Google Ads Management That Stops Budget Going to the Wrong Clicks

Most campaigns need four to six weeks before the data means anything. The first two weeks are mostly Google learning. It’s figuring out who clicks, who converts, and where to show your ads. Judging performance in week one is like leaving a pot roast in the oven for 20 minutes and deciding it’s not working.

That said, you don’t have to wait in the dark. We set up conversion tracking before we launch anything, so you can see calls, form fills, and purchases from day one. By week four, we have enough real data to start optimizing. By month three, you should have a clear picture of what’s working and what to cut.

If an agency tells you Google Ads will produce results in the first week, ask them to show you proof from a real account.

There’s no universal answer, but there is a useful rule: your budget needs to be high enough to get at least 30-50 clicks per month on your most important keywords. Below that, you don’t have enough data to make good decisions.

For most local service businesses in BC, that means a minimum ad spend of $800–$1,500/month. Competitive industries (legal, dental, trades) typically need $1,500–$3,000+ to show up consistently.

We always do a keyword cost estimate before recommending a number. We’d rather tell you the real cost upfront than start you on a budget that can’t produce results.

You’ll have a dashboard that shows the numbers that matter to your business: calls, form submissions, direction requests, purchases, not just clicks and impressions. We don’t send you a wall of data and call it a report.

Every month you get a plain-English summary: what changed, why it changed, and what we’re doing about it. If something isn’t working, we say so. If something is working well, we show you exactly what it is so you can make decisions from a position of knowledge, not guesswork.

We also set a baseline before we touch anything, so you always have something real to compare against.

Honestly, it depends on the data, which is why we look before we answer.

That said, the most common problems we find are: the main page headline doesn’t say what the business actually does, the contact form has too many fields, there’s no tracking on key actions so nobody knows what’s converting, and the site loads slowly on mobile.

Any one of those can cut your conversion rate in half. Together, they can make an otherwise solid marketing spend look like it isn’t working. We do a full site and tracking review at the start of every engagement so we know what we’re actually dealing with before we make any recommendations.