Google Ads management for UK and US businesses

The work changes shape as an account ages, so it helps to know what a monthly fee buys in month one and by month nine.

Month one is mostly defence. Tracking is proved with a test lead, the campaigns go live on a deliberately short keyword list, and most of the hours go into the search terms report: reading what people typed, adding negatives, tightening loose matches. Two settings get checked on day one. Google includes search partner sites by default on a new Search campaign without telling you which partner sites showed the ad, and on an account someone has run before, account-level auto-apply recommendations may already be switched on.

Month two is the first honest read. There is enough data to see which ad groups bring enquiries and which only bring clicks. Budget moves to the first group, the second is rewritten or paused, and match types widen only where the search terms show it is safe. A conversion-based bid strategy comes in once there are real conversions for it to learn from.

From month three it settles into a rhythm. Weekly: search terms, negatives, budget pacing and the written report. Monthly: the current ad copy test, landing page notes, and the location and schedule settings checked against when enquiries arrived. Quarterly: whether the structure still fits what you sell, what the coming season needs, and whether a second campaign type has earned a test, with the auction insights report showing which advertisers keep meeting you in the same auctions.

The weekly part never stops, because new search terms keep arriving, and an account left alone for a quarter keeps paying for the ones that should have been excluded weeks earlier.

The prices published by providers that rank for this service fall into three patterns, sometimes stacked together.

• A percentage of your Google spend. It rises with the budget, so whoever recommends a bigger budget is paid more when you agree to it.
• A flat fee, sometimes in tiers. One common version sets the fee by spend band, flat inside a band and stepping up when your budget crosses into the next: in effect a slow-moving percentage, fine if you can see where the bands sit.
• A hybrid with conditions. A flat fee up to a spend ceiling with a percentage above it, a set-up charge, or a three-month minimum term. None is unreasonable alone; just know which are in the quote before you sign.

I charge flat monthly fees, agreed in writing before work starts, and nothing on this site is priced as a percentage of your ad spend. Google Ads retainers start at £650 a month on the retainers page; they run month to month with one month’s notice either way, and the first month is paid in advance. The longer comparison, which also covers hourly and performance-based fees, is in the guide to PPC management fees.

Three things should sit in your name from day one: the Google Ads account, with your own email address at Admin level; the payments profile, with your card and your business’s legal name; and the tags and analytics property that count the conversions.

Google offers two routes that never involve sharing your password. A provider with a manager account sends a link request to your ten-digit customer ID, and an admin on your side accepts it under Admin, then Access and security, then Managers. Or you invite the provider’s email address as a user at Standard level, which can edit campaigns, while adding users and accepting or removing manager links stay with Admin. Google says an admin on the client account can unlink a manager at any time.

Check ownership as well. Google lets a manager account be given ownership of a client account, which lets it control who else has access, and the Managers tab shows which manager is listed as owner. If your account was created inside an agency’s manager account and nobody at your end holds Admin, it is yours in name only. The manager you link to matters too: Google says an account can be paused if it is linked to a manager account that breaches its third-party policy, and so can accounts sharing a payment method with a paused one.

Shared passwords break the audit trail. Change history records the email address behind each change made in the interface, and an admin can see every user’s sign-in method and last sign-in time. With one shared login, every edit looks like yours. I work through partner access only and never ask for your passwords, and if we stop working together I remove my access and nothing else changes, as set out on the payment and contracts page.

Google is rolling out advertiser verification gradually and says every advertiser will eventually have to complete it. A selected account gets a notification, some of its ads may be restricted, and there is often a deadline, which cannot be extended. Miss it and the account is paused, unable to run any ads, until verification is done.

Three points decide how smoothly it goes. Only an admin on the Google Ads account can complete the tasks, so whoever holds Admin must be reachable. The name and location on the payments profile must exactly match the documents submitted, so a profile under an agency’s name, a nickname or a web address becomes a problem on the day the request arrives. And Google tells anyone completing verification who manages ads for a client to answer yes to “Is your organisation an agency?”, or risk a pause or suspension. The status sits under Admin, then Policy, then Account.

Some sectors face more checks. For financial services ads in the UK, including ads shown to UK users who appear to be seeking financial services, Google requires verification and proof of Financial Conduct Authority authorisation or an exemption, and that applies even to services the FCA does not regulate. Google may also request verification for cross-border targeting, ads on brand-related searches and scam-prone sectors such as travel and customer or technical support services. Settle these before a campaign is built, not after the disapprovals arrive.

A monthly service pays for decisions that keep coming. Some accounts stop producing them, and a fee on an account like that buys reassurance rather than work.

The clearest case is a narrow, settled account: one service, one area, a short keyword list and an owner with an hour a week. Once it is built properly and the early negatives are in, what remains is reading the search terms report every week and acting on it, which a careful owner can learn. A one-off account and tracking setup with a fixed price agreed before work begins, then running it yourself, is often cheaper; the fixed-price packages show how a build is scoped and handed over with a written walkthrough.

The same goes for a campaign with an end date, such as one season or a single event, where a build plus a few managed weeks fits better than an open-ended arrangement. It goes for accounts that are not the bottleneck, too: if calls go unanswered, the landing page loses people or the price of a job cannot carry the cost of the clicks, a management fee only adds to the loss. And an account that is paused, suspended or past a verification deadline has to be sorted out before management can begin.

Tell me what you sell, where, and what one new customer is worth, and I will say in writing, within one working day, which of these applies. “You do not need this every month” is one possible answer.

Send me your website, the searches you want to show up for and, if you already run ads, read-only access to the account. I will look at the tracking, the search terms and where the budget is going before suggesting any work or fee. Terms are agreed in writing before anything starts, the ad budget stays on your own card, and I will not promise a cost per lead before the account has data.