Google Ads management for Hartlepool and Teesside businesses

I'm Liam, I run Gate Digital, and I manage every Google Ads account myself, not a junior, not a dashboard. When someone types what you sell into Google, you want to be right there. Done properly it's one of the fastest ways to get the phone ringing. Done badly, it's a quick way to burn money, and the difference is in the detail.

175+Projects managed

10+ yearsIn digital marketing

5+Countries worked in

Why this is different

I build and run Google Ads accounts myself, for a small number of businesses in Hartlepool and across Teesside. Small on purpose: an account only stays sharp if someone's looking at it week to week, checking what the money bought and moving it towards the searches that turn into customers.

Done properly, Google Ads is one of the fastest ways to get the phone ringing. Done badly, it's one of the fastest ways to burn through a month's budget for nothing.

Search advertising (PPC, or pay-per-click, same thing) works because it puts you in front of someone at the exact moment they're looking for what you sell. Broad match with no negative keywords, conversion tracking that's never checked, budget spread across searches that were never going to convert, more accounts I take over have at least one of those problems than not.

If you've worked with an agency before and felt like you were only getting a fraction of someone's attention, that's a common pattern, not just bad luck. Junior staff running accounts sold to you at a senior level, no real reporting access, broad match keywords left unchecked, clicks sent to a homepage instead of a page that matches what someone searched for, these come up again and again when auditing accounts that have moved on from another agency. None of that is unique to Hartlepool, it's just what happens when one person is spread across too many accounts to look properly at any of them.

If you already have Google Ads running, whether through another agency or in-house, it gets audited properly before anything changes. See how I work for the full process, from that first audit through to ongoing reporting. And for real account numbers rather than projections, the results page has the actual figures. If you'd rather one person ran the paid side and SEO together, that's what the Marketing Partner option is for.

None of this is a "set it up and leave it" service either. Search behaviour shifts, competitors adjust their bidding, seasons change what people are looking for, and an account left running on autopilot drifts away from what's working within a few weeks.

Small businesses and larger ones need different things from a Google Ads account too. A single-location trades business usually needs tight geographic targeting and call tracking done properly, a business selling online needs the shopping and conversion side built right, whether the budget's a few hundred pounds a month or considerably more. The account gets built around what your business is, not a generic template applied regardless.

Check this yourself

Three things to look at in your own account before you call anyone

You don't need me for these. Ten minutes in your Google Ads account will tell you a lot.

Is anything being counted? Go to Goals, then Conversions. If the list is empty, or the only conversion is a page view, nobody can tell you whether the ads are working, whatever the report says.
What are you paying for? Open the search terms report (Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms) and read the first page. If searches with nothing to do with what you sell are in there, that's budget going out of the door every day.
Where does the click land? Click the landing page on your own ad. If it goes to your homepage instead of a page about the thing the ad promised, a lot of people will leave before they get in touch.

If any of those three come up short, that's usually where the first month's work goes. See the results page for what fixing them did for a Hartlepool cleaning company.

What you get

Your account built or rebuilt around the searches that bring you customers, not vanity clicks.

The wasted spend cut. Most accounts I look at are paying for clicks that were never going to convert.

Clear reporting in plain terms. What you spent, what came back, what I'm changing next.

Me, doing the work and answering the phone. Not a junior, not a dashboard.

How I approach your account

Same process whether I'm building from scratch or taking over something that already exists.

Audit what's there

If there's an existing account, I go through it campaign by campaign, keyword by keyword, before I touch anything. I want to see exactly where the budget's going.

Fix the foundations

Making sure results are being counted properly, blocking off searches that have nothing to do with what you sell so you're not paying for them, and getting the account structure right. Most accounts I take over have at least one of these wrong, and it skews everything else until it's sorted.

Build around what converts

Campaigns organised by what you sell and where, not one blended pot. Bidding set to match how much conversion data your account has behind it.

Report in plain English

What you spent, what came back, what's changing next, every month. No dashboard you're left to interpret on your own.

Google Ads questions people actually ask

How much should I budget for Google Ads?

Depends on your industry and how competitive it is locally, but most small businesses I work with start somewhere between £500 and £1,500 a month in ad spend, on top of my management fee. I'll give you a realistic number for your specific market before you commit to anything, not a generic industry average.

What's Quality Score, and does it actually matter?

It's Google's rating of how relevant your ads and landing pages are to the searches you're targeting, scored 1 to 10. A higher score means you pay less for the same position. It matters, but it's a symptom, not the goal, get the targeting and account structure right and Quality Score tends to look after itself.

How long until I see results?

Usually 4 to 6 weeks to see a proper pattern, sometimes faster if the account's already got history and conversion data behind it. Google needs time to learn who's converting before it can bid efficiently.

Can you take over an account another agency or I set up?

Yes, and it's most of what I do. I audit it first, keep what's working, fix what isn't. You don't lose your history or your data, it's yours, it just gets handled properly from here.