.

But the account shouldn’t feel like a black box.

You should have appropriate access to your advertising account and be able to understand how it is being managed.

Should a PPC agency make changes every month?

Your agency should actively review the account.

That does not mean every campaign should be changed because another month has passed.

There is a difference between:

• Monitoring — checking that campaigns are behaving as expected.
• Analysis — understanding what the data is telling you.
• Optimisation — making a change intended to improve performance.
• Testing — deliberately comparing approaches to learn what works better.
• Strategic change — making a larger change to structure, budget, targeting or objectives.

Sometimes all of those happen during one month.

Sometimes monitoring and analysis lead to the conclusion that the current setup should continue.

Imagine an agency starts a new campaign test.

Performance is stable, but the campaign needs another two weeks of data before the result is meaningful.

Changing the bidding strategy, ads, targeting and budget midway through simply to prove that the account was “optimised” could make the test less useful.

By contrast, if hundreds of pounds are suddenly being spent on obviously irrelevant searches, waiting until the end of the month to act would make little sense.

How often should PPC management happen?

There is no universal schedule for every account.

As a general guide:

Activity	Typical cadence	Purpose
Spend and budget monitoring	Ongoing	Identify unexpected pacing or spend issues
Conversion tracking checks	Ongoing	Catch missing or unusual data
Search-term analysis	Regularly	Identify waste and opportunities
Campaign performance review	Weekly / regularly	Spot meaningful trends
Optimisation	When evidence justifies it	Improve efficiency or results
Testing	Ongoing where useful	Learn what produces better outcomes
Reporting	Monthly	Explain results, work and priorities
Wider strategy review	Monthly / quarterly	Reassess bigger opportunities

This should be treated as guidance, not a rigid timetable.

A campaign spending £50 per day and generating four conversions per month will produce information at a very different rate from one spending £2,000 per day and producing hundreds of transactions.

Cadence depends on:

• Budget.
• Traffic.
• Conversion volume.
• Complexity.
• Seasonality.
• Number of campaigns.
• Business objectives.

What should your PPC agency need from you?

Good PPC management isn’t entirely one-way.

Your agency should ask questions too.

Useful information can include:

• Which leads became customers?
• Were the leads good quality?
• Has business capacity changed?
• Are you launching something?
• Are any products low in stock?
• Are margins changing?
• Is a promotion coming up?
• Are particular services more important?
• Has anything changed in the sales process?
• What objections are customers giving?

Suppose one campaign generates leads at £25 each.

Another generates them at £45.

From the advertising dashboard alone, the £25 campaign looks stronger.

But if the sales team says those cheaper leads rarely become customers while the £45 leads regularly become £1,500 projects, the commercial picture changes completely.

PPC management red flags

No individual issue automatically proves an agency is doing a poor job.

But there are several things worth questioning.

10 questions to ask your PPC agency about monthly management

You don’t need to interrogate your specialist about every Google Ads setting.

These ten questions are much more useful:

1. What performed best this month?
2. What performed worst?
3. What did you change?
4. Why did you make those changes?
5. What did you learn?
6. Where are we currently wasting budget?
7. What are you testing?
8. What are your priorities next month?
9. Is there anything you need from us?
10. Is anything outside Google Ads limiting performance?

A good specialist should welcome these conversations.

The objective isn’t to justify every mouse click.

It’s to keep the business and agency aligned around the same commercial goal.

What shouldn’t PPC management include?

Guaranteed results

Advertising performance can be influenced by competition, demand, pricing, your website, your offer and many other factors.

Guarantees should be treated cautiously.

Constant unexplained changes

More account activity isn’t automatically better.

Reporting without interpretation

A collection of graphs isn’t the same as analysis.

Optimising purely for clicks

Traffic matters only if it contributes to the business objective.

Increasing spend as the solution to every problem

Additional budget should have a commercial justification.

Treating automated bidding as completely hands-off

Automation still relies on suitable goals, accurate measurement, budgets and strategic oversight.

What should a PPC management fee actually pay for?

A PPC management fee shouldn’t be viewed as payment for a fixed number of account edits.

You’re paying for the knowledge and time required to decide what deserves attention.

That can include:

• Campaign monitoring.
• Performance analysis.
• Conversion tracking oversight.
• Search-term reviews.
• Keyword management.
• Budget allocation.
• Bidding strategy.
• Ad testing.
• Landing-page observations.
• Reporting.
• Communication.
• Strategic recommendations.

Account complexity matters.

Managing one local Search campaign is very different from managing Search, Shopping and Performance Max activity across hundreds of ecommerce products.

The important thing is that the scope and fee are clear.

You can compare this with our PPC management services, Google Ads management and digital marketing pricing.

Monthly PPC management checklist

If you want a simple way to assess ongoing PPC management, use this checklist.

A good PPC agency won’t necessarily tick every box by making a change every month.

It should, however, be able to show that the areas relevant to your account are being actively considered.

What good monthly PPC management should feel like

You shouldn’t need to understand every menu, bidding strategy or Google Ads setting to know whether your campaigns are being managed properly.

You should be able to understand:

• Where your budget went.
• What it generated.
• What worked.
• What didn’t.
• What your agency changed.
• Why.
• What was learned.
• What happens next.

There will always be uncertainty in PPC.

Customer behaviour changes.

Competition changes.

Search demand changes.

Not every test wins.

A good agency shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

What it should provide is clear thinking, regular oversight, evidence-led decisions and honest communication.

At Koupe Media, that’s how we believe PPC management should work.

Frequently asked questions