Most PPC agencies in Melbourne will show you a return on ad spend figure from inside Google Ads. It is the easiest number to make look good and the least useful one to run a business on. Four things tell you more.
1. Which number in your admin will they be judged on?
Cost per order from your store, or cost per booked job from your call and form records. If the answer is a platform metric, the agency is marking its own homework. We put the number in writing before the first campaign goes live.
2. Do they read the search terms report every week?
Ask to see last month's negative keyword additions. A Melbourne account that is not pruned weekly pays for the same wrong searches month after month, and the auction is too expensive for that.
3. Who builds the landing pages?
The agency that runs the ads should own the page the click lands on, or at least sign off on it. A campaign sent to a page it cannot change is a campaign that cannot improve. Ours come with the page, or with the exact change list for yours.
4. How are they paid?
A percentage of spend rewards spending. A flat fee rewards results, which is why ours is flat and stated on the audit call, with the ad spend going to Google and Meta in full from accounts in your name.
The Google Ads management page covers the national service and the regional Victorian markets; the guide to top rated PPC agencies in Melbourne works through the same four checks for ecommerce brands, and the Google Ads versus SEO guide explains when paid search is the wrong first move for a service business.
