Broad match with a thin negative list
The single most expensive default in the platform. It buys adjacent, irrelevant and research-stage searches at the same price as the ones with a buyer behind them.
Paid ads
Already running Google Ads? We manage it around sales, not conversion counts
The first thing done in a new Google Ads account here is to read ninety days of search terms and add up what went to searches you could never have served. On the accounts opened so far that number has been large enough to matter on its own, and none of it needed a bidding change to recover. This page covers what management involves every week, and what it costs.
- 2,410 conversions at £19.21 each Google Ads
- 188K clicks from 14.4M impressions Google Ads
What we report on
- Cost per qualified enquiry
- Wasted spend, in currency, month on month
- Search impression share, split by budget and by rank
- Conversion rate by landing page
- Cost per customer where CRM data supports it
Certified across the platforms we buy on. 150+ businesses, 7 years.
How it works, in plain steps.
Paid ads: pay for a lead, not for a month.
1First, we fix the tracking.
What the ad account can see
✓Form enquiries
✓Phone calls from the ad
✓Orders and their value
If the account cannot see a lead, it cannot find you more of them.
Tap a step to see it again.
Fit
Who this is for, and who it is not.
Worth reading before the rest of the page. If the right-hand column describes you, the honest answer is that this is not the service to buy.
This is for you if
- Businesses already spending on Google Ads with no clear view of what a customer costs.
- Accounts running on defaults: broad match, automated bidding, thin negatives and one landing page.
- Owners who want to understand the account rather than hand it over and hope.
This is not for you if
- Anyone looking for percentage-of-spend billing. It is not offered here, and the reason is on this page.
- Budgets too small to gather usable conversion data. You get told the floor for your category rather than taken on and under-served.
- Categories Google prohibits. No structure changes a policy.
If you are on the right-hand side, say so in the form anyway. We will tell you what we would do in your position, which costs you nothing and costs us fifteen minutes.
Where this work has been done.
Industries with their own page, each with what goes wrong in search, paid and email for that trade.
What this actually fixes.
Automated bidding fed bad conversion data
Smart Bidding is only as good as what it is told a conversion is. Point it at a page view and it efficiently buys more page views.
Fees that rise when your spend rises
A percentage-of-spend fee pays the agency more when you spend more, at exactly the moments when the correct advice is to cut a campaign. That conflict is the reason management is priced differently here.
Reporting that never reaches a customer
Clicks, impressions, click-through rate and a green arrow. None of which say what a signed customer cost.
What management actually involves, week by week
The search terms report gets read every week and the negatives get updated from it. Bids get checked against clean conversion data. Assets get filled in, because sitelinks and callouts are free inventory. The landing page for each priority search gets measured against the search that sends traffic to it. And the monthly report opens with cost per qualified enquiry, in currency, next to the wasted spend that came out of the account since last month.
That is the whole job. It is unglamorous, it is weekly, and it is the difference between an account that drifts and one that gets cheaper.
How this page differs from the other paid pages
This is the ongoing management service: the work that happens every week inside an account somebody already decided to run. If you are still deciding whether Google Ads is the right channel at all, the Google Ads page answers that first, including when the honest answer is no. PPC covers paid search across Google and Microsoft together, and media buying covers splitting one budget across search and paid social.
Read the search terms before touching the bids. Every week.
Exactly what gets done.
Not a list of capabilities. This is the work that happens inside the ad account every week, and the invoice and the report can both be held against it.
Ninety-day search term audit
Every query the account paid for, sorted by spend, with the unservable ones totalled. You get this document whether or not you continue.
Conversion tracking rebuild
Actions rebuilt to fire on submitted enquiries and calls of real length, duplicates removed, values attached, and offline conversions imported from the CRM where one exists.
Campaign restructure by intent and margin
Split so that high-value work is not competing with filler for the same budget, and so that emergency and planned demand can be bid differently.
Negative keyword architecture
Built as a shared structure rather than a per-campaign list, then maintained weekly. It does not stay fixed.
Ad copy and the full extension set
Copy written against the objection rather than the keyword. Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call and lead form assets, which are free inventory most accounts leave half configured.
Landing pages for the priority intents
Built as part of the engagement. The mismatch between a specific query and a general page is where most budget is lost.
How long it takes
What happens, and when.
Nobody can tell you in advance what your account will do. What can be said in advance is what will have happened by when.
- 01 Week 1
Audit and tracking
Search term audit delivered, wasted spend quantified, conversion actions rebuilt and verified against real submissions.
- 02 Weeks 2 to 4
Restructure
Campaigns rebuilt, negatives applied, match types tightened, budgets reallocated to what converts. Cost per enquiry usually moves this month.
- 03 Month 2
Pages and creative
Landing pages for the highest-value intents, ad copy testing, asset coverage completed.
- 04 Month 3 onward
Feed the machine and hold it
Offline conversions flowing back, values attached, weekly search term work, monthly structural review and a call with the founder.
Outcomes, not activities.
Impressions and clicks are what the platform sells. These are the things that should be different in the business afterwards, each one measurable in the account or the CRM.
- A known cost per qualified enquiry, and where the CRM allows it, a cost per customer.
- Wasted spend identified in currency and falling month on month.
- Conversion data the bidding algorithms can be trusted with.
- A monthly report you can read in two minutes that opens with enquiries.
Three things you can hold us to.
Per lead, not a percentage
Your budget going up should not automatically pay the agency more. Paying per qualified lead removes the conflict at the exact moment advice matters most.
You keep the account
Billed to your card, owned by you, history intact if you leave. An agency that runs spend through its own account is holding something you should own.
The audit is yours either way
The search term audit and the wasted spend figure are useful whether or not you hire us, and you keep them.
What drives the number.
A price per qualified lead, agreed in writing against your criteria before launch, with no monthly retainer. The price reflects what a lead is worth in your category. Ad spend is separate and is billed by Google to your own card.
Included
- All in-platform management and weekly search term work
- Conversion tracking build and CRM import
- Ad copy, assets and creative testing
- Landing pages for the priority intents
- Monthly report and a review call with the founder
Not included
- The ad budget itself, billed by Google to your own card
- Leads that miss the criteria you agreed, which are not billed
- Percentage-of-spend fees, which are not charged here
No lock-in, month to month. Paid search shows its hand quickly, so you will know inside the first few weeks whether it is working.
What happens if it underperforms
A lead that misses the agreed criteria is not billed, and if the month falls short of the agreed volume the following month is free. Separately, and more usefully: if the audit shows your category cannot support a paid cost per customer, you hear it before you spend rather than after.
Numbers from live accounts.
Google Ads
2,410
conversions at £19.21 each
£46.3K spend at a £0.57 average cost per click.
Google Ads
188K
clicks from 14.4M impressions
£59.7K spend at £16.11 per conversion.
Google Ads
6.45x
return on ad spend
787.59 conversions at $4.77 each.
Real accounts, anonymised by client agreement. Currency as recorded in the account. Movement varies by market, budget and starting position.
Proof
Accounts where this work was done.
Every figure below is legible in the screenshot beside it, and every card says what the numbers do not establish.
Google Ads, retailMedia buying
6.74xreturn on ad spend
- £31.4Kconversion value
- £4.66Kspend behind it
- £15.87cost per conversion
Google Ads, lead generationMedia buying
2.41Kconversions
- £19.21cost per conversion
- £0.57average cost per click
- £46.3Kspend managed
A 50% increase in 90 days, or a refund plus $1,000.
A 50% increase in organic traffic, keyword rankings or direct enquiries within 90 days of the engagement starting.
- The baseline is measured in your own Google Search Console and GA4 in week one, and you get a copy of it before any work starts.
- The 90 days run from the day access is granted, not the day the contract is signed.
- Recommended changes are implemented, or we are given the access to implement them ourselves.
On camera
Four clients on camera, in their own words.
Four clients, four industries, one thing in common: the number moved and they said so on camera.
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It is the best long-term investment we have made in the company, full stop.
Ahmed · Business owner · SEO
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The cost per lead from organic is a fraction of what we pay on ads, and that math gets better every month.
Sandra · Founder · SEO
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People can book a table without calling during the dinner rush. My host actually thanked me.
Aaliyah · Restaurant owner · Website
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These tech geeks know the Facebook analytics and the data and the pixels and all that stuff that makes a musician’s head explode.
David · The Wankers · Social ads
Reviews
What clients say, in their own words.
4.9 out of 5 from 22 published reviews
I have been in business long enough to know that every agency has a presentation about why they are different. That part doesn't interest me. What mattered to us was whether they understood our market and whether they would actually do the work after the meeting was over. So far, they've been practical, responsive and consistent. We discuss priorities, the team works on them, and we review what was done. I prefer that kind of relationship.
I am probably not the easiest person to build a landing page for because I change my mind constantly. First I wanted it minimal. Then more colour. Then less colour. Then I hated the headline. Then I wanted the old headline back. 😂 What I liked was that the team didn't get irritated or disappear every time I asked for another round of changes. We kept working through it until it finally felt like us.
My son said we needed SEO. I said fine, but I didn't want to hear about it every week. Mavix sorted the important stuff and kept it simple.
Photos are illustrative. Every quote is the client's own words.
Questions
Questions people actually ask.
01 How much does Google Ads management cost?
A price per qualified lead, agreed in writing against your criteria before launch, with no monthly retainer. The audit gives you a real figure before you commit, and a lead that misses the bar is not billed.
02 Why not charge a percentage of ad spend?
Because it pays the agency more when you spend more, and there are months when the right recommendation is to cut a campaign or pause a market. A model that penalises the agency for giving that advice produces worse advice.
03 What is the minimum budget for Google Ads?
It depends on your cost per click and conversion rate rather than on a number that could be published honestly. In most service categories the account needs enough conversions per month for bidding to learn from, and that floor gets worked out for you on the audit.
04 What happens in the first month?
Mostly work you cannot see: the search term audit, the tracking rebuild and the restructure. There is often a visible change in cost per enquiry by the end of it, because structural changes take effect immediately.
05 Can we keep our existing account?
Almost always, and that is usually the right answer because the account history has value to the bidding. Occasionally an account is structured badly enough that rebuilding is faster, and the audit says which.
What this is usually run alongside, and why.
Google Ads Agency Paid Per Qualified Lead | Mavix
Starting or rebuilding Google Ads? A straight answer on whether the searches exist, what a click costs you, and an account aimed at enquiries you would take.
PPC Management Across Google and Microsoft Ads | Mavix
Paid search on Google and Microsoft Ads, judged on cost per customer rather than cost per click. Wasted spend found first, tracking fixed before optimising.
Conversion Rate Optimization for Lead-Gen Sites | Mavix
Before you buy more traffic, give the traffic you have a reason to act. We fix the form, the promise, the proof and what happens next, then measure the change.
Work it out yourself
Model the numbers before you talk to anyone.
- Google Ads ROI calculator Cost per lead, cost per customer and break-even return on ad spend worked out from your real gross margin, so the answer is profit rather than the revenue figure the ads dashboard reports.
Do it yourself first
The same work, written out step by step.
- Google Ads account structure, built so you can still diagnose it later A campaign layout where budget is controlled at the level you care about, every ad group has one job, and any underperforming segment can be isolated and paused on its own.
- Negative keywords, and how to find the waste already happening A shared negative list applied across the account, a weekly ten minute routine for the search terms report, and a record of what you excluded and why.
Run the checks
The checklist we work through on these accounts.
- The Google Ads audit checklist we run before touching a budget What to check before you blame the agency or raise the budget: structure, matching, negatives, tracking and landing pages, in the order that finds waste.
Read next
Written from the accounts this work was done on.
- Google Ads audit checklist, ordered by what actually costs money A free 28-row Google Ads audit checklist: tracking, search terms, structure, bidding, ads and landing pages, with a pass condition for every row.
- Consent Mode v2 for US advertisers: why your European Google Ads conversions dropped, and sales did not For US advertisers: Google Ads conversions fell in Europe while orders held. How to tell if Consent Mode v2 is the cause, a ten-minute check and the fix order.
- Meta vs GA4 conversions: why the numbers never match, and which one to trust Meta and GA4 rarely agree on conversions, and the gap is usually normal rather than broken. What each one counts, why they disagree, and the number to trust.
Take the file
The templates we use on these accounts.
- The Google Ads audit checklist we run before touching a budget What to check before you blame the agency or raise the budget: structure, matching, negatives, tracking and landing pages, in the order that finds waste.
In your industry
How this works in a specific market.
- Treatment centre marketing built around certification Regulated industry
- Automotive marketing that fills the workshop and the forecourt Retail and consumer
- Accountancy marketing that wins the right clients, at the right time of year Professional services
- Dispensary marketing for a market with no paid search Regulated industry
- CBD marketing built for a channel mix that stays open Regulated industry
- Cleaning company marketing built for contracts, not one-off jobs Trades
- Commercial print marketing that wins repeat accounts, not one-off jobs Industrial
- Crypto marketing that survives a policy review Regulated industry
- Ecommerce and retail marketing measured in revenue, not sessions Retail and consumer
- Dental marketing where the search starts with insurance Healthcare
- Electrician marketing that books the jobs worth sending a van to Trades
- Financial services marketing that clears verification Regulated industry
- General contractor marketing for the projects worth bidding on Trades
- Healthcare marketing that stays inside the rules and counts patients Healthcare
- HVAC marketing that survives the quiet season Trades
- iGaming marketing that starts with the licence, not the campaign Regulated industry
- Landscaping marketing that wins projects, not just mowing Trades
- Insurance marketing that wins quotes and stays inside the rules Professional services
- Law firm marketing where every click is expensive Professional services
- MSP marketing where the search volume is tiny and the contracts are not B2B
- Manufacturer marketing for low volume, long cycles and large orders Industrial
- Med spa marketing that gets through the ad review Healthcare
- Property management marketing aimed at owners, not tenants Property
- Pest control marketing built for the urgency of the search Trades
- Plumbing marketing where the phone is the conversion Trades
- Real estate marketing on the searches portals do not own Property
- Roofing marketing built around the job, not the click Trades
- SaaS marketing measured on revenue, not signups B2B software
- Supplement marketing that survives its own claims Regulated industry
- Wellness and coaching marketing that fills the diary with the right clients Retail and consumer