What a Senior PPC Team Does Each Month

A well-run Google Ads account is looked after every day, reviewed every week, rebuilt in parts every month, and rethought every quarter. That rhythm is what you pay a senior team for. Most of it happens out of sight, so this piece lays it out step by step.

It covers what we check, how often, and why. It’s written for business owners and marketing managers who want to know what should be happening inside their account. Use it to check our work, or anyone else’s.

The accompanying spreadsheet lists every step as a checklist. It has one tab for each cadence, so your team or ours can tick items off as they’re done.

Every day: protect the budget

Daily work is short and defensive. The goal is to catch problems before they cost money. A daily check takes 10 to 15 minutes per account when nothing is wrong.

• Spend against budget. We compare yesterday’s spend to the daily target. A campaign that spent double, or nothing at all, gets looked at the same morning.
• Conversion tracking. We check that leads, calls and sales are still being recorded. If conversions drop to zero overnight, the cause is usually a broken tag or form, not the ads. Google’s bidding relies on this data, so a gap of a few days can throw bids off for weeks.
• Disapproved ads and policy flags. Google can stop an ad or a product from showing without much warning. We fix these the day they appear.
• Billing and payment status. A declined card pauses the whole account. We check it’s active.
• Sudden swings. We look for cost per click, click volume or conversion rate moving well outside normal range. One bad day isn’t a trend, but it’s worth a note.

Most days, nothing needs changing. That’s the point. Daily checks exist so that small faults don’t run for a week before anyone notices.

Every week: cut waste and steer

Weekly work is where most of the hands-on improvement happens. A week gives enough data to make decisions without reacting to noise.

• Search terms review. We read the actual searches that triggered your ads. This is the single most valuable weekly task. Irrelevant searches get blocked. Good ones that we weren’t targeting directly get added as keywords.
• Negative keywords. Blocked terms are added at the right level, either for one campaign or the whole account. Shared negative lists are kept tidy so they don’t block searches we want. (Not sure how much is slipping through? Try our wasted ad spend scorecard.)
• Performance Max checks. Performance Max campaigns show ads across Google’s networks with less visibility into where the money goes. We check search themes, placements and asset ratings, and make sure they aren’t taking credit for people who were already searching for your brand.
• Bids and targets. We check whether each campaign is hitting its cost per lead or return on ad spend target. Targets are adjusted in small steps, usually 10 to 20 percent, so the bidding system can settle.
• Budget pacing. We check spend to date against the monthly plan and move money toward the campaigns that are converting. When those campaigns are ready for more, we scale the budget carefully.
• Ad tests. We review any ad copy or asset tests running. A test is only called once it has enough clicks and conversions to be reliable. Losing ads are paused and replaced with a new challenger.
• Impression share. We check how often your ads showed when they could have. Lost share due to budget and lost share due to low ad rank need different fixes.

Each weekly review ends with a short written log of what changed and why. That log is what lets anyone on the team, or you, trace a result back to a decision.

Every month: review, report and plan

Monthly work steps back from the day-to-day. It looks at how the account is built, whether it’s still right for the business, and what happens next. We run it in the same order every month.

Week	Focus	What gets done
Week 1	Report	Last month’s results are pulled, checked and explained. The report goes to you within the first 5 business days.
Week 2	Structure	Campaigns, ad groups and keywords are reviewed. Anything that has drifted from the plan is cleaned up.
Week 3	Landing pages and build	Landing pages are reviewed against ad performance. New campaigns, ads or assets are built.
Week 4	Plan	Next month’s budget, tests and priorities are set and shared with you.

Reporting

• Results against targets. Leads, sales, cost per lead and return on ad spend, compared to target and to last month. Where it matters, we compare to the same month last year to account for seasonality.
• What we changed. The weekly change logs are summarised. You see what was done, not just the numbers.
• What worked and what didn’t. In plain English. If results were poor, we say so, explain why, and set out the fix.
• Lead quality. Where you share sales data with us, we check which campaigns bring in customers, not just enquiries. Good-looking numbers don’t always mean revenue.

Account structure

You can run a quick version of these checks yourself with our Google Ads account structure self-audit.

• Keyword and match type review. Keywords with spend but no conversions over 60 to 90 days are paused or reworked. Match types are checked against what the search terms review shows.
• Campaign overlap. We check that two campaigns aren’t competing for the same searches and pushing up your own costs.
• Location, schedule and device settings. We check which suburbs, times of day and devices convert, and adjust bids or exclusions.
• Audiences. Remarketing lists and customer lists are checked for size and freshness.
• Shopping feed health (for online stores). Product titles, prices, stock and disapprovals are reviewed. A clean feed is the foundation of Shopping performance.

Landing pages

• Page speed and mobile check. Slow pages lose visitors before they read anything.
• Message match. The page should say what the ad promised. If an ad mentions a price, offer or service, the page should lead with it.
• Form and call tracking test. We submit a test lead and place a test call to confirm the full path works.
• Conversion rate by page. Pages that get traffic but don’t convert are flagged for changes, or for a purpose-built landing page.

Planning

• Budget for next month. Based on results, seasonality and anything coming up in your business, such as a sale, a new service or a quiet period.
• Tests for next month. One or two clear tests, each with a reason and a way to measure it.
• Scripts and automated rules. We check that alerts and automated rules still run and still make sense.
• Account access and hygiene. User access is reviewed and anyone who no longer needs it is removed.

The month ends with a short plan you can read in five minutes. It says what we’ll do, what we need from you, and what success looks like.

Every quarter: check the strategy still fits

Every three months we sit down with you for a strategy review. Monthly work keeps the account healthy. Quarterly work checks it’s still pointed at the right goals.

• Business goals. Have your targets, margins, capacity or priorities changed? The account should follow the business, not the other way round.
• Attribution and tracking audit. We check how conversions are counted, which ones Google is bidding toward, and whether the numbers match your own sales records. Our GA4 and GTM consulting team handles the fixes when they don’t (here are the GA4 checks we run first).
• Competitor review. We look at who else is bidding on your searches, how often they outrank you, and what they’re offering.
• Channel mix. We check how Google Ads is working alongside SEO, Microsoft Ads, social and your website. A search that already ranks well organically may need less paid support.
• Full account audit. Settings, structure, tracking and spend are checked against our own standard, as if we were seeing the account for the first time. It’s the same process behind our Google Ads audit, and what we learned from auditing 100 accounts.
• Next quarter’s roadmap. Larger pieces of work are agreed and scheduled, such as a new campaign type, a landing page rebuild or a move into a new area.

What you should be able to see

If this work is happening, you should see evidence of it. Every month, you should receive:

• A report within the first 5 business days, with results against targets.
• A list of changes made during the month and the reason for each.
• A plan for next month, including tests and budget.
• A clear flag of any problems or risks.

Every quarter, you should have a strategy meeting with a senior person who knows your account.

Questions to ask any agency

These questions work whether you’re reviewing your current agency or choosing a new one.

1. How often do you review our search terms, and can I see what you blocked last month?
2. Who checks our conversion tracking, and how often?
3. What did you change in our account last month, and why?
4. What are you testing right now, and how will you decide the winner?
5. Do we own our Google Ads account and all its data?
6. Who is the senior person responsible for our account, and how do I reach them?

A good answer to each is specific and quick. If the answer is vague, the work probably isn’t happening on a schedule.

Using the checklist

The spreadsheet turns this piece into a working checklist. Use one copy per account, per month.

1. On the Summary tab, enter the account name, the month and the account manager. These carry across every tab.
2. Each cadence has its own tab: Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly.
3. Mark each step using the dropdown in its column. Choose Done, Issue or N/A.
4. Use the Notes column to record what was changed and why. This becomes your change log for the monthly report.
5. The Summary tab shows the completion rate for each cadence and counts any open issues.

An Issue mark means the step was checked and something needs fixing. It stays counted as open on the Summary tab until it’s changed to Done.

FAQs

Want to see how your account measures up? Talk to our team about a review of your Google Ads account. Call 1300 781 961 or get in touch.