Can you tell if your PPC management is actually working, or are you just approving invoices and hoping for the best?
The invoice arrives. Same number as last month. The report comes with it, full of charts showing impressions and clicks and Quality Score trends. You read it, nod vaguely, approve the next payment, and close the email without being able to say whether anything actually improved.
That situation is more common than most agencies would like to admit. PPC management is genuinely technical work, and most clients are not close enough to the details to know whether the work is being done well or just being done. Understanding what you are actually paying for is the first step toward knowing whether it is working. Leapyn offers paid marketing services that focus on demonstrable results rather than activity.
PPC management is the ongoing process of planning, executing, and optimising paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Meta, with the goal of generating qualified traffic and converting that traffic into revenue at a cost that makes commercial sense.
It is not turning on ads and leaving them. It is active work across five distinct areas, each of which affects the others.
Strategy and Setup. Before any money goes to an ad auction, effective PPC management starts with building a campaign architecture that matches how your buyers actually search. ICP-informed keyword research, competitor analysis, campaign structure decisions, audience configuration, and conversion tracking setup. This work determines the quality of everything that follows. Leapyn's marketing strategy work forms the foundation for paid campaigns.
Active Optimisation. Weekly review of the search term report to identify irrelevant queries and add negative keywords. Testing ad copy variations to find which messages convert at a lower cost per click. Adjusting bids based on what is working at different times of day, on different devices, for different audience segments. An account that does not receive this attention deteriorates over time even if nobody touches the campaign settings.
Bid Management. Modern Google Ads bidding is partly automated, but that automation requires supervision. Smart Bidding strategies need accurate conversion data to learn from, sensible targets to optimise toward, and a human reviewing whether the machine is bidding up on the right signals. Bid management is not set-and-forget.
Ad and Landing Page Coordination. Ad copy should be tested constantly for which headline produces the highest conversion rate, not just the highest CTR. If the landing page is the conversion bottleneck rather than the ad itself, a good PPC manager identifies that and says so. Website development that aligns with paid campaigns matters. Quality Score is the composite metric that reflects how well all of these elements are aligned. See the Search Engine Journal guide for more details.
Reporting and Communication. A useful PPC report tells you what changed, why it changed, and what is being done next. It does not just show impressions and clicks in a bar chart. If the report you receive every month does not answer those three questions, the reporting is not serving its purpose.
The fee range for PPC management is wide enough to be confusing. A freelancer might charge $100 per hour. A full-service agency might charge $8,000 per month. Both can be described as PPC management. Here is what the different structures actually mean.
Current PPC management pricing guides from WordStream consistently place the percentage-of-spend model in the 10 to 20 percent range, with additional industry data from AgencyAnalytics confirming this as the most widely cited band for standard agency engagements. Leapyn publishes transparent pricing so you know what you are getting.
One practical point. If your monthly ad spend is below about $1,000 to $2,500, management fees on either model tend to consume a disproportionate share of the budget. Below that threshold, most providers recommend DIY management or a lightweight freelancer arrangement rather than a full-service agency engagement.
This is the distinction most agencies do not explain, and it is the one that matters most when evaluating whether the management relationship is producing value.
Keeping campaigns from deteriorating. The ads are running, the billing is processing, the basic settings have not broken. A maintenance-level relationship produces relatively stable performance. Costs do not spike. Impressions stay roughly constant. Nothing is visibly wrong. And nothing is improving, either.
Compounding improvement. Every week something in the account is meaningfully different from the previous week. A new negative keyword list based on the latest search term review. An ad copy variation being tested against the current control. A bid adjustment based on a device or time-of-day pattern that emerged in last month's data. Optimisation-level management produces accounts that get more efficient over time. The cost per lead decreases. The conversion rate improves. The Quality Score trends upward.
To tell which one you are getting, pull the campaign modifications history in your Google Ads account. If the change log shows the same bid strategy sitting unchanged for 90 days and no new negative keywords added in the last month, you have a maintenance-level relationship regardless of what the invoice says. See how Leapyn works with accounts and how that compares to traditional agencies for a different approach.
Most PPC reports lead with metrics that look the best. Impressions are up. CTR improved. Average position looks strong. These are activity metrics. They tell you whether ads are showing and whether people are clicking. They do not tell you whether the business is growing.
These five metrics tell you whether PPC management is working.
ROAS or ROI. Return on ad spend is the ratio of revenue generated to money spent on ads. Many practitioners reference a 4 to 1 ROAS as a practical baseline profitability target, earning $4 for every $1 spent, though this is a rule of thumb from performance marketing practice rather than a hard Google benchmark. For B2B with long sales cycles, in-platform ROAS is often misleading because deals close months after the click. Tracking qualified pipeline and closed-won revenue influenced by paid search gives a more reliable picture. Leapyn's pipeline growth work ensures PPC connects to actual business outcomes.
Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Lead. How much are you spending to acquire each customer or each qualified lead. B2B CPLs in competitive industries like SaaS and professional services typically run in the $100 to $300 range, though this varies considerably by market and offer. WordStream's 2024 benchmarks provide industry comparison data. This metric connects ad spend to commercial outcome more directly than ROAS for most B2B companies.
Conversion Rate. The percentage of ad clicks that complete a desired action. Well-optimised B2B Google Ads campaigns typically achieve conversion rates in the low single digits up to around 5 to 7 percent. A consistently low conversion rate despite good click volume usually points to a landing page problem, not a targeting problem. Website optimisation often unlocks better ROAS than bid adjustments alone.
Conversion Volume. Whether the total number of qualified leads or sales is trending in the right direction month over month. An account that converts at 8 percent but drives almost no traffic is not a performing account. Volume and rate need to be read together.
Click-Through Rate. CTR tells you whether ad copy is relevant to the query that triggered it. A signal of relevance, not a measure of outcome. A high CTR with poor conversion is a warning sign. It means people are clicking expecting something the landing page does not deliver. Aligning ad messaging with content strategy helps close this gap.
ROAS and CPL improvements take time to appear, particularly in B2B where deals take months to close. These signals appear earlier and tell you whether the management work is sound before revenue metrics confirm it.
Improved Quality Score. Google's composite indicator of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing pages are to each other. When Quality Score improves, cost per click decreases and ad rank improves without a higher bid. A rising Quality Score trend is evidence of active, informed management.
Reduced Wasted Spend. Fewer irrelevant clicks coming through means the negative keyword list is being maintained. Pull the search term report and look at what queries triggered your ads last month. Irrelevant terms that have been triggering ads for weeks without a negative keyword being added are wasted spend that active management should have caught.
Transparent Reporting. Monthly reporting that tells you specifically what was done, what changed as a result, and what is planned next. Not a dashboard export with a cover note. An actual account of the work.
Lowered CPA Over Time. The cost to acquire each lead or customer decreasing quarter over quarter as campaigns are refined and the account learns from better data. Flat or drifting CPA over six months means either the market has shifted or the optimisation work is not happening.
Proactive Recommendations. A manager who surfaces opportunities and flags risks before you ask. A competitor who just entered the auction and is driving up CPCs. A landing page that data suggests is the conversion bottleneck. A new campaign type worth testing. If every communication is a reaction to your questions rather than an observation from their work, the relationship is missing something important. See our case studies for examples of proactive management producing results.
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Most clients never ask these questions. A good PPC manager will have specific, direct answers to all of them. A vague or deferred answer is informative too.
How often is the negative keyword list being reviewed and what was added last month. A good answer names a specific review frequency and can produce a list of recent additions. A vague answer suggests the search term report is not being worked regularly.
What changed in the campaign structure or bid strategy in the last 30 days and why. A good answer describes a specific change and the reasoning behind it. Stable accounts still benefit from ongoing testing, so 'nothing changed because performance is stable' deserves scrutiny.
What is the current Quality Score trend and what is being done to improve it. A good answer gives the current average Quality Score, the trend direction, and the specific work targeting it.
Which ad variations are winning the tests running right now. A good answer names the test, the current control, the challenger, and what the data shows so far. An account with no active ad copy tests is being maintained, not optimised. Copywriting expertise makes this work evidence-based rather than intuitive.
What does the search term report show about which queries are triggering ads this month. A good answer describes the search intent distribution across the account.
Where is conversion tracking pulling data from and does it connect to actual revenue. A good answer confirms whether conversions are tracked at the lead, opportunity, or revenue level, and whether in-platform conversion data matches what the CRM shows. See Invoca on closed-loop attribution and revenue operations alignment for context.
What is the plan for the next 90 days and what metrics will you use to judge whether it worked. A good answer describes a specific initiative, the expected outcome, and the measurement criteria.
PPC management is the ongoing process of planning, executing, and optimising paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Meta, with the goal of generating qualified traffic at a cost that produces a commercial return. It includes keyword strategy, bid management, ad copy testing, negative keyword maintenance, landing page coordination, conversion tracking, and regular reporting. Accounts that receive active management consistently outperform those left to run without regular intervention.
Current PPC management pricing guides show three common structures. The percentage-of-spend model typically runs 10 to 20 percent of monthly ad spend, sometimes up to 25 percent for smaller accounts. Flat retainers start around $500 to $1,500 per month for smaller accounts and climb to $2,500 to $10,000 or more for complex full-service programs. Hourly consulting typically runs $100 to $200 per hour for experienced specialists. Below about $1,000 to $2,500 per month in ad spend, management fees tend to consume too much of the budget for full agency engagement to be cost-effective.
PPC management is worth it when your ad spend is large enough to justify the fee, your campaign complexity benefits from ongoing optimisation, and your conversion tracking is connected to actual revenue. It is not worth it when the management relationship is maintenance-only, when tracking is not connected to revenue, or when the offer and landing page cannot convert the traffic being sent to them. The quality of the management matters as much as whether you have it. Pairing PPC with SEO and AEO compounds results over time.
Practitioners commonly reference a 4 to 1 ROAS as a practical baseline profitability target for Google Ads, particularly when factoring in product costs and overhead. Many accounts in competitive industries operate in a 2 to 1 through 4 to 1 band, with strong performers exceeding that range. For B2B companies with long sales cycles, in-platform ROAS is often a misleading primary metric because deals close long after the click. Tracking qualified pipeline and closed-won revenue influenced by paid search gives a more reliable picture of whether PPC is actually working.
PPC management through an agency gives you a team with cross-account experience and no training overhead, but adds a management fee and requires strong internal communication to work well. Running PPC in-house gives you full control and deep brand context but at a fixed salary cost that does not flex with your ad spend, and with a single person working in a single account rather than across many. The right answer depends on your spend level, your internal capacity, and whether you can provide strategic direction to an external vendor. Our lead generation approach integrates PPC within the broader demand system.
A weekly or bi-weekly brief update naming what changed, what it produced, and what is next should be standard for active accounts. A full monthly report should break down performance metrics, what work was done during the month, and the plan for the next period. Quarterly reviews should address strategic direction and whether the overall approach is still aligned with business goals. Automated reporting workflows can help standardise this cadence. If the only communication you receive is a monthly dashboard export, the reporting cadence is not adequate for active management.
A useful PPC report should include the core performance metrics (ROAS or CPL, conversion rate, conversion volume, Quality Score trend), a specific account of what work was done during the period, what changed as a result, and what is planned for the next period. It should identify the search terms that drove the most conversions and the most wasted spend. It should flag any anomalies or opportunities the manager identified. A report that contains only charts without explaining what caused the numbers is a reporting exercise, not a management communication.
Pull the campaign modifications history in your Google Ads account and check whether changes are being made regularly. Review the negative keyword list and ask when it was last updated. Look at whether ad copy tests are running and producing data. Check whether Quality Score is trending upward or flat. Ask for closed-loop reporting connecting ad clicks to CRM outcomes. If the answers to these questions are vague or deferred, the management may be maintenance-level work being charged at optimisation-level rates.
A PPC account that receives genuine management attention gets better over time. Cost per lead decreases. Conversion rates improve. The reporting tells you specifically why. That is what the fee is for.
If the monthly report is not answering the questions in the section above, the management relationship is not producing what it should.
If you want an honest look at what your current PPC program is actually producing, a free strategy session with Leapyn is the right place to start. We will look at your account, your reporting, and your conversion setup and tell you directly what we see. No pitch. No pressure. Just a straight conversation about what the data shows and what the options are.
Our approach to paid marketing, including how we work with accounts and how our model compares to the traditional agency approach, is worth reading before that call if you want context first.
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