Google Ads consultant for London businesses
London has the highest click costs in the UK. The same mistakes cost you more here than anywhere else. I rebuild accounts around tight targeting, tracking that works, and keywords that bring buyers rather than browsers.
What usually needs fixing first
Almost every London account I audit loses money in the same three places. First, location targeting. The campaign is set to all of London. The business serves four boroughs. So a big share of the budget goes on clicks from people thirty miles away. London is large enough that this gets expensive fast.
Second, keyword intent. Searches with ‘jobs’, ‘salary’, ‘courses’ and ‘free’ pull huge traffic from people who will never buy. Broad match finds them for you happily. Without a proper negative keyword list, a lot of a London budget goes to job seekers and students.
Third, measurement. Conversion tracking is usually wrong in some way. When it is, Google's bidding optimises for whatever it can see. That is normally clicks, not enquiries. This is not just a reporting problem. It actively points your budget at the wrong people. I check it first, and it is often the single biggest fix.
Where London ad budgets actually leak
Targeting the whole city by default
If you serve a radius rather than all of Greater London, the campaign should say so. Switching from city-wide to genuine service-area targeting is usually the fastest reduction in wasted spend available in a London account.
No negative keyword discipline
‘Jobs’, ‘salary’, ‘free’, ‘course’, ‘DIY’, competitor brand terms you cannot win. A negative list built from your own search terms report, reviewed monthly, is boring and reliably profitable.
Broken or partial conversion tracking
Forms that do not fire, phone clicks untracked, offline sales never fed back. The bidding algorithm can only optimise toward what it measures, so this quietly determines everything else.
Ads pointing at the homepage
A homepage has to serve every visitor, so it converts ad traffic poorly. At London click costs, the gap between a homepage and a page built for one action is the difference between a campaign that works and one that does not.
What a Google Ads engagement includes
Account and tracking audit
Structure, match types, search terms, geographic settings and — first — whether conversion tracking is actually recording what you think it is. This normally finds the largest single fix.
Geographic targeting rebuilt
Radius or borough targeting around the catchment you genuinely serve, with excluded areas where you do not. In London this is usually the fastest reduction in wasted spend available.
Negative keyword programme
A list built from your own search terms report and reviewed monthly, filtering the job seekers, students and bargain hunters that London volumes bring in abundance.
Campaign and ad group structure
Tight themes, sensible match types, and ad copy that matches the query rather than a single ad serving twenty keywords.
Landing page direction
What the ad traffic should arrive at, and why it should not be your homepage. I will specify the page; building it can be in scope or handed to your developer.
Budget and bidding management
Bid strategy appropriate to your conversion volume, budget pacing, and a monthly call covering what changed and what it cost.
How a London Google Ads engagement runs
Free account audit
Read-only access to your Google Ads and Analytics. I report where the budget is going, what is working and what is being wasted — in writing, yours to keep.
Fix the measurement
Conversion tracking verified and corrected before anything else changes, because every optimisation after this point depends on it being right.
Tighten targeting and keywords
Geography, match types and negative keywords. This usually reduces spend before it increases results, which is the correct order.
Rebuild structure and creative
Campaigns restructured around genuine themes, with ad copy written per ad group rather than per account.
Optimise on real data
Six to eight weeks before the optimisation is anything but guesswork. Monthly calls, visible working document, changes explained rather than announced.
A London PPC agency or an independent consultant
The difference that matters most here is not size. It is how the fee is structured, and so whose interest it serves.
Working with me
- Fixed fee, so reducing your spend costs me nothing
- The person on the call is the person in the account
- Changes explained before they happen, not in a monthly summary
- You own the Google Ads account outright
- I will recommend pausing a campaign that is not working
- One account at a time, not a portfolio of forty
A London PPC agency
- Dedicated creative, landing page and analytics teams
- Can launch across several markets and platforms at once
- Continuity when an individual is away
- Beta access and direct Google representative relationships
- Fees often a percentage of spend, which rewards bigger budgets
- Accounts sometimes held in the agency’s own name
Ask any agency two questions before signing: is the fee a percentage of my spend, and is the Google Ads account in my name or yours. The answers tell you more about the relationship than the pitch does. More about how I work ›
What Google Ads management costs in London
Market context, not a price list
There are two separate numbers and they are often conflated. The management fee pays for the work on the account. The ad spend goes directly to Google and never passes through me.
London agencies often charge 10–20% of spend, or a minimum retainer around £1,000 to £1,500 a month. I charge a fixed fee instead, so the advice to spend less is as easy to give as the advice to spend more.
Before you get in touch
It depends far more on your cost per click than on a general rule, which is why guessing is unhelpful. The real limit is that Google's bidding needs about thirty conversions a month to work well. Start there. Work back through your conversion rate and your cost per click, and you have a floor. The budget calculator does that arithmetic for you in about a minute.
Because more advertisers are bidding on the same terms, and many of them are national firms with national budgets targeting the city. You cannot change the auction. You can change how much of it you enter. That means tighter match types, better quality scores, and targeting that cuts out areas and audiences you cannot serve.
Only if you genuinely serve all of it. Most businesses do not, and city-wide targeting is one of the more expensive defaults to leave in place. Radius or borough targeting around your actual catchment almost always performs better.
If you need enquiries this quarter, paid search, because it starts immediately. If you are building something durable and can wait two or three quarters, SEO compounds and does not stop when you stop paying. Most London businesses eventually need both — the question is sequencing, and that depends on your margin and how long you can wait.
No. A percentage fee rewards me for increasing your budget, which is a poor alignment of interests. I charge a fixed monthly fee for the management work, so the recommendation to reduce spend is as easy to make as the recommendation to increase it.
Usually, and that is normally the cheaper route. The audit establishes whether the account structure is sound enough to work with. A rebuild is sometimes the honest answer — most often when campaigns have been layered on by several agencies without anything being removed.
Where to go next
All London services
The full picture of how I work with London businesses, including pricing context and how a remote engagement runs.
SEO consultant, London
The other specialist page for London — worth reading if you are weighing one channel against the other.
The underlying service
How the work is done in general, independent of location — process, deliverables and what it includes.
Get a free audit
A 30-minute call. Then a short written report on where you stand now. Yours to keep, even if we never work together.