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Replies from David, usually within one working day

Paid search

Google Ads management for UK small businesses On a budget you cap.

You set the monthly cap, so your ad spend can never run past it, and you see every enquiry the ads bring in, with nothing hidden from you. The account stays in your name, you pay Google directly, and Lucent charges a flat monthly fee, never a percentage of your spend.

Live within ten working days of brief lock, or the second half of the invoice waits until it is one 20-minute call and we do the rest price fixed in writing before anything starts

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Replies from David, usually within one working day. No call booked, nothing in your calendar.

No call booked, nothing in your calendar. David reads every one himself and replies from his own inbox.

Paid search without the usual conflicts.

  1. P01

    We will not point ads at a page that cannot convert

    Paid traffic is only worth buying if the page it lands on can turn a visitor into an enquiry.

    Most wasted ad budgets do not leak at the click. They leak after it, on a page that was never built to convert. So the free audit checks the landing destination before we talk about spend. If the page already converts, good, we run the ads at it. If it leaks, we tell you where and we fix that first, because sending expensive clicks at a page that cannot hold them is the fastest way to lose money with an invoice attached. We would rather fix the leak than bill you to feed it.

  2. P02

    Flat fee. Never a percentage of your spend

    The industry standard is a percentage of ad spend, which pays the agency more every single time it persuades you to spend more.

    That is a conflict of interest sitting at the centre of the relationship. Our fee is flat and banded. Inside a band it does not move when your budget does, so the advice you get about raising spend is advice rather than self-interest.

  3. P03

    Your account, your card, your data

    The Google Ads account is in your name. You pay Google directly, on your own card, with your own cap set in your own account.

    Your ad spend never passes through our Stripe and we never mark it up. If we stop working together you keep the account, the campaign history and every bit of conversion data, which is not true of every agency offering to set this up for you.

  4. P04

    Tracking verified before a penny is spent

    Broken conversion tracking is the most common fault we find on accounts we inherit, and it is the one that matters most: a campaign that is not tracked properly cannot be judged at all, however healthy the click numbers look.

    We verify the conversion fires against your real enquiry form before launch. You are then reported on enquiries and cost per enquiry, not impressions.

Google Ads management built around the job each campaign must do

Search is the core service-business use case. Shopping, Display, remarketing and YouTube are used only when the account, assets, consent and economics make them suitable.

  1. 01

    Account audit and setup

    Review tracking, landing-page readiness, structure, search terms and wasted spend. New setups use a client-owned account and verified conversion actions.

  2. 02

    Search campaigns

    Capture people already searching for the service, aligning commercial intent, location, message and the live destination.

  3. 03

    Keyword and negative work

    Select purchase-intent searches, structure match types, review search terms and exclude irrelevant demand.

  4. 04

    Responsive Search Ads and assets

    Test RSA messages and add call, sitelink and location assets where the account and destination support them.

  5. 05

    Shopping campaigns

    conditional

    Available for ecommerce with a valid feed, Merchant Center, verified tracking and enough margin to support acquisition costs.

  6. 06

    Display and remarketing

    conditional

    Available for a defined awareness or return-visit job with consent, audience readiness, privacy information and a measurement plan.

  7. 07

    YouTube campaigns

    conditional

    Available when suitable video, a defined audience and a measurable objective exist.

  8. 08

    Measurement and reporting

    Link Google Ads, GA4 and GTM after conversions are verified. Report spend, qualified clicks, verified enquiries, cost per enquiry and attributable outcomes where available.

Results

One client's ledger.

Procon 24/7, a Leeds ready-mix concrete firm, has run its Google Ads through us since 2022. These numbers come straight from their own revenue reports, reconciled invoice by invoice against ad spend.

£1,215,784

tracked revenue from the campaigns, 2022 to date

9.1×

return on ad spend. Every £1 in came back as £9.11 in tracked sales.

1,902 new customers. 12,887 tracked calls. 8,618 cubic metres of concrete sold.

Source: Procon 24/7 internal Google Ads revenue reports, 2022 to June 2026. Their figures, shared with permission. No round-ups, no projections.

Paid search that paid for itself.

Procon 24/7 is the account we point everyone at: £1.22M of revenue on £133,417 of ad spend, a return of 9.1 times, held across four and a half years rather than in one good quarter.

See all work
The Procon 24/7 homepage, rebuilt on Astro: 'Volumetric concrete, mixed on-site across Yorkshire and the North West' over a photograph of a red Procon mixer on a job

Concrete Supplier · Yorkshire & North West 2026

Procon 24/7

£1.22M of tracked revenue on £133,417 of ad spend. 9.1× blended return, four and a half years, still running.

  • £1.22M TRACKED REVENUE
  • 9.1× BLENDED ROAS
  • 1,902 NEW CUSTOMERS
  • 8,618 m³ CONCRETE SOLD

How a Google Ads account runs when it's run properly.

  1. Step 1

    Free audit, and an honest no if it fits

    We check whether your site converts well enough to deserve paid traffic. If it does not, we say so and we fix that first. Plenty of these calls end with us telling somebody not to spend on ads yet.

  2. Step 2

    Account, tracking and structure

    Your own account set up in your name, conversion tracking wired to the real enquiry form and tested live, then tightly themed ad groups. Loose single-ad-group campaigns are why most small accounts have a poor Quality Score and a high cost per click.

  3. Step 3

    Launch within the agreed cap

    The media budget is agreed after the audit, based on the auction, conversion economics and what the account can measure responsibly. You pay Google directly and retain control of the cap.

  4. Ongoing

    Search terms, negatives, iteration

    Weekly search-term review and negative keyword work, which is where wasted spend actually gets cut, plus landing page and bid iteration. Reported monthly on enquiries and cost per enquiry.

The same four stages, in detail
  1. Step 1 · Free audit, and an honest no if it fits

    We check whether your site converts well enough to deserve paid traffic. If it does not, we say so and we fix that first. Plenty of these calls end with us telling somebody not to spend on ads yet.

  2. Step 2 · Account, tracking and structure

    Your own account set up in your name, conversion tracking wired to the real enquiry form and tested live, then tightly themed ad groups. Loose single-ad-group campaigns are why most small accounts have a poor Quality Score and a high cost per click.

  3. Step 3 · Launch within the agreed cap

    The media budget is agreed after the audit, based on the auction, conversion economics and what the account can measure responsibly. You pay Google directly and retain control of the cap.

  4. Ongoing · Search terms, negatives, iteration

    Weekly search-term review and negative keyword work, which is where wasted spend actually gets cut, plus landing page and bid iteration. Reported monthly on enquiries and cost per enquiry.

  • Can I get Google Ads without SEO?

    Yes. Google Ads is a standalone service here, no SEO retainer required. The one thing we will not do is skip the audit. Paid traffic lands on the same pages organic traffic lands on, and pointing ads at a page that does not convert is the fastest way to lose money we know. So before we spend anything we check whether your pages actually turn visitors into enquiries. If they do, we build the campaign. If they leak, we tell you what to fix first, and often we can fix it, rather than letting you pay Google to find the same problem faster. Sometimes the honest answer is not yet, and you get that answer before the budget, not after it.

  • Do you charge a percentage of my ad spend?

    No, and we never will. A percentage fee pays the agency more every time you spend more, which puts a conflict of interest at the centre of the relationship. Our management fee is flat and agreed in writing before work starts. It does not rise simply because you choose to raise the budget. Your ad spend is separate, paid by you directly to Google.

  • Whose Google Ads account is it, and who pays Google?

    The account is yours, in your name, and you pay Google directly on your own card with your own cap set in your own account. Your ad spend never touches our Stripe. We invoice the management fee and nothing else. If we part company you keep the account, the campaign history and the conversion data, which is not true of every agency offering to set this up for you.

  • What does a Google Ads agency charge in the UK?

    Most UK agencies charge either a percentage of ad spend or a flat monthly management fee. The useful comparison is not the headline number. Ask what work is included, who owns the account, whether you pay Google directly, whether conversion tracking is tested and whether the fee changes when your budget changes. Our management fee is flat, agreed in writing before you commit, and separate from the ad spend you pay Google directly.

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  • Do you work as a Google Ads agency for small business, or only larger accounts?

    Small business is the whole client base: trades, construction, clinics and local service companies, mostly running £750 to £5,000 a month in ad spend. Small accounts are where the flat fee matters most, because a percentage model gives an agency almost no reason to care about a £900 budget. The one condition is the free audit first, because we will not point ads at a page that does not convert.

  • What is the minimum I need to spend?

    £750 a month on ads, separate from our fee. Below that Google's auction starves the campaign and you buy noise instead of customers, so we do not launch under it. It is a floor rather than a target: plenty of clients run well between £750 and £1,500, while a busy multi-area operator will want more.

  • How will I know the ads produce enquiries and not just clicks?

    Conversion tracking wired to your actual enquiry form, verified before a penny is spent. Broken tracking is the single most common fault we find on accounts we inherit, and a campaign that is not tracked properly cannot be judged at all, however good the click numbers look. You get enquiry counts and cost per enquiry, not impressions and click-through rate.

  • How long am I committed for?

    Ninety days minimum. Google's bidding needs roughly the first month to learn before the numbers mean anything, so a thirty-day trial would judge the campaign during the one phase guaranteed to look worst. After ninety days it runs month to month.

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  • What if it does not work?

    If the campaign produces no enquiries in the first sixty days, we refund our management fee for that period. We cannot refund your ad spend, because that money went to Google rather than to us, and any agency promising otherwise is not being straight with you. The guarantee covers our side of it, which is the part we control.

  • Do you run Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn ads?

    Not currently. This is Google Ads: search, plus Shopping where there is a product feed worth running. We would rather do one channel properly than four adequately, and for the trades, construction and local service businesses we work with, Google search is where somebody who wants to buy right now actually is.

  • Is a PPC agency the same as a Google Ads agency?

    Not quite, and the gap is worth knowing before you shortlist. PPC covers every pay-per-click channel: Google, Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, Amazon. A PPC agency in the broad sense sells all of them. What we sell is the Google search half of it, deliberately, because that is where somebody actively looking to buy is. So if you want PPC management across four platforms we are the wrong firm and will say so on the call. If you want Google search run properly on a flat fee, that is the whole product.

  • What do PPC management services normally include?

    At the useful end: account structure, keyword and negative-keyword work, ad copy and testing, landing page feedback, bid and budget management, and conversion tracking that is actually verified. At the thin end, and this is common on small accounts, it is a monthly automated report and somebody nudging budgets. The way to tell them apart is to ask what changed in the account last month and get a specific answer. Ours includes the lot, plus the part most PPC advertising management skips: telling you when the landing page rather than the campaign is the problem.

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  • Do you take over an existing Google AdWords account, or start fresh?

    Usually we take it over, because the account history has value: Google has learned things about your customers that a new account throws away. Google AdWords management services are still searched for under the old name, and inherited accounts are most of what we see. The first job is an audit of what is already there, and the most common finding by a distance is conversion tracking that was never wired to the real enquiry form, which means every cost-per-lead figure the previous agency reported was fiction.

  • Do you work as a PPC consultant, or only full agency management?

    In substance, closer to a consultant than a call centre: one person sets up, structures and runs the account, and it's the same person on the call if something needs explaining, not a rotating account exec. We call it management rather than consultancy because the flat fee includes doing the work, not just advising on it: campaign build, tracking, weekly search-term and negative-keyword iteration. If what you actually want is a named PPC specialist who knows your account rather than a junior handed a login, that's already what's on this page.

11 cities

What a click costs where you are.

Each page below prints the live auction for that city: monthly searches, what Google quotes for a click, and whether paid search is the right spend there at all. Some of these pages tell you the answer is no, which is cheaper for you than finding out with a budget.

  • jonathon sowray July 2026 · Google
    ★★★★★

    Thank you for all your help and hard work we really appreciate it. Highly recommend!!

  • Neil Gallagher July 2026 · Google
    ★★★★★

    As director of a supported living provider, I needed a website that worked for two very different audiences: families making an emotional decision and local authority commissioners checking our credentials. David at Lucent got this immediately. He researched our sector before writing a single word, asked better questions than agencies three times his size, and delivered a website that does exactly the job we briefed. Straightforward to deal with, fast to respond, and honest about what we did and didn't need. If you're looking for web design in Leeds from someone who genuinely thinks about your business rather than pushing a template, I'd recommend David without hesitation.

  • Matthew Brown April 2025 · Google
    ★★★★★

    Great professional service. 5 stars isn't enough , don't hesitate to use LD creations absolutely top class at what they do.

Find out if your site is ready for paid traffic.

A free 30-minute audit. We look at the site and the numbers live, and tell you honestly whether Google Ads would make you money right now or just make you poorer faster. Both answers happen.

Flat fee, never a percentage. Your account, your card, your data.

David Domingos, founder and principal of Lucent Stop wasting money. We'll find 7 things costing you work.