Hiring a Google Ads Management Agency? Here's What to Check Before You Sign
Most business owners who ask this question have already been burned once. They hired a Google Ads management agency, watched the monthly budget disappear, and got a report full of green arrows that never quite matched what was happening to their phone or their enquiry inbox.
I have been running Google Ads accounts for UK SMBs for 5 years, working out of Cromford Mills here in Derbyshire, and I have inherited more broken accounts than I have built from a blank page. The pattern is nearly always the same. An agency signs the client, sets up a handful of campaigns, and then goes quiet except for the invoice.
This post is the checklist I wish more Derbyshire and East Midlands business owners had before they signed anything. It covers what to bring to your first call, what a competent Google Ads management agency should be able to explain about your account, the red flags that mean you should walk away, and how these agencies typically charge so you are not caught out later.
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Before you take a single pitch meeting, pull 90 days of your own Google Ads data. You need three things: your blended customer acquisition cost, your branded versus non-branded traffic split, and your top three conversion actions.
Any agency that cannot walk through that data with you on the first call is not ready to manage your account. This is not a test to catch them out. It is the only way to have a real conversation about what actually needs fixing rather than a generic pitch about "unlocking growth".
What to bring to the first call
I sat down with a joinery business near Ashbourne last year whose previous agency had never once mentioned that 70% of their ad spend was going on branded search terms, meaning people who already knew the business and would have found them anyway. That is not a Google Ads problem. It is an account structure problem, and it should have been flagged in month one.
If you run your own numbers first, you walk into every pitch meeting able to tell the difference between an agency that is diagnosing your account and one that is reading a script.
It also changes the tone of the conversation. Instead of an agency talking at you about impressions and click-through rates, you are having a discussion about which of your three conversion actions is actually worth chasing, and which one is skewing the picture. That is the conversation that leads to better decisions, not a bigger invoice.
Do not skip the branded search question
Branded search, people typing your business name directly into Google, will almost always convert well because those searchers already know who you are. An agency that reports a strong return on ad spend without separating branded from non-branded performance is showing you a number that flatters the account rather than one that tells you whether the campaign is actually finding new customers.
Ask for that split before you sign anything. If an agency cannot produce it, or seems reluctant to, treat that as your first answer.
Look for Google Ads expertise, not general marketing know-how
Google Ads has changed shape. Performance Max now blends Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps into a single AI-managed campaign, and Google's newer AI Max tools push automation further into Search itself.
The job of a Google Ads management agency has shifted. It used to be about writing manual ad groups. Now it is about building the asset library, the conversion structure, and the audience signals that tell the automation what a good customer actually looks like for your business.
That means the specialist you want is not the one with the flashiest case study. It is the one who can explain, in plain terms, what is feeding the algorithm and why. Ask a candidate agency to walk you through how they would structure conversion tracking for your business specifically, not in general. If the answer is vague, or if manual ad group building is pitched as the main value-add, that is a sign they are behind the curve.
This matters more for smaller budgets than larger ones. Google's automation needs a certain volume of conversion data to work well, and an agency that understands your business can build interim signals, phone call tracking, form quality scoring, enhanced conversions, that give the algorithm something useful to learn from long before your account hits the volume Google would normally want. Without that groundwork, a smaller Derbyshire business can end up paying for the same automation as a national account with none of the data to make it work.
"If an agency cannot tell you what signals they are feeding Google's automation and why, they are not managing your account. They are watching it manage itself." Stuart Baddiley, Optimise Your Marketing
What a proper account audit finds
We picked up a bathroom fitting business in Chesterfield whose previous agency had three near-identical campaigns competing against each other in the same auction. Restructuring the account and rebuilding conversion tracking cut their cost per lead by more than a third within the first quarter, without increasing the monthly budget.
See how we manage Google Ads accountsCheck they can diagnose, not just optimise
A good account manager can tell you why performance moved, not just that it moved. When cost per click spikes or conversions drop, they should be able to isolate whether the cause is auction competition, a shift in search query mix, a landing page problem, or a tracking gap.
If every monthly report from a Google Ads management agency reads the same regardless of what actually happened in the account that month, ask harder questions. A copy-paste report is usually a sign that nobody has actually opened the account and looked.
We test this with every new client relationship. Before we touch a setting, we run a full audit and show the business owner exactly what we found, good and bad. That is standard practice, not a bonus service, and any agency worth hiring should offer the same.
One useful test is to ask a candidate agency to look at last month's performance and tell you, off the top of their head, what changed and why. A competent account manager who genuinely works the account weekly will have an answer within seconds. One who only opens the account before writing the monthly report will need to go away and check, which tells you how often they are actually looking.
Red flags worth walking away from
- Case studies that lead with a return on ad spend figure but will not disclose the budget, margin, or attribution model behind it. A high ROAS on a low-margin product can still lose money.
- An inability to explain your own conversion tracking setup in plain English. If they cannot explain it to you, they are not fully across it themselves.
- A guaranteed ROAS or cost per acquisition with no conditions attached. Nobody can promise that on Google's auction, and anyone who does is either inexperienced or setting up an excuse for later.
- A push for a 12-month contract before they have even audited your account. A confident agency is happy to earn a longer commitment after showing you what they can do, not before.
- No Google Partner status, and no clear answer for why not. It is not the only signal of competence, but a lack of one with no explanation is worth asking about directly.
Any one of these on its own is worth a follow-up question. Two or more together and I would keep looking, whether you are based in Derby, Nottingham, or anywhere else in the East Midlands.
How Google Ads management agencies charge
Most agencies work on a percentage of ad spend, typically somewhere between 12% and 18% depending on budget size, sometimes with a flat setup fee for the initial audit and account rebuild.
That upfront work, tracking rebuild, account restructure, and asset library setup, is usually the highest-leverage work in the first 90 days. Do not be put off by a setup fee. Be put off by one with no clear deliverable attached to it.
Ask what you get for that fee in writing. A proper audit document, a rebuilt tracking plan, and a restructured account are reasonable outputs. A vague promise to "get started on your account" is not.
It is also worth asking how performance is reviewed after the first 90 days. A Google Ads management agency should be moving from setup work into a regular rhythm, weekly checks on spend pacing and conversion quality, monthly reporting against the numbers you agreed at the start, and a quarterly conversation about whether the budget itself still makes sense. If nobody can describe that rhythm to you, the percentage fee is paying for very little ongoing attention.
Where Google Ads fits into the bigger picture
Google Ads rarely works in isolation. A well-run account can still underperform if your website is slow, your Google Business Profile is neglected, or leads never get followed up because there is no CRM process behind them.
That is why we manage Google Ads as one part of the BIG12 framework we use with every client, sitting alongside SEO, local visibility, brand, and CRM, because ad spend rarely does its best work feeding into a business that is not ready to convert it. We have run Google Ads accounts for UK SMBs for 5 years, across sectors from professional services to farm shops, and every engagement starts with an audit of the whole marketing picture, not just the ad account.
See where Google Ads sits in your marketing mix
The BIG12 Scorecard benchmarks your Google Ads alongside the other eleven pillars, from SEO to CRM, so you know what to fix first.
Take the BIG12 ScorecardIf you want to see the full framework behind this, it is worth reading through the BIG12 marketing training we built from 18 years of client work.
The challenge is never learning. It is doing.
By now you know what to ask, what to check, and what should make you walk away. That is the easy part. The hard part is actually running the audit, comparing three agencies properly, and holding whoever you hire to the standard you have just set.
Most business owners we meet already know their current agency is not explaining itself well enough. What they are missing is the time to do a proper comparison, or the confidence to know what a good answer to these questions actually sounds like.
That is where we come in. Five years of managing Google Ads accounts for businesses across Derbyshire and the East Midlands, backed by 18 years of running OYM, means we have seen most of the ways an account can go wrong, and most of the ways it should be put right.
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We will look at your current marketing, benchmark it against the BIG12, and give you a practical set of actions to take. No sales pitch. No fluff. Just 18 years of honest advice applied to your business.
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