Google App Ads: Why Local Experts Are a Waste

I see you’re looking for a Google App Ads expert in Bath. Let me be blunt: that's probably the worst way to start your search. You're looking for a highly specific skill set, and limiting your search to a small city in the South West, no matter how lovely it is, is setting yourself up for failure. The best person to grow your app isn't down the road from the Royal Crescent; they're the person who lives and breathes app marketing metrics, probably working with clients from London to San Francisco from their home office.

The logic of hiring a local agency for a pint and a progress meeting is a relic from a pre-digital age. For something as niche and data-driven as app user acquisition, proximity is worthless. Expertise is everything. You don't need someone who knows the best pubs in Bath; you need someone who knows how to slash your Cost Per Install (CPI) while increasing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of the users you acquire. These are two very, very different skills.

Let's forget geography for a moment and talk about what actually gets results. You're not just buying clicks or installs. You're investing in a growth engine for your app. The person running that engine needs to be a specialist mechanic, not a local jack-of-all-trades who also does SEO for a local plumber and social media for a cafe.

So, Why is the "Local Expert" Idea a Trap?

The desire to hire locally is understandable. It feels safer, more accountable. But for digital marketing, especially for something as specialised as mobile apps, it's a massive strategic error. The Bath and Bristol tech scene is certainly growing, with hubs like SETsquared doing great work, but the pool of genuine, battle-tested app marketing specialists is tiny. Most local agencies are generalists. They have to be, to serve the local market of dentists, solicitors, and restaurants.

They might tell you they can "do" Google App Ads. And technically, they can. Anyone can log into Google Ads, create a campaign, and set it to drive installs. But that's like saying anyone with a wrench can fix a Formula 1 car. The reality is they'll set up a basic campaign, burn through your budget on low-quality installs from users who open the app once and then delete it, and then show you a fancy report full of vanity metrics like "impressions" and "clicks".

We often see the results of this generalist approach. For instance, we worked with a medical job-matching app that was struggling with a Cost Per User Acquisition (CPA) of over £100. Their campaigns were driving installs, but not the valuable, registered users they needed to grow their business. By shifting the focus to acquiring high-quality users who would actually engage with the app, we were able to reduce their CPA for a registered user to just £7. That’s the difference between a generalist and a specialist. The generalist gets you installs; the specialist gets you customers.

The truth is, hiring a local expert is often a waste of money because the real talent operates on a national or international level. Communication is done via Slack and Zoom, reports are delivered via live dashboards, and results are measured in cold, hard data, not friendly handshakes.

What Should You Look For Instead? The App Specialist's DNA

If not locality, what defines a real expert? It's their deep, obsessive understanding of the mobile app ecosystem. This goes far beyond just knowing the Google Ads interface. Here’s what seperates the pros from the amateurs:

1. They Speak in LTV and CPI, Not Clicks and Impressions.

An expert's first questions won't be about your ad budget. They'll be about your business model. What's your average revenue per user? What's your churn rate? They need to understand your app's unit economics to know how much you can afford to pay to acquire a user (your target CPI). They understand that the goal isn't just to get cheap installs; it's to acquire users who will spend money or engage in a way that generates value, and to do so profitably.

2. They Care More About What Happens *After* the Install.

Getting someone to download your app is the easy part. The real challenge is getting them to sign up, complete a tutorial, make a purchase, or subscribe. A true expert will insist on tracking these "post-install events" meticulously. They'll build campaigns designed to find users who are likely to perform these specific actions, not just any user who will download an app. They will talk about building different campaigns for different objectives: one for installs (to gather data), another for registrations (to find engaged users), and a third for purchases (to find your most valuable customers).

3. They Have Verifiable, App-Specific Case Studies.

Don't accept vague promises. Ask for proof. And not just any proof. A case study about getting leads for a local builder is irrelevant. You need to see evidence that they have successfully grown mobile apps. Look for specific numbers. For instance, we've run campaigns that generated over 45,000 signups for a sports event app at under £2 per signup. We’ve driven 5,082 software trials from Meta Ads at $7 a pop. These are the kinds of concrete, relevant results you should be looking for. If they can't show you this, they're not an app specialist.

4. They Understand the Whole Funnel.

Google App Ads don't exist in a vacuum. Their effectiveness is directly tied to your App Store listing. An expert will be able to advise on your App Store Optimisation (ASO) – your icon, screenshots, description, and reviews. They know that a brilliant ad campaign pointing to a poor store listing will fail. They see the user journey from the first ad impression to the first in-app purchase and can identify friction points along the way.

The Vetting Process: How to Find a Killer Expert from Your Laptop

So, you’re convinced. You’re ditching the local search. How do you find and vet a top-tier expert or agency, no matter where they are based?

Start with a better Google search. Instead of "app ads expert in Bath," try "app user acquisition agency," "mobile app marketing specialist," or "google app ads case studies." Look for agencies that produce detailed content—blogs, guides, webinars—about the specific challenges of app marketing. This is a sign they have deep expertise.

Once you have a shortlist, here's your vetting checklist:

The Case Study Deep Dive:

• -> Do they have multiple case studies specifically for mobile apps?
• -> Do the case studies mention the key metrics: CPI, CPA (for in-app actions), and ideally ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)?
• -> Can they explain the *strategy* behind the results, not just show the final numbers? What audiences did they target? What creative approaches worked?
• -> Are the results recent? The app marketing world changes fast. A success story from 2019 is ancient history.

The Vetting Call Questions:

When you get them on a call, don't let them run a sales pitch. You are interviewing them for a critical role. Here are the questions that will seperate the talkers from the doers:

1. "Walk me through how you would determine our initial target Cost Per Install." A good answer will involve asking about your LTV, your funding, and your growth goals. A bad answer is "We'll aim for the lowest possible."
2. "Beyond installs, what one or two post-install events would you recommend we optimise for first, and why?" This tests if they are thinking about your business funnel, not just the download.
3. "Describe a time a campaign wasn't working. What steps did you take to diagnose and fix the problem?" This reveals their problem-solving process. You want someone who is methodical and data-driven, not someone who just guesses.
4. "How do you approach creative testing for App Campaigns?" They should talk about testing different video formats, image styles, and messaging angles systematically to find winning combinations.
5. "What data and access would you need from us to be successful?" An expert will ask for access to your analytics (like Firebase or AppsFlyer), your app store listings, and a deep understanding of your target user. A charlatan will just ask for your credit card details.

The Numbers Game: Understanding App Ad Economics

Let's talk about money. What should this cost, and what kind of return can you expect? The answer, of course, is "it depends." But a true expert can help you model it out. The most important calculation you need to master is the relationship between your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), which in the app world is often just your Cost Per Install (CPI) or the cost to get a user to a specific action (CPA).

Your LTV is the total profit you can expect to make from a single user over their entire time using your app. Your CAC is how much you paid to get that user. A healthy business model requires your LTV to be significantly higher than your CAC, typically by a factor of 3 or more (LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1).

Most app founders don't know their LTV. An expert will help you calculate it. But to give you a rough idea, here's an interactive calculator. Play around with the numbers to see how small changes in revenue or churn can dramatically affect how much you can afford to spend on ads.

As you can see, knowing your numbers changes the conversation entirely. An agency that promises a £1 CPI might sound great, but if those users have an LTV of £0.50, you're losing money on every single one. Conversely, an agency that delivers users at a £15 CPI might seem expensive, but if those users have an LTV of £50, you've built a profitable, scalable growth machine. This focus on profitable growth is what you pay an expert for, and it's something a local generalist agency in Bath will almost certainly not understand.

A Winning Google App Campaign Structure (That a Local Generalist Won't Know)

So what does this look like in practice? It's not about just setting up one campaign and hoping for the best. A sophisticated app advertising strategy involves a multi-layered approach, using different campaign types to achieve different goals. A generalist will likely just create a single "Universal App Campaign" (the old name) optimised for installs.

A specialist will build a structure that guides users through your funnel and teaches Google's algorithm who your most valuable users are. It looks something like this:

This phased approach is fundemental to success. You start broad to learn, then you focus on quality, and finally you optimise for profit. A local agency that runs a single tCPI campaign and calls it a day is leaving 90% of the potential value on the table. They're not just failing to get you the best results; they're actively preventing Google's powerful machine learning from working its magic for your app. The ability to plan and execute this kind of strategy is why you need to find a specialist, not a generalist.

Furthermore, an expert understands the creative nuances. Google App campaigns are heavily automated; you provide the "assets" (headlines, descriptions, images, and videos), and Google mixes and matches them to find the best combinations. An expert has a process for testing hundreds of these assets to constantly feed the algorithm fresh material and fight ad fatigue. They know that a raw, user-generated-style video will often outperform a slick, corporate production. They know how to write headlines that speak directly to a user's motivation for downloading an app like yours. This is as much an art as it is a science, and it's a skill honed over millions of pounds in ad spend across dozens of apps. For more on this, check out our guide to getting started with app download growth in the UK.

Forget Bath, Find the Best.

I hope by now the point is clear. Your search for a "Google App Ads expert in Bath" is based on a flawed premise. The talent you need to make your app a success is not defined by its postcode. It's defined by a deep, narrow, and proven specialisation in the complex world of mobile user acquisition.

By shifting your focus from "where are they?" to "what can they do?", you open yourself up to a global talent pool of genuine experts. You move from finding someone who can *run* ads to finding a partner who can help you build a profitable, scalable growth engine for your entire business. This is a far more important goal, and definitly one worth pursuing correctly from the start.

To put it all together, here is the main advice I have for you:

Choosing the right partner to manage your ad spend is one of the most critical decisions you'll make. It can be the difference between burning through your funding with nothing to show for it and achieving explosive, profitable growth. It requires a level of expertise that simply isn't available on every high street.

If you'd like a second opinion on your current app growth strategy or want to see how a specialist approach could work for you, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can review your app, discuss your goals, and give you some actionable advice you can use, whether you decide to work with us or not. It might be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing this year.