Urgency
final 48 hours
Conversion
final week
Broad conversion push via email and paid social.
Google Ads Account Optimisation
I took over Google Ads management for an Australian not-for-profit, an account running four campaigns side by side, each with its own product, promotion and audience. The Brand campaign was already performing well. However, I was asked to find where spend, structure and conversions were being left on the table across the account, and rebuild what wasn't working without disturbing what already was.
Over the first three months, I began by auditing every campaign individually for targeting and wasted spend, rebuilt the keyword structure, simplified the account, as it had grown more complex than it needed to be, and put a reporting rhythm in place the wider team could use without needing account access of their own.
MY ROLE
Account Manager: From auditing through to ongoing optimisation and reporting
TIMEFRAME
First three months of the campaign
account scope
Four campaigns targeting Australia and
New Zealand
01 / THE results
Where the account landed
Conversion
Week 3
1
2
3
4
5
Within the first three months of managing this account, performance moved in every direction that mattered, more clicks, more impressions, a higher conversion value, and more conversions overall, and the gains held without a corresponding blowout in spend.
The figures below are pulled straight from the account for that period. Some details, including the organisation's identity, have been de-identified to protect its privacy.
02 / the approach
Starting with the audit
Four campaigns running side by side meant the first job wasn't fixing anything, it was understanding what I was actually looking at. I reviewed each campaign individually rather than judging the account as a whole, so no single strong performer could hide a weaker one sitting next to it. From there I ran a full audit to find where budget was leaking.
Finding the first leak
During the audit, I noticed this organisation's Brand campaign converted best on mobile, yet a larger share of the budget was going toward desktop and, to a lesser extent, tablet, devices that were converting poorly or not at all.
That was the first leak I closed, reprioritising spend toward mobile rather than spreading it evenly across devices out of habit.
The device breakdown made the case on its own. Computers were costing $5K+ for just 11 conversions, a cost per conversion of roughly A$500. Tablets fared worse, about A$240 spent for zero conversions. Mobile, by comparison, converted at around A$230 per conversion, still not cheap, but far less than converting on desktops.
03 / keyword optimisation
Reviewing the Keywords
Next I reviewed the keyword list by total spend rather than by relevance alone, so the words costing the most budget were the first ones reviewed. I kept what was clearly tied to the brand and the organisation, and cut what was high spend with low return, reallocating that budget toward keywords that were already converting well.
On top of a spend problem, I found a number of niche and product specific keywords within the Brand campaign.
Branded terms were converting at around $6 per conversion, the kind of performance a Brand campaign should be delivering. Product specific terms sitting in the same campaign, by contrast, were costing anywhere from $49 to over $100 per conversion.
Four of the worst performers made the case on their own. Together, these four keywords had cost roughly $4.5K for just 5 conversions between them. Equating to a cost per conversion above $900.
Beyond wasting valuable budget, these product keywords were competing directly with the organisation's own product specific campaigns for the same auctions, cannibalising performance across the account rather than adding to it.
The Quick wins
With the bigger structural issues identified, I moved to quick fixes available. Tightening negative keywords was the biggest of these. Running the search terms report, I found a group of queries, shown on the left, where my organisation's name was similar to several much larger, well known competing organisations. A considerable share of search traffic was people looking for those larger organisations and landing on us by mistake, at the account's expense. I added these as negative keywords to stop that spend going to waste. Together, this group of mismatched queries had pulled 76 clicks and cost roughly $2,172, for just 6 conversions
I also checked geographic targeting to confirm spend wasn't leaking to an international audience, since this organisation operates solely within Australia and New Zealand. Any impressions or clicks from outside that footprint were pure waste, however small.
From there I reviewed Google's automatic recommendations rather than accepting them by default. Two were switched on for this account, and neither benefited the account. Removing conflicting negative keywords sounds helpful, but not for accounts where negatives had already been deliberately tightened.
The add broad match keywords option was worse, as the account already had broad matched terms active in the campaign, pulling in expensive and low lead generating traffic I discovered while reviewing the campaign's keywords. This goes to show that a high optimisation score doesn't mean much if the recommendations behind it don't serve the campaign. I turned them both off.
04 / ongoing monitoring
Optimisation and ongoing management
Once the changes were live, I watched the Brand campaign closely throughout the its first fourteen days and learning period, focusing on which keywords were actually driving results. What performed stayed, what wasted budget without conversions or engagement was removed or realigned with what was working.
I also ensured that the ads were sending people to the right destination. When someone searches for something specific, they do not have time to browse a website looking for it, so the search intent, the ad copy and the landing page need to line up as closely and quickly as possible. Getting that alignment right improves quality score, lowers cost per click, and increases both leads and conversions.
As the campaign was already performing and the goal was refinement rather than a rebuild. I set a weekly review to add negatives, pause underperforming keywords, and reallocate budget toward what was converting. With enough conversion data already built up.
Tidying up the account
The account's other three campaigns had grown into multiple ad groups each, more complexity than the account actually needed. I simplified them down to two ad groups per campaign, one for B2C and one for B2B, so that each stayed focused on a single, clear audience split rather than fragmenting performance data across many small groups.
The Brand campaign I treated differently again. I kept it to a single, tightly focused ad group, high intent brand keywords only, ad copy that matched what the organisation stood for, nothing extra. For a smaller not for profit account with a specific, niche audience, a simple structure is better suited, easy to report on and fast to troubleshoot if performance ever dipped.
Beyond the campaign structure, I also tidied up the account's basic housekeeping. A number of personal email addresses belonging to former employees were still set as primary contacts on the account, a security gap left over from staff who'd long since moved on. I removed these and made sure access sat only with current, appropriate accounts.
05 / communicating the results
Reporting
To keep reporting fast and consistent, I built a dashboard in Google Data Studio that let the wider team check performance without needing account access themselves, and let me report to leadership and the board more quickly. It also gave a clearer view into individual keyword performance than a quick Google Ads login on the go usually allows.
I'm comfortable building reports inside Google Ads directly, but Data Studio gave my manager the kind of customised, self serve view she needed without depending on me to pull it each time.
Key Insights
Only change what actually needs changing. This campaign was already performing when I took it over, the brief was to improve it, not rebuild it for the sake of being seen to. I only made calculated changes, and not because it gave me something to point to as evidence I'd been in the account.
A high optimisation score isn't the goal. Google's recommendations optimise for Google's definition of performance, not necessarily the organisation's advertising goals. Reviewing every suggestion before accepting it mattered more than chasing a higher score.
Proper ad structure improves performance, not just tidiness. Simplifying two overbuilt campaigns down to two ad groups each, and keeping Brand to one, made the account easier to read and faster to react to.
Easily accesible reporting benefits the whole team. Building a dashboard the wider team could open themselves meant performance data was available whenever it was needed, not just when I was asked for it, which led to faster, better informed decisions across the team.