PPC and Google Ads we build the landing page too, not just the campaign

Most PPC relationships end in the same argument. The agency shows a dashboard where everything is green — impressions up, cost per click down, click-through rate climbing — and the owner says the phone isn't ringing. Both are telling the truth. The clicks arrived, and landed on a page never built to turn a stranger into an inquiry.

That gap is structural. When the people running the ads cannot touch the landing page, traffic goes to whatever page exists, usually a homepage written for browsing rather than deciding. The one thing deciding whether the money comes back waits on a developer booked until next month. We are a build shop that runs ads, so the page is inside our scope: same team, same repo.

What PPC means in our hands

We build the landing page, then keep rebuilding it. Campaigns get purpose-built pages, not a homepage with a tracking parameter on the end, and they ship on our usual standards: built to WCAG 2.1 AA, and fast on a real phone — we measure it before launch. When the data says the form is too long or the offer is buried, we change it.

Negative keywords are the job, not the afterthought. Broad match with an untended negative list is how budgets evaporate into searches for free versions, jobs and homework help. We mine the search terms report on a fixed cadence and keep one shared negative list, so a lesson learned in one campaign applies across the account.

Tracking measures money, not form fills. A form fill is a proxy, and optimising toward one buys cheap leads nobody wants. We wire tracking properly, then close the loop: qualified and won outcomes import back into Google Ads from your CRM, so bidding learns which clicks became customers.

The stack and the approach

• Platforms: Google Ads and Microsoft Ads; Merchant Center feeds for Shopping
• Measurement: GA4 and Google Tag Manager, with server-side events where the browser can't be trusted
• Pages: Next.js 16 on Vercel, the same stack behind our web design work
• Feedback loop: offline conversions pushed from your CRM, or one we build for you
• Ownership: accounts stay in your name, billed to your card, with full admin access. Nothing here is hostage to the relationship continuing.

What this looks like in practice

Two shapes most engagements take:

A local service business on Search. A clinic, trades company or professional practice competing for high-intent local searches. Campaigns structured by service, an aggressive negative list, call tracking, and a dedicated landing page per service instead of one catch-all. Leads reach the CRM with campaign and keyword attached; won deals flow back to Google as conversions.

An ecommerce catalogue on Shopping and Performance Max. The product feed gets cleaned and structured before a dollar is spent, because feed quality decides Shopping performance more than bidding does. Best sellers, long tail and clearance are separated so they stop bidding against each other, with remarketing on cart abandoners. Pairs naturally with an ecommerce build.

Paid search captures demand that already exists; SEO compounds it and social creates it.

Pricing

PPC management is scoped per project. Effort depends on how many campaigns you run, how much landing page work the account needs, and how deep the tracking integration goes — a flat percentage of spend would overcharge some clients and underserve others. After a short call you get a fixed scope in writing. Media budget is separate, paid directly to the platforms. Contact us for a quote.