Top-rated PPC agencies in Melbourne for ecommerce brands, and what "top-rated" hides.
Ratings measure how happy an agency's clients were with the agency. They do not measure whether the ads made money. For an ecommerce brand those are different questions, and the second one is the only one that matters.
- No pitch deck
- Findings yours to keep
- Month to month after 90 days
Short answer: the top-rated PPC agencies in Melbourne are the ones whose clients liked working with them, which is not the same as the ones whose campaigns were profitable. For an ecommerce brand, check four things instead: whether they fix tracking before spending, whether they report cost per order rather than ROAS, whether the fee is flat or a percentage of spend, and whether they will send traffic to a page you have not fixed yet.
Running Meta as well as Google? Our Facebook advertising agency work is judged on the same cost per order, from the same tracking.
If you would rather have the four checks run for you, the PPC agency Melbourne page sets out how we run PPC management in Melbourne for stores and service businesses, judged on cost per order rather than return on ad spend.
How we score on those four
Tracking first: every account starts with conversion tracking rebuilt and tested on a real order, before a dollar is spent. Cost per order, not ROAS: that is the number in every report, next to what you spent. Flat fee: stated on the first call, never a percentage of spend, no mark-up on media. Pages before traffic: if the product page leaks, we fix it before we send paid clicks to it. The proof is on two client screens, Tuff Gear at A$222K in twelve months, up 274%, and Koi Koi Inbox up 205% in seven, both published with permission. The full approach is on the Melbourne ecommerce growth agency page.
Want the four questions answered about your own account? Book a free ten minute call, or send three answers and get the findings in writing within 24 hours. You keep them either way.
What an ecommerce PPC agency should do in the first 30 days
Before you compare ratings, ask any ecommerce PPC agency what the first month looks like. A good answer has four parts. Week one: conversion tracking rebuilt and tested against a real order, so Google and Meta optimise toward sales rather than page views. Week two: the Shopping feed cleaned, because titles, product types and missing identifiers decide which searches your products can show for. Weeks three and four: search terms that spend and never sell are cut, and the budget moves to the products with the margin to carry the cost per click.
Ecommerce PPC services that skip straight to new campaigns usually rebuild the same leak on a bigger budget. Ours start with the tracking and the feed, and report cost per order from your store admin, not ROAS from the ad platform.
Why the ratings mislead for ecommerce
An agency review is written by a marketing manager about communication, reporting and responsiveness. Those matter. But an ecommerce PPC account can be beautifully managed and unprofitable, because the leak is on the product page, in the shipping cost at checkout, or in a pixel that counts every purchase twice. None of that shows up in a five star review of the agency.
The four things that actually separate them
Tracking first, or campaigns first?
Ask what happens in the first two weeks. If the answer is launching campaigns, your spend will be optimised toward whatever the inherited tracking says is a conversion, which in the accounts we inherit is wrong more often than it is right.
ROAS or cost per order?
ROAS is a ratio and ratios hide problems. A four times ROAS on a product with a thirty percent margin loses money after shipping. Cost per order next to margin is the honest number. Ask which one the monthly report leads with.
Flat fee or percentage of spend?
A percentage of spend pays the agency more for a bigger budget whether or not it works. A flat fee scoped to your revenue stage removes that conflict.
Will they refuse to send traffic to a broken page?
A PPC agency that only touches the ad account will run profitable-looking campaigns into a product page that cannot convert, because the page is not their job. Ask whether they audit the landing page before spending. If the answer is no, the ROAS you get will be the ceiling the page allows, not the ceiling the market allows.
Melbourne, specifically
Melbourne has more ecommerce PPC agencies than any Australian city except Sydney, and most of them are good at Google Ads. The gap is rarely platform skill. It is whether anyone is accountable for what happens after the click. That is the question to ask, and it applies whether the agency is in Melbourne, Geelong or Sydney.
Questions owners ask
Do you run PPC for Melbourne ecommerce brands?
Yes, from Geelong, remotely, with the senior team in your accounts. Google Shopping, Search, Performance Max, Meta and TikTok, run to cost per order, with the landing page audited before the first dollar moves.
What is a good ROAS for an Australian ecommerce brand?
It depends entirely on margin, which is why we do not lead with it. A brand at seventy percent margin can be profitable at two times; a brand at thirty percent needs closer to four. Cost per order against margin is the number that transfers between businesses.
Is a flat fee really cheaper?
Usually, once ad spend passes a few thousand a month. A fifteen percent management fee on $20,000 of spend is $3,000 before any work is judged. A flat fee scoped to revenue stage does not move when the budget does.
Rather just get the answer for your business?
The free audit applies all of this to your market, your competitors and your numbers. Ten minutes on a call; the written findings are yours either way.