Your First 90 Days with a PPC Agency: What Actually Ships, Week by Week

What to Expect in the First 90 Days with a PPC Agency

Signing is the easy part. Then comes the quiet stretch. Money leaves your account. The dashboard looks like last week. And you start wondering if you picked wrong.

Day one to day fourteen is mostly work you cannot see in a dashboard.

Tracking live

48 hrs

Rebuild ships

Day 8-14

Gains start

Week 3

First fair read

Day 90

What Should Happen in Your First 30 Days?

Month one is plumbing. Almost none of it shows up in your ROAS yet, and that is normal.

Week one, day by day. This is our own clock, published on our process page. No industry body sets these dates, so treat them as a yardstick and ask whoever you hired for their version in writing.

• Day 1. Your Slack channel goes live and access grants land. You create the Google Ads and Merchant Center accounts under your own login. Then you give the agency manager access.
• Day 2 to 3. The Shopify app and tracking install. Our standard is tracking fully live within 48 hours.
• Day 4 to 7. The audit is finished and the rebuild plan is in your inbox. In writing. Something you can read, question, and say no to.
• Day 8 to 14. The rebuild ships.
• Day 15 onward. Daily work starts on top of a clean account.

The product feed. Titles get rewritten around the words buyers type into Google. Google product category and product type set properly. Colour, size, gender, age group, material filled in. Images checked. Google reads all of it from the product data specification, and that is what Shopping and Performance Max decide from. Your product data starts in Shopify and reaches Google through a feed app, an API or a feed tool. Wherever it is managed, it is not the Google Ads interface. So an agency that only ever opens Google Ads is not touching the thing Shopping and PMax read from.

Merchant Center. Disapprovals cleared. Shipping and returns settings matched to what your store actually does. Google's own help page is blunt about the cost of leaving it. Disapproved products stop showing across Google. An account-level suspension disables all of them at once. So this gets fixed before a single bid changes.

Tracking. Your sales get sent to Google from your server, not only from the shopper's browser, then matched against real Shopify orders. Google's enhanced conversions exist for a related reason. They add your own hashed order data on top of the standard tag so more sales get counted. If the conversion numbers are wrong, every bid built on them is wrong too.

The check that matters is not the install. It is the comparison. Google counts only the orders it can tie back to an ad click, and your store counts every order, so the two totals will never match. What you want is a gap that is steady and believable. A number that swings wildly week to week, or shows a sliver of the orders you know you got, means something is broken.

Structure. The account gets rebuilt around what your catalog earns. Tag every product with what it does for you, a winner or a money-loser, and one campaign can bid on them differently. Google calls those tags custom labels. Products stop being one big pile.

What Should Happen in Days 31 to 60?

Smart Bidding gets reset. If the old conversion numbers were wrong, every bid Google learned from them was wrong too. Once tracking is honest, the targets get reset and the system relearns. Google says that relearning usually runs one to two conversion cycles, and how long that takes depends on how many sales you get. Expect a noisy stretch.

Plain Search campaigns on your proven terms. Performance Max hides most of what it does. A normal Search campaign on the terms you already win lets you see the query and set the bid yourself. If PMax is buying your own brand name back at a premium, the direct control is a brand exclusion on the PMax campaign. A Search campaign on its own does not stop it.

Search-term hygiene and negatives. Real queries get read every week, straight from the search terms report. The junk gets blocked. On a normal ecom account this is where the first visible waste disappears.

First asset tests. New headlines, new images, new asset groups. One variable at a time, so the result means something.

If your account looks flat in the middle of month two, check the bid strategy before you panic. It is relearning on numbers that finally reflect your real orders.

What Should Happen in Days 61 to 90?

Scale what keeps earning. Budget goes up on the products and campaigns that still earn at higher spend. Doubling everything overnight buys worse traffic at a higher price.

Feed iteration on real search data. The rebuilt account now has weeks of real queries behind it. Every week we pull the search terms report and push the words that convert back into titles and attributes. Same loop, every week, for as long as we run the account.

Cut what does not pay. Products, asset groups, campaigns, whole markets. Ask for the list of what got cut and why.

Your calendar matters. Sign in July and the rebuild is done well before Q4 peak. Sign in late October and the rebuild fights your biggest trading weeks for attention. A straight agency tells you that before you sign, and stages the work around your peak.

When Should a PPC Agency Show Real Results?

The first two weeks look slow on paper. Feed rebuilds and tracking fixes do not show up in a dashboard the day they ship. Our process page puts real performance changes at week three, once the rebuild is in.

Google's own Smart Bidding guidance recommends measuring performance over a window with at least 30 conversions, and 50 for Target ROAS. That is a guideline for reading a result, not a rule about who is allowed to hire an agency. Google also notes Smart Bidding can pull on data from across your account, so a thin campaign is not automatically flying blind. How long you take to get there is your own maths, not a calendar rule. A store doing five sales a day clears 30 in a week. A store doing five a week needs a month and a half. Read the number before you have that many conversions and you are reading noise.

So nobody gets to quote you a target ROAS before they have opened your account. Anyone who does is guessing with your money.

Four things are checkable in week two. None of them need a report from the agency.

• Your Merchant Center disapproval count.
• The gap between Google's reported conversions and your real Shopify orders.
• Whether non-brand search is reported apart from brand.
• Whether your product titles changed.

	On track	Stalled
Product feed	Rebuilt, titles changed	Untouched since you signed
Tracking	Sent from your server, checked against Shopify orders	Browser pixel only, never compared
The plan	In writing by day seven	Discussed on a call, never sent
Account ownership	Yours	Inside the agency MCC
Reporting	Brand and non-brand split	One blended ROAS number

Red Flags That Mean You Should Fire Them

Seven of them.

1. No written 30-day plan by day seven. A plan that only ever gets described on a call is a plan nobody has to be held to. Get it in writing, once. Ask them: "Can you send the 30-day plan as a document, with what ships in which week?"

2. They own your Google Ads or Merchant Center account. Google's manager account help says a manager account can be given ownership of a client account. The same page says an admin on the client account can unlink at any time. So check who is listed as owner, and grant access instead of handing it over. The question to ask: "Are these accounts under my ownership, and can I revoke your access myself today?" This one is worth leaving over. Everything you built goes with the account.

3. Nobody has touched your product feed. On Shopping and Performance Max, Google reads your product data from the feed. An agency that never opens it is working with one hand. Get the before and after. Ask them: "What exactly changed in my feed this month? Show me my product titles before and after." Either the titles changed or they did not.

4. Nobody has checked Google's conversion numbers against your real orders. Every bid is built on the conversion number, so a wrong number makes every bid wrong. Sending the data from your server is how we close that gap, and however they do it, someone has to compare the two totals. Ask them: "How close were Google's conversions to my Shopify orders last month, and how did you check?" If nobody has run that comparison, nobody knows what the account is being steered on.

5. The report is branded search dressed up as growth. Branded search is the cheapest traffic in the account, and people typing your store name already know you. Counting those sales as agency performance flatters the report. Ask for the split. One question does it: "What is my non-brand ROAS on its own?" If they will not split it, that is your answer. More on this in how to verify an agency's results.

6. Feed work turned up as a paid add-on after you signed. A fee you cannot predict is a fee you cannot compare against anyone else's quote. Get the full list of everything billable, in writing, once. Ask: "What is on my invoice besides the management fee, and where is that published?" One surprise is a conversation. An invoice that keeps growing is the deal you signed, so treat it as an exit flag. We break the models down in Google Ads management fees explained.

7. No named senior person who can answer a question in plain words. You are paying for someone senior on the account. Ask them to explain last month's changes without jargon. Get the name. Get them in your channel. Ask them: "Who runs my account day to day, how senior are they, and how many other accounts do they have?" The answer tells you how they staff.

What a Good Agency Asks You for in Week One

A team doing real ecom work wants:

• Your Shopify order data, to check tracking against.
• Access you grant and can pull back yourself.
• Which products actually make you money.
• Stock levels and restock dates.
• Your seasonal calendar.
• Your return rates by product.

Return rates matter because a product with a great ROAS and a high return rate can still lose money. Google Ads never sees the return.

If nobody asks about stock, seasonality, or returns, ask why. Those three decide what is safe to scale.

How We Run the First 90 Days

The week-by-week clock is the same one at the top of this post. Full version on our process page.

You own your Google Ads and Merchant Center accounts. Always. We get access, and you can pull it back yourself.

Our fee is a tiered percentage of your monthly Google Ads spend. It starts at 10% on the first €10,000 and falls to 6% above €150,000. That fee is charged per client, on total spend across your stores. No retainer, no setup fee, no lock-in.

Two tools do get billed on top. A CSS partner at €24.90 and a feed management tool at €49.90. Those two are priced per store per month, and only once the tool is installed on that store. One of those is a feed tool, which is exactly what red flag six is about. That is why both prices sit in public on the pricing page, next to the brackets. Run flags six and seven on us before you ever talk to us. The thing to hold us to is that every price above is published, not quoted, and you can check it today. The rest of our numbers, the 200+ ecom brands and the 8+ years in ecom, sit on our about page with the detail attached. Those 8+ years are mine, not the agency's, and ZenoX itself launched in 2024. None of it should decide anything for you. The published prices and the seven flags should.

When Someone Else Is the Better Hire

You want every channel on one plan. Google Ads is the core focus here. Search, Performance Max, Shopping and Demand Gen, with Merchant Center and the feed underneath them. Paid social, email and SEO are not what this shop is built around. If your first 90 days need all of that moving together under one roof, KlientBoost sells that whole mix. If you are at national scale with Amazon, Walmart and streaming TV in the media plan, Tinuiti is built for that and we are not.

Your sales volume is still low enough that nobody can read the result. Not a hiring floor, and there is no published one. It is the same Smart Bidding guideline from further up: below roughly 30 conversions in a window, the number you are judging is noise. If your store takes months to get there, a percentage fee is eating budget that should be buying clicks, and neither of us can prove whether it worked. Run it yourself first. The free eCom Lab community is where to learn it without paying anyone.

Already onboarding with someone and want a second opinion? Send the store URL on WhatsApp. We will tell you what should have shipped by now, whether or not you ever become a client.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should happen in the first 30 days with a PPC agency?

Five things ship. A full account audit. A product feed teardown and rebuild. Merchant Center errors cleared. Sales tracking moved off the browser onto your server, then checked against your real store orders. An account restructure, so your winners and your money-losers can be bid on separately. Then ask for proof instead of a status call. Three things show it: your product titles before and after, your Merchant Center disapproval count on day one next to day 30, and last month's Google conversions next to your store orders. All three sit in accounts you own, so you can pull them yourself. Ask for the 30-day plan as a document too. A plan that only ever gets described on a call is a plan nobody is held to.

When should a PPC agency show real results?

The first two weeks look slow on paper. Feed and tracking work does not show up in a dashboard the day it ships. Our process page puts real performance changes at week three, once the rebuild is in. After that, judge it on conversions rather than days. A bid strategy needs enough conversions behind it before the number means anything, and a slow store takes more calendar time to get there than a fast one. Nobody should promise you a number before they have opened your account.

What are the red flags in the first month with a PPC agency?

Seven. No written 30-day plan by day seven. The agency owns your Google Ads or Merchant Center account. Nobody has touched your product feed. Nobody has checked Google's conversion numbers against your real store orders. The report is mostly branded search dressed up as growth. Feed work turned up as a paid add-on after you signed. No named senior person who can answer a question in plain words. Two of the seven are structural. Account ownership and an invoice that keeps growing are the deal you signed, so treat those two as exit flags. The other five you can raise, and how they answer tells you the rest.

Should I pause my campaigns when a new agency takes over?

Usually not. Pausing does not delete anything. Google says a paused campaign keeps its settings and its history and can be turned back on. Your conversion history is not erased. What you lose is delivery and momentum: the days it sits off bring in no new sales, so the bidding has less recent data to work with when you switch it back on. So keep spend running while the audit, the feed rebuild and the tracking work happen underneath. Then restructure and reset the targets once the data is clean. Keep the same conversion actions when tracking changes, too. Google says changing the conversion goals or actions a bid strategy uses sends it back into learning, usually one to two conversion cycles. The exception is an account burning money on broken tracking or a disapproved feed. Then pausing is the cheaper option.

What is the minimum ad spend before hiring a PPC agency?

There is no published industry floor, and we will not invent one. Count conversions instead. Google's Smart Bidding guidance recommends judging performance over a window with at least 30 conversions, and 50 for Target ROAS. That is a rule for reading results, not a hiring rule, and Google notes Smart Bidding can also use data from across your account. It is still a useful gut check. If your store takes months to reach that many conversions, you are paying a percentage fee while nobody, you included, can tell whether it is working. Run it yourself until the numbers move faster, then hire.