Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out. I've had a look over the situation you described, and I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience. It sounds like you've had a rough time of it, which is completely understandable.
First off, your expectation that an agency should improve performance rather than just manage it is not only reasonable, it's the entire point. Any decent agency or freelancer should be a growth partner, not just a caretaker for your ad spend. If they aren't adding more value than their fee, they're not doing their job. The fact you're even asking this shows you've been burned by someone who didn't understand this basic principle, and I'm sorry to hear that. Getting tracking that wrong is a massive red flag, and it's no wonder you lost trust.
Let's unpack this a bit. I'll walk you through how I'd approach a situation like yours, what levers we can pull to actually drive improvement, and what you should be looking for in a partner. This will be quite detailed, but given your ad spend and your ambition to scale, the detail matters.
I'd say you're right to be cautious, but your goal is achievable...
The story about your previous agency is unfortunately not that uncommon. Tracking is the absolute bedrock of any paid advertising campaign. Without accurate data, every decision you make is a guess. It's like trying to navigate a ship in a storm with a broken compass. The fact they messed it up so badly tells me they either lacked basic technical competence or they just weren't paying attention. Either way, it's unacceptable.
Your goal of needing an agency to improve performance to make it financially viable is spot on. With a $180k annual spend, there's a lot at stake. Just 'managing' the account isn't enough. You need strategic input, rigorous testing, and proactive optimisation to get more out of every dollar you spend. You need someone who will treat your budget like their own.
You mentioned something interesting: "Our ROAS decreased but ROI increased." This is actually a sign of potentially sophisticated advertising, even if it feels counter-intuitive. It could mean the campaigns were driving sales of higher-margin products or services. So while the overall revenue per ad dollar (ROAS) went down, the actual profit (ROI) went up. For example, selling one $100 product with a $70 profit margin is far better than selling two $80 products that each have a $20 profit margin. This is a nuance a good partner should understand and discuss with you. It’s not just about a single metric, but about how advertising impacts your bottom line. We need to define what success really means for your business – is it top-line revenue, or is it profit? Most of the time, it's the latter.
The core issue here is trust, and the only way to build that is with transparency and competence. You need a partner who can not only get the basics right (like tracking!) but also explain their strategy clearly and demonstrate how their actions are leading to tangible business results. You're too busy running the business to babysit your ad campaigns; you need an expert you can rely on to get on with it and deliver.
We'll need to look at your foundations first: Tracking & Data
Before we even think about touching a keyword or an ad, we have to fix the foundations. That means a complete audit and overhaul of your conversion tracking. This is non-negotiable. We need to be 100% confident in the data before we spend another penny. Your past experience proves just how critical this is.
What does proper tracking look like? It's more than just sticking a standard Google tag on your 'thank you' page. We need to ensure:
-> Accuracy: We need to track every valuable action. This might be a sale, a lead form submission, a phone call, or even a key page view. We need to be sure the numbers in Google Ads match the numbers in your sales ledger.
-> Value-Based Bidding: Are all conversions worth the same to you? Probably not. A new customer buying a high-ticket item is worth more than a returning customer buying a low-cost accessory. We need to pass dynamic revenue values back to Google Ads. This lets us use powerful bidding strategies like Target ROAS (tROAS), where the algorithm optimises for revenue, not just the number of conversions. This is likely how that Google plan managed to increase your ROI while ROAS fell – by focusing on higher-value outcomes.
-> Robustness: With things like iOS14 updates and cookie restrictions, standard client-side tracking is becoming less reliable. We'd likely look at implementing server-side tracking using Google Tag Manager. This creates a more direct and stable connection between your website and the ad platforms, meaning we lose less data and can make better optimisation decisions.
Getting this right isn't just about reporting. It's about feeding the machine learning algorithms the right fuel. Google's systems (especially PMax) are incredibly powerful, but they are only as good as the data they receive. Garbage in, garbage out. By feeding them clean, accurate, value-based data, we empower the algorithms to find you more of your best customers, often at a lower cost. This alone can lead to a significant improvement in performance, before we even start on strategy.
You'll need a proper campaign structure...
Once the data is solid, we'd look at your current campaign structure. Running just a Search and a PMax campaign is a common setup, but the devil is in the details. It's very easy for these campaign types to cannibalise each other or operate inefficiently if not configured correctly.
My approach would be to create a much more granular and controlled structure. This allows us to allocate budget more effectively, tailor messaging more precisely, and get clearer insights into what's working and what isn't.
For your Google Ads account, a robust structure might look something like this:
| Campaign Type | Purpose & Strategy | Key Considerations |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Search | Protect your brand name from competitors. Capture the highest-intent traffic at a very low cost. This should have a very high ROAS. | Keywords would be just your company name and variations. Essential for defence. |
| Generic Search (High Intent) | Target users actively searching for your exact products/services with buying intent. E.g., "emergency electrician near me" or "buy [product name]". | Split ad groups by theme. Use exact and phrase match keywords to maintain tight control. This is your workhorse campaign for driving sales/leads. |
| Generic Search (Low Intent) | Target users in the research phase. E.g., "how to fix [problem]" or "best [product category]". | Lower budget, focus on providing value and capturing them for retargeting later. Not a direct sales driver. |
| Performance Max (PMax) | Use for broad reach across all of Google's inventory (YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, etc.). Good for finding new customer segments. | Needs to be controlled carefully. We'd use specific Asset Groups for different products/services, feed it strong audience signals (like lists of your past customers), and use negative keywords to stop it from bidding on your core search terms. It should complement Search, not compete with it. |
| Retargeting (Display/YouTube) | Bring back website visitors who didn't convert. Show them specific offers or reminders to complete their purchase. | Segment audiences based on behaviour (e.g., cart abandoners vs. homepage visitors). A very cost-effective way to boost overall conversion rate. |
This kind of structure gives us far more control and clarity than a simple Search + PMax setup. We can see exactly where performance is coming from and double down on the winners. It's more work to set up and manage, but that's what you'd be paying an expert for. This is how you move from just 'managing' to actively improving an account.
You probably should think beyond just Google...
With an annual spend of $180k, you're at a scale where relying solely on Google could be limiting your growth. Google Ads are fantastic for capturing existing demand – people who are already looking for what you offer. But what about creating new demand? What about reaching potential customers who don't even know they need you yet? This is where other platforms come in.
Depending on whether your business is B2C or B2B, the strategy would differ:
-> If You're B2C (selling to consumers): We should be looking very seriously at Meta (Facebook & Instagram) ads. This is where you can proactively reach people based on their interests, demographics, and behaviours. We've run many campaigns for eCommerce and service businesses here with great success. For instance, I remember one client, a women's apparel brand, where we achieved a 691% return on ad spend using Meta and Pinterest. For a subscription box client, we hit a 1000% ROAS on Meta alone. The strategy here is about building a funnel:
1. Top of Funnel (ToFu): Reach broad audiences with engaging video or image ads to build awareness. We'd test various interest-based and lookalike audiences to find pockets of customers.
2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Retarget people who engaged with our ads or visited the website but didn't take a key action. Show them testimonials, different product angles, or user-generated content.
3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Hit cart abandoners and recent visitors with a direct call to action – maybe a small discount or a reminder to complete their purchase. This is often where the highest ROAS is found.
-> If You're B2B (selling to other businesses): Your options are different. While Meta can sometimes work for B2B (I recall driving 4,622 registrations for a B2B software using Meta), the king of B2B is LinkedIn. The targeting capabilities are unmatched. You can target people by their exact job title, company size, industry, seniority, and more. This is incredibly powerful if you know exactly who your decision-maker is.
For example, I remember a campaign we ran for a software client where we needed to reach specific B2B decision-makers and managed to achieve a cost per lead of just $22, which for their high-ticket service was a fantastic result. For B2B, the sales cycle is longer. The goal isn't usually an immediate sale, but to generate a qualified lead – someone who downloads a whitepaper, requests a demo, or books a consultation. The ads need to reflect this, offering value and building authority rather than going for a hard sell.
By expanding to another platform, you're not just finding more customers; you're diversifying your marketing mix. If a Google algorithm update hits you hard, you'll have another channel still bringing in leads or sales. This creates a more resilient and scalable growth engine for your business.
I'd say we need to get serious about creative testing...
In today's advertising world, especially with machine learning-driven campaigns like PMax and Meta Ads, the single biggest lever you can pull to improve performance is your creative. The algorithms are great at finding the 'who' (audience), but you have to provide the 'what' (the ad itself).
I suspect, like many business owners doing their own marketing, you probably created a few ads that worked okay and have let them run. An agency's job is to bring a rigorous, systematic testing process to your creative strategy. We'd be constantly producing and testing new:
-> Messaging & Angles: What problem does your product solve? We can test ads that focus on pain points, benefits, features, social proof (testimonials), or scarcity. A simple change in the headline can dramatically alter performance.
-> Formats: Are you just using static images? We need to be testing video ads, carousel ads, user-generated content (UGC) style videos, and more. I've seen several SaaS clients get incredible results with simple, authentic UGC videos – they often outperform slick, professionally produced ads because they feel more trustworthy.
-> Calls to Action (CTAs): Are you testing "Shop Now" vs. "Learn More" vs. "Get a Quote"? The right CTA can have a big impact on click-through rates and conversion rates.
This isn't random. We'd build a testing roadmap, analyse results, and iterate. We'd find winning elements and combine them to create new champion ads, then try to beat those. This relentless optimisation of creative is a huge value-add that an expert partner brings. It's time-consuming work that you don't have time for, but it's often the key to unlocking the next level of performance and scaling your spend profitably.
This is the main advice I have for you:
To make this all a bit more concrete, here's a summary of the approach I'd recommend. This is a framework for moving from simply 'managing' your ads to actively and strategically improving them.
| Recommendation | Why It's Important | Actionable First Step |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Full Tracking Audit & Fix | Your previous experience shows this is the weak point. Without 100% reliable data, all other efforts are wasted. It's the foundation for everything. | Conduct a full audit of your Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking. Implement server-side tagging and set up dynamic value tracking. |
| 2. Strategic Account Restructure | Your current setup is likely inefficient. A granular structure gives you more control, better insights, and allows for more effective budget allocation. | Pause existing campaigns (once tracking is fixed) and build out a new structure based on intent (Brand, Generic, PMax, Retargeting) as outlined above. |
| 3. Creative Testing Framework | Creative is the biggest lever for performance in modern ad platforms. A constant stream of new creative is needed to avoid ad fatigue and find new winners. | Develop 3-5 new creative concepts based on different customer pain points or benefits. Test these as new ads within your restructured campaigns. |
| 4. Channel Expansion Testing | Relying only on Google limits your scale. New channels like Meta or LinkedIn can create new demand and diversify your lead/sales sources for more stable growth. | Allocate 10-15% of your total budget to test a new platform (Meta for B2C, LinkedIn for B2B) for one month. Measure results and decide whether to scale. |
| 5. Clear KPI & Reporting Rhythm | You need clear visibility on performance to rebuild trust. This means regular, jargon-free reporting focused on the business metrics that matter to you (like profit ROI, not just ROAS). | Establish a weekly snapshot report and a monthly deep-dive call to review performance, tests, and next steps. Agree on primary KPIs from the start. |
Implementing a plan like this is how you get the improvement you're looking for. It's a strategic, methodical process. It takes expertise and, just as you said, it takes time that you simply don't have. This is the value a true partner brings to the table.
Hiring an expert isn't just about offloading tasks. It's about bringing in years of experience from working across dozens, if not hundreds, of accounts. We see what's working right now across different industries and can apply those learnings to your business much faster than you could discover them on your own. We can help you avoid costly mistakes (like the tracking disaster) and accelerate your path to scaling profitably.
I hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful and gives you a clearer picture of what to expect and demand from a PPC partner. You're right to want more than just management – you should be demanding strategic growth.
If you'd like, I'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could have a proper look at your ad account together, and I could give you some more specific feedback based on what I see. It would give you a taste of the kind of expertise we could bring to your business.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
