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Serving the Wabash Valley — Illinois & Indiana— Now Accepting Early Clients
E-Commerce Service

Google Ads Management

Paid search and Shopping campaigns for e-commerce stores that actually need to defend ROAS, not just spend a budget. I treat your ad dollars like they're my own — because for years they were. Currently running paid search for a $10M operation; happy to apply the same discipline at small-business scale.

Management Fee
$400 – $800 / month
Recommended Ad Spend
$1,500/mo minimum
Best For
Stores with proven product-market fit
What You're Paying For

Pricing

$400–$800/mo
management fee, separate from ad spend (you pay Google directly)
  • $400/mo for accounts spending under $5K/month with 1–3 active campaigns
  • $600/mo for accounts spending $5K–$15K/month with broader campaign mix
  • $800/mo for accounts spending $15K+ with Performance Max, dynamic remarketing, and feed work
  • +$500 one-time onboarding for new accounts (audit, conversion setup, feed build)

Ad spend is paid directly to Google on your card — never through me. This protects you (no markup, full transparency), keeps tax accounting clean, and means I have no financial incentive to push spend higher than what produces returns.

Why a minimum? Below about $1,500/month in ad spend, the management fee becomes a meaningful percentage of your total budget and the algorithm doesn't have enough conversion data to optimize against. If you're not ready to spend $1,500/mo on ads yet, paid search probably isn't the right channel for you yet either — SEO and email marketing usually pay back faster at small scale.

What's In Scope

Everything Included

  • Account audit and setup — conversion tracking verification (the #1 thing most accounts get wrong), campaign restructure, audience setup, exclusions
  • Google Merchant Center — feed configuration, product data optimization, disapproval cleanup, supplemental feeds where needed
  • Shopping & Performance Max campaigns — the workhorses for most e-commerce. Asset groups, audience signals, brand exclusions, listing group structure.
  • Search campaigns — for branded defense, high-intent non-brand terms, and competitor terms where appropriate
  • Conversion tracking and GA4 — proper event setup, conversion values flowing, attribution model defaults reviewed
  • Bidding strategy management — tROAS / tCPA targets calibrated to your actual margins, not arbitrary defaults
  • Negative keyword management — ongoing search term review, negatives applied, wasted spend cut
  • Weekly performance review — I check your account at least weekly. Anomalies, budget burn, dropping ROAS — you hear about them when they happen.
  • Monthly reporting — written summary of what spent, what returned, what was changed and why. No 30-page autogenerated PDFs.

Not included

  • Meta / Facebook / Instagram Ads (different beast; ask if you need them and I'll refer)
  • Amazon advertising
  • Creative production (banner ads, video assets) — can be quoted separately
  • Landing page development (see Web Design & Development)
  • SEO content production (see SEO Management)
Why It Matters

What Good Google Ads Looks Like

The single biggest reason e-commerce ad accounts underperform isn't bid strategy or keyword choice — it's broken or sloppy conversion tracking. If Google doesn't know which ad clicks turn into actual revenue, and what that revenue is worth, the algorithm can't optimize. Your account becomes a slot machine.

I spend the first 2–3 weeks of every engagement verifying conversion tracking end-to-end — pixel firing, value passing, attribution windows, currency, refunds. After that, the algorithm has signal to work with and the optimization actually happens.

700%+
Sustained Shopping ROAS at my current operation. Not a stunt month — the average over years of running the program.

Your numbers may not look like that — the operation I'm describing has eight figures of revenue, mature feed data, and years of conversion history. But the same disciplines move the needle at any scale: clean conversion tracking, sane campaign structure, ruthless negative-keyword hygiene, and not changing bid strategy every two weeks because someone read a blog post.

Common Questions

FAQ

Why are you not running my ads on credit you provide?

Because that arrangement is bad for you. When agencies markup ad spend, you can't see the real cost. When agencies bill on percentage of spend, they have a perverse incentive to grow your spend whether or not it produces returns. Direct billing on your card means you see every dollar Google charges you and the management fee is a separate, known number.

How long until results?

Performance Max typically needs 4–6 weeks of stable structure before its bid algorithm settles. New Search campaigns produce conversions faster but need 2–4 weeks to find the right CPC range. Plan on month 1 being audit + foundation, month 2 starting to see results, month 3 hitting target ROAS in most cases. Anyone promising day-1 results either inherits a working account or is bullshitting.

What about Meta Ads / Facebook / Instagram?

Different platform, different skillset. I'm strongest on Google. For Meta, I'll either refer you to a partner or scope it carefully — not pretend I'm equally expert in everything. Most small e-commerce stores get more lift from Google Shopping than from Meta these days, but it's product-dependent.

Should I do Performance Max or regular Shopping?

Depends on your account size and goals. PMax is powerful but a black box — great when it works, frustrating when it doesn't. Standard Shopping gives you more control but less algorithmic lift. Most accounts I run use both with proper audience and brand-keyword exclusions wired up. We'll decide together based on your data.

What if my ROAS drops?

First thing: I tell you, before you have to ask. Then we figure out why — seasonality, feed problem, bid strategy, competitor entering, search demand shift. Action depends on the cause. What I won't do is hide the dip or pretend the trend is fine. The point of paid search is to make you money, and if the math stops working we either fix it or shut it off.

Do you sign long-term contracts?

Three-month minimum to start (so the algorithm has a chance to optimize), then month-to-month with 30 days notice. I don't lock people in. The relationship continues because it's making you money — not because of a contract.

Track Record

Examples

Currently running paid search for a $10M flooring operation. The Shopping program clears 700%+ ROAS sustained, with the brand and non-brand search programs filling in around it. That's the scoreboard from the day job — not a portfolio piece, but the kind of operating discipline I'd bring to your account.

For a small-business client, expectations should scale to your margins and search demand. A 300% ROAS on a $3,000/month spend nets you $9K of revenue at $2K of margin (depending on your margins) — meaningful for most local stores. We'll calibrate targets based on your actual unit economics, not somebody else's.

Want a free Google Ads audit?

Send me access (read-only is fine) and I'll spend 30 minutes looking at your account — conversion tracking, campaign structure, the obvious wins. No pitch, no deck. Free.

Book a Free Consultation Or send a message