I run Google Ads accounts the way a pilot reads a cockpit — every number, every leak, every signal.
Seven years in, NPR 1Cr+ in managed spend, and one consistent pattern: most accounts I inherit are leaking 30-40% of their budget before a single new campaign launches. My job is to plug the leaks first, then scale what’s actually working.
The leaks I find on day one
When I audit a Google Ads account, I’m not looking for what’s working. I’m looking for where the money is quietly walking out the door. These ten show up in roughly nine out of ten accounts I inherit.
Burns 15-25% of budget on placements that almost never convert. First thing I turn off.
I once found an Australian finance account paying for “free home loans” and “loan forgiveness scam”.
If your CPA looks suspiciously good, this is usually why. GA4 and Google Ads conversions disagreeing is a red flag.
PMax cannibalises branded traffic and takes credit for it. Brand exclusions are non-negotiable.
Three RSAs minimum, refreshed monthly. Ad strength “Poor” is a Quality Score tax.
Mobile converts at half the rate on a B2B account. Your bids should know that.
Google “helpfully” raising your budgets and broadening keywords overnight. Off.
Free real estate on the SERP. Skipping these is leaving 10-15% CTR on the table.
Quality Score lives or dies here. Message match is half the battle.
Smart Bidding gets handcuffed and your impression share quietly collapses.
What actually gets done — 30 / 60 / 90
Stop the bleeding
- Full account audit + Google Tag Manager / GA4 conversion tracking rebuilt and verified
- Negative keyword sweep — usually 200-500 terms added in week one
- Search Partners, Display expansion, and auto-applied recommendations turned off
- Campaign restructure: tight ad groups by intent, branded split from non-branded
- Baseline report — every metric documented so we can prove the lift in week 8
Rebuild for Quality Score
- Fresh RSAs — 3 per ad group, written for the actual buyer, not the keyword
- Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, lead form assets fully deployed
- Landing page message-match audit with developer hand-off if needed
- Smart Bidding transitioned to tCPA or Maximise Conversions with guardrails
- First A/B test live — usually headline, sometimes offer
Scale what works
- Performance Max layered on top of Search — with brand exclusions, audience signals, asset groups by theme
- YouTube and Demand Gen tested for upper-funnel demand creation
- Budget reallocation based on actual marginal ROAS, not gut feel
- Monthly strategy call + Looker Studio dashboard you can read at a glance
- Documented playbook so your team knows exactly what’s running and why
Search is the foundation. The rest earns its place.
Every campaign type Google offers exists to sell more impressions. My job is to figure out which ones earn their place in your account — and which ones are just expensive learning experiments dressed up as AI.
The workhorse
High-intent, bottom-funnel demand capture. Where I start every account. Tight match types, exact-match negatives, RSAs written for the searcher’s job-to-be-done.
Powerful, dangerous
Brilliant when fed first-party data and given brand exclusions. A budget shredder otherwise. I run PMax only after Search is healthy and feeding it conversion signals.
For real e-commerce
Merchant Center feed health, custom labels, priority bidding, and search term mining. The unsexy work that decides whether Shopping is profitable.
Upper-funnel demand
Skippable in-stream for awareness, in-feed for consideration. Measured against view-through conversions and brand search lift — not last-click.
The visual long game
Discover, Gmail, YouTube Shorts in one campaign. Great for visual brands and lead gen offers with a strong creative asset library. I test, I don’t assume.
Two campaigns I’m proud of
Better Broking
Inherited an account spending hard on broad-match home loan terms with a Quality Score average of 5. Conversion tracking was firing on the contact page header, not the form submit. So the CPA looked great on paper and the owner couldn’t figure out why phones weren’t ringing.
- -35%CPA in 60 days
- 5 → 8Avg Quality Score
- 40+Qualified leads / month
// fix: rebuilt tracking, killed broad match, restructured by loan product, three RSAs per ad group with location-specific headlines.
Global IME Bank
Enterprise banking account with multiple product lines competing for the same budget. The challenge wasn’t traffic — it was attribution, brand vs non-brand separation, and proving Google Ads’ contribution against organic and direct in a market where banking decisions take weeks.
- Brandfully isolated, PMax exclusions live
- Multi-productstructure with shared learnings
- Lookerdashboard for marketing + leadership
// scope: account architecture, conversion modelling, monthly stakeholder reporting in plain Nepali + English.
FAQ
How much should I spend on Google Ads to make this worth it?
For lead gen in Nepal, I generally won’t take an account under NPR 50,000/month — there isn’t enough data for Smart Bidding to learn. For Australian or international accounts, AUD 3,000-5,000/month is the floor. Below that, you’re better off with focused SEO and one tightly-run Search campaign.
Do you work on a percentage of ad spend or a flat fee?
Flat monthly retainer. Percentage-of-spend creates the wrong incentive — it rewards me for spending more, not for performance. We agree on a scope, a fee, and the KPIs we’re optimising for. That’s it.
Can you fix an account that’s already running, or do you need to start fresh?
Both. About 70% of accounts I take over are rebuilt in place — restructured, retracked, and re-launched in 30 days. The rest get a parallel build because the legacy structure is too tangled to salvage. I’ll tell you which after the audit.
How quickly will I see results?
Tracking fixes and wasted-spend cuts show up in week one. CPA improvements stabilise around week 6-8 once Smart Bidding has fresh, clean conversion data to learn from. Better Broking hit -35% CPA in 60 days — that’s a realistic, repeatable timeline for a mid-size account.
Do you handle landing pages and creative too?
I audit and brief them, and I work closely with your developer or designer. For Encore Media clients I run the full stack end-to-end. For everyone else, I’d rather you keep your existing team and I tell them exactly what needs to change for the ads to convert.
Ready to see where your Google Ads budget is actually going?
Two ways in. Book a 30-minute call and we’ll walk through your account live. Or send me read-access and I’ll send back a free written audit within five business days — the same one I’d do on day one of a paid engagement.
hello@krjoshi.com.np · Kathmandu → working with clients across Nepal, Australia and beyond