Training · In-house teams
Learn Google Ads from someonewho still runs accounts daily.
Most Google Ads training is delivered by full-time trainers working from a curriculum written two platform updates ago. I manage accounts every week, on budgets up to $30,000 a month, and teach on yours.
What we look at first
Budgets managed
$30k
Per month, single account
Who this is for.
People who have to make decisions about an account rather than pass an exam about one.
In-house marketers who inherited the account
You are responsible for the number at the bottom of the report and you would like to understand how it got there.
Business owners running their own ads
Spending your own money and reasonably suspicious that some of it is being wasted. Usually right.
Teams managing an agency
You are not running it day to day, but you need to know which questions to ask and which answers should worry you.
Juniors who learned by copying
They can build a campaign because they have built one before, but nobody has explained why it is structured that way or when it should not be.
How the session works.
Taught on your account, with your money
We work in your live account. Your search terms report, your conversion setup, your wasted spend. It makes the session concrete, and it means the value is not theoretical — most sessions surface enough waste in the first hour to cover the cost of the day.
- Your account reviewed before the session so we start with real findings
- Search term mining and negative keyword work done live
- Conversion actions checked properly, which is where most surprises come from
- A prioritised list of what to change, in order, when we finish
First-hour findings, typical
Return on ad spend achieved
6x
Unbranded, new customer only
Current platform reality, not 2019 best practice
The platform changed fundamentally and a lot of training has not caught up. Match types behave differently, manual bidding is mostly gone, and Performance Max requires a completely different set of controls. We cover how it actually behaves now, including the parts Google would rather you did not think about.
- What smart bidding is genuinely doing and what it needs from you
- Performance Max without handing over control entirely
- Match types and the search terms you are actually buying
- Which Google recommendations to apply and which to ignore
Recommendations, triaged
previewAccounts run day-to-day
15+
Agency side, simultaneously
What the session covers.
Adjusted to your level and account type after a short scoping call.
- How the auction and Quality Score actually work
- Account and campaign architecture, and why it matters
- Keyword research and match types as they behave now
- The search terms report and negative keyword discipline
- Writing and testing responsive search ads and assets
- Conversion tracking, values and why the setup decides everything
- Branded versus unbranded, and reading results honestly
- Smart bidding strategies and when each one fits
- Performance Max with exclusions and proper controls
- Shopping campaigns and Merchant Center basics
- Product feed fundamentals for e-commerce
- Budget planning, pacing and seasonality
- Reading the reports that matter and ignoring the rest
- Diagnosing a performance drop methodically
- Google Ads Editor for bulk work
- Which recommendations to apply and which to dismiss
For e-commerce accounts we spend more time on Shopping and feeds. For lead generation we spend more on conversion quality and offline imports. The scoping call decides the balance.
Taught by someone still in the accounts.
Nine years of paid search, currently managing live accounts every week.
6x
Consistent return on ad spend achieved on a $30,000 monthly budget, unbranded new-customer traffic only
15+
Google Ads accounts managed day-to-day simultaneously, agency side
9 yrs
Paid search across agency and in-house, B2B and B2C, UK and Australia
4-15
People per in-person training session, across ads, analytics and paid social
Client names withheld under agency and contract terms. Happy to talk specifics on a call.
How a session gets organised.
Two conversations and a date.
A scoping call
Twenty to thirty minutes. Who is attending, what they already know, account type and budget scale. Free.
Preparation
Read access to your Google Ads account so I can review it beforehand and build the session around what is actually happening in it.
The session
Half day or full day, in person or remote. Working in the live account throughout, with your team making the changes.
Follow-up
Materials, a prioritised action list from the account review, and a window for questions once people start applying it.
Whether training or management is better value.
For some accounts, training is clearly the right call. For others it genuinely is not.
This is a good fit if
- You want to run the account in-house long term rather than outsource it
- Your budget is modest enough that management fees would eat too much of it
- You already have an agency and want to hold them to account properly
- You have someone with time to actually work in the account each week
- You would rather understand the account than receive a monthly PDF about it
Call someone else if
- Nobody has a few hours a week to spend in the account afterwards
- Your budget is large enough that a specialist would return more than the fee costs
- You need performance fixed this month and have no time to learn
- You want somebody to blame when it goes wrong, which is a legitimate reason to hire out
- You want an official certificate, which Google provides free through Skillshop
Trainingquestions.
Something not covered? Ask me directly — you will get a straight answer, not a proposal.
Do we need an existing account?
It is much better if you have one, because the session becomes concrete and usually pays for itself in identified waste. If you are starting from scratch we build the first campaigns together instead, which works well too.
Half day or full day?
Half a day covers structure, keywords, search terms and conversion basics. A full day adds smart bidding, Performance Max, Shopping and diagnosing performance drops with time to practise. E-commerce accounts nearly always want the full day.
Is this suitable for complete beginners?
Yes, if the whole group is at that level. Mixed groups of complete beginners and experienced users are harder to serve well, so tell me honestly on the scoping call and I will either split it or pitch it to the middle.
Can you train us on Microsoft Ads too?
Yes, though it is usually a short add-on module rather than a session. Most of what you learn in Google Ads transfers directly, and the import tools do a lot of the work.
Will you tell us if our agency is doing a bad job?
I will tell you what I see in the account and what I would do differently, plainly. I am not there to run a campaign against your agency, and sometimes the honest answer is that they are doing reasonable work with a constraint you have not given them.
Can you just manage it instead?
Yes, and for accounts above roughly $3,000 a month that is often better value. Some clients do both: I manage it while training the team, then hand over.