What does a PPC agency do?
A PPC agency's work falls into three stages:
- Onboarding and measurement setup
- Campaign build and launch, and
- Ongoing optimization and reporting.
The specifics vary by platform, as Google Ads, Meta Ads, and LinkedIn Ads require meaningfully different playbooks. But the sequence is consistent.
What follows is how a B2B paid media agency approaches each stage. A B2C or local services PPC agency would approach some of these steps differently.
Onboarding and measurement setup
If the business has never advertised before, the first 30 days are mostly not about launching ads. They're about understanding the business.
This means digging into growth targets, the buying committee, the sales cycle, CRM data, and what a qualified lead actually looks like, and making sure the measurement infrastructure can support the campaigns that come next.
This typically means installing or auditing Google Tag Manager, setting up conversion tracking that reflects real outcomes (not just form fills), integrating with the CRM, be it HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive, so closed-won data can feed back into the ad platforms, and building a reporting dashboard.
For B2B specifically, the CRM integration is where the real measurement leverage lives. Form fills are a weak signal. Plenty of them are junk, and the ones that matter take weeks or months to become pipeline.
The fix is syncing CRM deal stages back to the ad platforms as conversions. Google Ads supports this directly through offline conversion imports or native integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, enabling the algorithm to optimize for sales-qualified leads, opportunities, or closed-won revenue rather than raw form submissions.
LinkedIn supports a similar pattern through its Revenue Attribution Report, which connects to Salesforce or Dynamics 365 via the Conversions API and attributes pipeline revenue to LinkedIn ad exposure—including view-through influence on deals that never involved a click. For HubSpot users, the integration runs through HubSpot's own LinkedIn Ads settings, syncing deal stages and close values back to LinkedIn.
Without this, the ad platforms optimize for whatever converts fastest and cheapest, which in B2B is almost always the wrong signal. Low-quality leads convert fast. Real buyers take longer. If the algorithm doesn't know the difference, it will happily spend the budget chasing the wrong ones.
By day 30, the plan is documented, reporting is live, CRM sync is active, and initial campaign recommendations from the audit or build are implemented.
Campaign build and launch for Google Ads
For Google Ads, the first three weeks are spent on keyword research, campaign structure, ad copy, and landing page alignment.
The research identifies high-intent commercial keywords worth bidding on and, just as importantly, the queries that look related but aren't worth paying for (personal searches, job seekers, competitor employees, information-only queries) and need to be excluded.
Campaign launches should start with exact-match keywords first, provided there is enough volume to do so. This runs counter to what Google's own account reps recommend, but broad match lets Google expand into loosely related queries that burn budget without producing pipeline. Starting tight, then expanding once the data proves what converts, is how a B2B account avoids the wasted-spend pattern that defines most mismanaged Google Ads accounts.
Weeks three through six are about achieving clean traffic and optimization. This means aggressive negative keyword management, search term review, bid adjustments, and ad copy iteration. In a well-run B2B account, hundreds of negative keywords get added in the first few months. Not as an afterthought, but as the primary optimization lever.
After week six, once the account has clean data, campaigns can begin expanding to phrase match (or sometimes even broad match) with smart bidding (Target CPA or Target ROAS). The agency might also begin segmenting landing pages by persona and testing new ad formats.
Particularly in terms of bidding strategy, the sequence matters because smart bidding only works well once Google has enough clean conversion data to optimize against.
Campaign build and launch for LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads follow a different sequence because the platform behaves differently. Buyers aren't actively searching on LinkedIn. They're scrolling through a feed, which means the job isn't demand capture; it's building familiarity and recall with a specific list of target accounts and decision-makers.
The first phase is authority and engagement: optimizing company and executive profiles, publishing organic and thought-leadership content, and using organic post performance as a free A/B test for what resonates before paying to amplify anything. Posting cadence should typically be 8–12 pieces per month, though posting daily or multiple times per day is justified in some cases.
The second phase is paid amplification of the posts that performed well organically. Targeting is at the account and contact level (specific companies, specific titles, specific seniority levels) rather than broad "supertitles" like "marketing manager" that balloon audience size and dilute frequency. It generally works better to build account lists outside LinkedIn and upload them as audiences, rather than relying solely on LinkedIn’s audience creation tools.
Creative is square or vertical for mobile, bidding is manual (not max delivery), and the goal is 3–5 monthly impressions per prospect to build recall.
The third phase is retargeting and conversion. Lead Gen Forms and Message Ads run only to warm audiences: website visitors, people who engaged with earlier ads, and video viewers who watched 25% or more.
Running lead-gen ads to cold audiences on LinkedIn is expensive and tends to produce low-intent leads; running them to people who've already been exposed to the brand multiple times is where conversion rates actually offset LinkedIn's high CPMs.
Ongoing optimization and reporting
After launch, the work is recurring rather than one-time. Weekly tasks include reviewing search terms, adding negative keywords, adjusting bids, rotating creative, and refining the audience.
Monthly tasks include landing page testing, ad copy iteration, and budget reallocation across campaigns based on what's producing pipeline--which is visible because the CRM-to-ad-platform sync set up during onboarding keeps deal-stage conversions flowing back into Google Ads and LinkedIn continuously.
Reporting cadence for a well-run B2B account typically includes biweekly calls to review performance and discuss strategy, a live dashboard the client can check anytime, and a Slack or similar channel for fast back-and-forth between calls. Quarterly business reviews zoom out to look at pipeline attribution, CAC trends, and strategic shifts.
The work doesn't get less hands-on over time. Accounts that are "set and forget" quietly see performance decline because search queries, competitor behavior, and the platforms themselves keep changing. A PPC agency's ongoing value is in that continuous attention, not just in the initial build.