Every month, a new invoice arrives.
And every month, after quickly glossing over the ads report that’s just a whole bunch of numbers that barely make sense, you approve it.
Not because you feel it’s worth it, but mainly because you approved the same invoice last month and the month before.
Ad campaigns seem to be running, and running means something is happening.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, quietly, a question keeps whispering in your ear…
What did I actually get out of this?
Just.. are there new clients, right now, in this business, who are here because of the money on this invoice?
And if there are, how many?
Who are they?
Could we find them again?
These questions are usually left in a corner of your mind.
You’ve been running the business long enough to know how many of your monthly costs do not survive a question like that.
You let it pass… and the invoice gets paid.
The campaigns keep running another month.
And your marketing agency just sighed of relief.
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The Arrangement
Nobody will tell you this directly, but your marketing agency is also not trying to answer those questions directly.
It isn’t personal.
It’s how the industry was built.
Ad agencies sell a service.
- They run the ads
- They send the report
- They adjust the bids
What they want to be accountable for is the work getting done, not the clients walking in the door.
The report will show that work is happening.
Clicks up, impressions up, cost per click down, green arrows in the right places.
If you asked directly, the agency would tell you that the campaigns are running fine.
And they are.
By the definition the agency is using…
But the definition that most businesses are using is different.
You’re paying to get more clients. The agency is being paid to run ads.
Those are not the same thing.
Nobody set it up to be the same thing.
Most agencies will not make themselves accountable to the outcome you actually care about, because getting clients has too many variables for them to safely own.
If they promise clients and you don’t get clients, the relationship ends.
So they promise service.
The service runs whether or not your business grows.
This is the arrangement most of the industry is built on.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And it sucks.
This arrangement is also what prevents most marketers from telling you what actually matters in advertising to get you clients.
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Half a Second
Here’s what actually happens when one of your ads gets a click.
A person, somewhere, is doing something else and has a thought.
They pick up their phone, or they turn to their laptop, and they search for something.
They have a purpose.
Maybe they’ve been circling the idea for weeks.
Maybe something just broke at work and they need it solved today.
The results load and your ad appears.
Something about it makes them stop.
For half a second, maybe even a full second, and they decide to click.
That half a second is what you paid for.
Standard agencies charge for that half a second decision that caused the click and nothing else.
Now they’re on your website.
What happens next is out of the agency’s “control”.
But that space after the prospect clicked is what determines whether any money on that monthly invoice is worth it for you.
What nobody dares tell you is that the most important part of a Google Ads campaign is about what happens after they click on your ad.
The most important part is the page your prospects land on.
What it promises.
Whether it keeps the promise the ad made.
Whether the person who arrived feels like the site was expecting them.
Almost nobody dares to look at that.
Not the platform, or most agencies.
The average agency only reports on how many clicks you get.
That’s why Google Ads are also called PPC (Pay-Per-Click).
Because that’s all you’re going to get out of the industry.
The person on the other side, who decided to click and then decided something else after they landed on your website, is a ghost in the system that no one’s tracking…
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Measure What Matters
The numbers most people track in reports is usually the wrong ones.
Clicks. Impressions. Click-through rate. Cost per click.
These measure whether the ad is running.
They don’t measure whether the ad is doing anything for your business.
The metric that matters is conversions.
The number of people who clicked and then did the thing you actually wanted them to do.
Booked the call.
Filled the form.
Bought the thing.
The action that moves the business forward.
The action that tracks that ghost in the system.
Knowing what is worth tracking and making that the goal changes how your ads should operate.
Optimizing for clicks will only get you more clicks.
And if you want more results, they’ll ask for a bigger budget so they can get you more clicks.
Spending more money to keep you in the same place.
But when you optimize for conversions, someone filling out a form or giving you a call, you spend money to improve the journey a person takes through your entire marketing.
Optimizing the ads, the website, the form, the email, etc. that will ultimately generate clients online.
It benefits you, the prospect, and your bottom line.
The way out is not a bigger budget.
It’s a more honest system.
An ad that makes a specific promise.
A page that keeps it.
A conversion event that represents a potential client, not a conversion based on seeing the website or how they scrolled down the page.
That type of honest system takes time to build.
And it’s built on a completely different type of arrangement.
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The Honest Part
Ads don’t generate clients.
Your ads bring people.
Your website is what turns those people into clients.
The ad and the landing page have to be one conversation, one leading to the next.
When they’re not, you pay for the mismatch every single click.
Which is why I do both.
I don’t like to run the ads and hand the clicks off to whoever built your website two years ago.
It’s proven time and time again to not work well.
I run the ads and I build or rework the page they land on, as one piece of work.
The ad makes a specific promise.
The page keeps it.
The conversion is the same system start to finish.
This is not how the industry is typically organized.
The industry splits ads and websites into separate services because each employee is taught to only have one expertise.
The advertisers are really good at creating ads, the web designers are really good at creating websites.
They don’t speak to each other.
And that causes your marketing tools to also not speak to each other.
From your social media posts, to your website, to your ads.
All of them are saying different things at the same time.
Confusing people and their journey to understanding if you are worth their attention.
The only way to be accountable to clients instead of just providing a service is to own the whole path from the ad to the conversion.
That’s the version that leads to you getting more clients.
That’s the version that works.
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The System Part
I’ve spent about ten years doing this work.
Most of what I do well I learned from sitting with a business owner who wasn’t sure what was working, opening an ad account they’d inherited from their previous agency, and going through it line by line.
Not to find what was broken.
To find what was true.
What the ad was actually promising.
Who was actually clicking.
What they saw when they landed.
Most of the time, the fix was simpler than anyone expected.
Not easier. Simpler.
A different landing page, a different opening line on the ad.
A different definition of what counted as a conversion. Teaching the algorithm that we’re looking for more clients, not more clicks.
I explain to my clients what each number means in my reports, what I worked on last month, and what I will work on the next based on the data gathered.
Depending on their needs, I meet with them monthly or join their marketing meetings.
I advise on their strategy based on what we can do with the ads.
My system is about working together to getting you the results you’ve always wanted from your ads.
If this resonates with you, I’m offering you a free audit.
An actual look at your ad account and the pages it sends people to.
If something surfaces in the audit worth working on, we’ll talk about what that would look like and why.
Even if you end up working with someone else or keep the agency you have.
My goal is to help you understand your marketing better, so you can make better decisions for your business.
Click the button below to book your free audit, and thank you for your attention anyway if you choose to click away.
I know your time is precious, and I appreciate you giving some of it to me.
