Google Ads Consultant, Ireland

Irish campaigns and the UK spillover problem

Ireland and Britain share a language and much of a media market, which makes location targeting the first thing I check in an Irish account. Google Ads offers one setting that shows ads to people located in your target area and another that also includes people searching about it or interested in it. The broader option suits tourism and relocation services. For a Cork engineering firm or a Galway accountancy practice, it often means paying for clicks from people who will never become customers.

Northern Ireland adds a specific wrinkle. It is part of the UK, trades in sterling and sits under different VAT and regulatory settings, yet many all-island businesses serve it gladly. I treat it as a deliberate decision rather than an accident of geography:

• Republic-only businesses target the Republic and exclude other regions explicitly.
• All-island businesses run a separate campaign for Northern Ireland with sterling pricing on the landing page.
• Companies selling into Great Britain get their own campaigns, budgets and ads written for a British reader, so Irish results are not muddied.

Splitting campaigns this way costs a little more management time and gives far clearer answers about where your inquiries come from. It also stops the much larger UK auction from absorbing a budget meant for Irish buyers. If you also want to be found organically, my SEO work in Ireland covers the same overlap from the organic side.

Keywords, negatives and Irish phrasing

Search terms in Ireland differ from British ones more than people expect. Buyers mention counties and towns, ask about grants and schemes, refer to Revenue rather than HMRC and use Eircodes in place of postcodes. Some services carry different names on each side of the Irish Sea. Keyword research therefore starts from the terms your sales team hears and the queries already showing in your account, not from an imported UK list.

Negative keywords matter just as much in a smaller market where each wasted click hurts. My standard exclusion lists for Irish accounts filter out:

• Job and career searches, including graduate programs and recruitment agencies.
• Grant, scheme and free-advice queries that do not match a paid service.
• Searches naming UK-only bodies, cities or regulations when you do not serve Britain.
• Training, course and definition queries from students.

Irish-language queries are a small part of commercial search, but some suppliers to public bodies and community organizations do target them. If you want Irish-language ads, the copy should come from a fluent Irish speaker among your staff or a partner you trust; the engagement itself runs in English. Broad match and automated recommendations are used with care. I accept them where the conversion signal is strong enough to guide them and switch them off where they mostly find loosely related searches.

Performance Max, landing pages and regulated sectors

Performance Max can reach buyers your keyword list never anticipated, mostly for ecommerce businesses with product feeds and steady sales data. For many Irish service and B2B firms the conversion signal is thin, and the campaign type spreads spend across YouTube, Display and Gmail with limited visibility into which placements produced an inquiry. I recommend it only after offline conversions are flowing and Search is performing, and I run it with brand exclusions so it cannot claim conversions from people who were already searching for your brand.

Landing pages often decide more than the ads. An Irish visitor should see euro prices or price drivers, the counties or regions you cover, Irish contact details and credentials they can verify. A page built for the UK with sterling and British delivery terms tells them they are in the wrong place. I review each main landing page for message match with the ad, clarity, form length and mobile speed, and write briefs your developer or web agency can implement.

Some sectors face stricter advertising rules. Financial services, healthcare, medicines, gambling and alcohol can be restricted by Google's own policies and by Irish or EU rules, and some require advertiser verification before ads run. I flag where those constraints are likely to apply and plan around them, while the regulatory reading belongs with your compliance team or legal advisor.

Consent mode and tracking that ends in your CRM

Cookie consent in Ireland follows EU law, with guidance issued by the Data Protection Commission. When a visitor declines advertising cookies, Google Ads cannot observe their conversion in the usual way. Consent mode lets tags adjust to that choice, and Google may then model some conversions it could not see. That helps bidding, yet it means the conversion column is partly an estimate. I set this up and explain which figures are observed and which are inferred; what your banner and privacy notice must say should be settled with your data protection advisor.

The more reliable signal sits in your CRM. The setup I use:

1. The form captures the Google click identifier and source fields alongside the inquiry.
2. Those values are stored on the lead record in the CRM.
3. Sales agrees which stages count, such as qualified lead, opportunity and won.
4. Those stages are sent back to Google Ads by a native connector, scheduled upload or integration.

Bidding then learns from inquiries your team confirmed as real, and reporting can show what each campaign spends per qualified opportunity instead of per form submitted. The method only works when stages are used consistently, so I agree them with sales first. Where the CRM needs work before it can carry this, my CRM consulting for Irish companies covers it.

Budget pacing, account ownership and reporting

Irish search volumes are modest in many B2B niches, so budgets need pacing rather than a fixed daily figure left alone. I watch how spend tracks against the month, flag when a campaign is limited by budget on searches that produce qualified inquiries, and recommend moving money away from campaigns that spend without producing pipeline. Seasonal patterns matter too: activity often slows over Christmas and the summer holidays, and campaigns should be adjusted on purpose rather than left running at the same pace. I do not set a budget figure without context; we agree a test level you are comfortable with and decide on evidence.

The account belongs to you. It sits under your company's Google account and billing profile, with me added as a user at the access level the work needs. If we stop working together, nothing has to be transferred or rebuilt, and the history stays with you. I take no commission on media spend and no referral fees from tool vendors.

Reports are short and readable by a managing director: spend, qualified inquiries, opportunities and pipeline by campaign from the CRM, plus a note on what changed and what happens next. Platform metrics such as impression share and click-through rate appear as diagnosis, not as the headline. Everything is delivered remotely, with review calls scheduled within the Irish working day. For how paid search fits a wider channel plan, see my B2B lead generation work in Ireland and the global Google Ads management page.