Google Ads Report

The story

Launch in three moves.

The ads are getting clicked by the right searches. They are not yet producing a booked call we can see, and that is the gap the next window closes.

12.8%

DFW Local is the strongest group

The ad group built on Dallas, Fort Worth and "near me" keywords clicks at 12.8%, almost three times the Management Services group. 19 of the 49 clicks came from here.

$254

Too much went to generic and how-to searches

16 clicks matched broad or DIY searches such as "how do you market your business on social media" and "smma". All of them came in through the Management Services ad group.

No booked call tracked yet

No strategy-call submission or ad call has been recorded. With 49 clicks this is still a small sample, so the first job is confirming the booking tag fires before judging the traffic.

Google Ads

Clicks since launch.

Daily clicks against daily spend from the first serving day. The shaded band starts on Sep 21, when the maximum cost-per-click cap was raised so the ads could win more auctions.

Clicks & spend per day

Clicks Daily spend

Window total 49 clicks on $852Shaded band = after the Sep 21 bid cap increase

21.6%

Search impression share

Share of eligible DFW searches we showed on

50.7%

Lost to ad rank

Quality Score and bid

27.7%

Lost to budget

Daily spend cap reached

61%

Clicks on mobile

30 mobile, 19 desktop

How to read this chart. Volume is small by design: the campaign runs exact-match keywords on Google Search only, in the Dallas-Fort Worth market only. Raising the bid cap on Sep 21 lifted impressions (553 in the 11 days after vs 146 in the 6 days before) but click-through fell from 10.3% to 6.1%, because the extra impressions came from lower positions and broader matches. The biggest blocker to visibility is ad rank, not budget.

Ad group split

Where the clicks came from.

One campaign, four ad groups, each with its own keywords, ad and landing page. Influencer & Creator has been paused since launch day.

DFW Local 19 clicks · 12.8% CTR

$353

Management Services 21 clicks · 4.7% CTR

$340

Core 9 clicks · 8.8% CTR

$159

Influencer & Creator Paused since launch

Ad group	Status	Impr.	Clicks	CTR	CPC	Spend
DFW Local Best CTR	Active	149	19	12.8%	$18.57	$353
Management Services	Active	448	21	4.7%	$16.19	$340
Core	Active	102	9	8.8%	$17.63	$159
Influencer & Creator	Paused	0	0	-	-	$0
Total		699	49	7.0%	$17.38	$852

Management Services takes the most impressions and clicks the least. 280 of its 448 impressions came from one keyword, "social media marketing for businesses", and this group is where every how-to search in the account came in: people looking to learn, not to hire. Core has a different problem: its ad points to the homepage and three of its six keywords carry Quality Scores of 1 to 3 out of 10, which drags on ad rank.

Search terms

What people actually searched.

Google shows the search behind 33 of the 49 clicks ($573 of the $852). We sorted them by intent.

Hiring an agency 10 clicks · "social media agency", "management company"

$172

Local DFW search 7 clicks · "agency dallas", "near me"

$147

Generic topic 9 clicks · "social media marketing", "smm"

$137

How-to / DIY 7 clicks · "how to grow your business on social media", "smma"

$117

Search	Intent	Clicks	Spend
social media agency	Hiring	3	$52
social media manager dallas	Local	2	$44
social media advertising	Generic	2	$42
social media marketing	Generic	3	$41
smm	Generic	2	$40
social media marketing agency dallas	Local	2	$35
how do you market your business on social media	How-to	2	$27
social agency	Hiring	1	$24
social media marketing companies	Hiring	1	$24
social media company dallas	Local	1	$24

Top ten searches by spend. Google hides low-volume searches for privacy, so 16 clicks ($278) have no search term attached.

→

Roughly half the visible spend reached people looking to hire. 17 clicks ($319) came from agency or local DFW searches. The other 16 ($254) went to generic or how-to searches, and every one of those came through Management Services. That is the first place to tighten.

Since launch

What we changed.

Every change made in the account from build day through Oct 2, in order.

Date	Change
Sep 14	Campaign built. One Search campaign, "NAT \| Search \| DFW \| Social Media Services", on Google Search only (no search partners, no Display), targeting people physically in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Four ad groups (Core, Management Services, DFW Local, Influencer & Creator) with 18 exact-match keywords and one responsive search ad each. Bidding set to maximize clicks. AI Max and auto-generated ad text left off so every line of copy is one we wrote.
Sep 14	Ad extensions added. Sitelinks to seven service pages, a structured snippet and a call button with call tracking.
Sep 14	Paused for a copy review before serving. DFW Local ad copy corrected (a suburb headline swapped for "Single In-House Team In Dallas", "Signed To Shooting" changed to "Signed To Posting", descriptions rewritten). Influencer & Creator ad group paused. Ad group names cleaned up.
Sep 15	Relaunched. Daily budget reduced to pace to the monthly plan. Tracking parameters added to the DFW Local ad.
Sep 15	13 negative keywords added to keep out job seekers and learners: job, jobs, hiring, career, careers, salary, internship, course, courses, certification, template, templates and "how to become".
Sep 15	Bid cap set at $20 per click so no single click could run away with the day's spend.
Sep 15	Ads rewritten for Management Services and Influencer & Creator (15 headlines and 4 descriptions each, landing on the matching service page). Two influencer keywords ("ugc creator", "marketing influencer") paused.
Sep 15	Business name and logo added to the ads.
Sep 21	Bid cap raised from $20 to $25 per click to win more auctions in the DFW market.
Sep 22 - Oct 1	No changes. The campaign was left to gather data.
Oct 2	Six how-to searches blocked as exact-match negatives, based on the search terms report: "how to do marketing on social media", "how to market your business on social media", "how to post on social media for business", "how to grow a business through social media", "learn how to use social media for business" and "how can i do social media marketing".

In short: the campaign was built and checked on Sep 14, relaunched on Sep 15 with tighter copy, job-seeker and course negatives and a bid cap, and given one bid increase on Sep 21. After ten days of data, the first how-to searches were blocked on Oct 2.

What's next

Where we take it from here.

Each move ties back to what the first weeks showed.

Operating plan

The next window.

Prove the booking tag fires. Run a test strategy-call booking from an ad click and confirm it lands in Google Ads, then check the calendar for any bookings since Sep 14 that the tag missed.
Finish cutting the how-to traffic. Six how-to searches were blocked on Oct 2. Next, tighten or replace "social media marketing for businesses" and widen the negatives to cover SMMA and the remaining how-to searches. Generic and how-to searches cost $254 of the $852 so far.
Apply the negative keyword lists already in the account. Nine lists (job seekers, DIY, price shoppers and more) exist but none is attached to this campaign yet.
Lift Quality Score on Core. Point the Core ad to a services or Dallas page instead of the homepage, to win back some of the 51% of impressions lost to ad rank.
Lean into DFW Local. It has the best click-through rate in the account; once tracking is confirmed it is the first group to give more room.
Decide on Influencer & Creator. Paused since launch day. Turn it on or remove it.

49 DFW clicks. Zero booked calls yet.