I am Adrian Bold.

I run Bold Internet, and I manage Google Ads accounts for a small number of clients. Well over 20 years of this, and there is no team. You deal with me from the first conversation onwards, and I do the work myself.

Most of my clients know they need to advertise on Google but have neither the time nor the patience to manage it themselves.

I was volunteered to build a website for my rugby club, on the grounds that I "worked in IT". Microsoft FrontPage (remember that?) was my weapon of choice, and I set about creating carnage. It became clear soon enough that I am not a designer, but it did push me towards the analytical side of the web. I started doing SEO before I knew that was what it was called.

The first Google AdWords campaign I built was in 2002, for an affiliate site of my own rather than for a client. Perry Marshall had just written the first book on the subject. I bought it, printed the whole thing off, and found the concept fascinating.

A few years of consultancy work followed, much of it process management carried over from an earlier career.

Then I joined a small agency as Head of Search. There were two of us. The brief was to help the owner scale it, and over three years the two of us became twenty, most of them in my team, covering Google Ads, SEO and Google Analytics.

In 2010 I left and rebuilt Bold Internet as a consultancy doing Google Ads and SEO. That is what it has been ever since.

The mix has always been broad. More recently my clients include a couple of legal firms, a European removals company, a catering company in London, a US fashion retailer, a bespoke blinds business, a B2B wholesaler and an international engineering manufacturer.

Quite the mixed bag. Advertising is the only thing they have in common; what I actually do with each account depends on what that business is trying to achieve.

Most of the skill in this job is not in the clever bits. It is in stopping money going where it should not.

Google is not a friend to advertisers. It is a business, and it grows when advertisers spend more; you grow when you spend less and get the same result. I sit on your side of that gap. In practice that means negative keywords, account structure, and checking what you are actually being charged for.

Google is there to be used and managed, not trusted. That is most of what you are paying me for.

Five different people, at different companies, none of whom compared notes.

Tell me what you are running and what is not working.

You always have a choice, and it matters that you make the right one.

One word of caution before you do. Be wary of anyone who wants to lock you into a long-term contract. This industry has been blighted with them, and they protect the agency rather than you. If you have buyer's regret two months in, the last thing you need is another ten months of it.

There are other people in the UK doing this work properly. These three I know and rate:

Jon Cottrell runs The Search Mechanics from Ashford in Kent.

Dids Reeve is a seasoned Google Ads pro based in Cornwall.

Amanda White, also in Cornwall, offers SEO services as well as PPC.

If none of that helps and you would rather just talk it through, get in touch.

Bold Internet Limited is a UK registered company, based in Hampshire.