Most businesses don't ask enough questions before hiring a Google Ads agency or consultant. They look at the website, maybe check a review or two, and make a decision based on how confident the agency sounds in the sales conversation. That's how expensive mistakes get made. I've spoken to businesses across North Wales who've spent months with agencies that were never going to deliver, and every one of them would have spotted the red flags earlier with the right questions.
A manufacturing client came to me after 14 months with a digital marketing agency. In that time they'd paid £750/month in management fees. When I audited the account, the campaigns were structured exactly as they'd been on day one. No search term reviews, no negative keywords added, no A/B copy tests. The agency's reporting had never shown a cost-per-lead figure. The client didn't know their Google Ads had generated a single new enquiry because nobody had thought to check. All five questions below would have surfaced those problems before they signed a contract. For a deeper look at what separates genuine expertise from salesmanship, The Hard Truth About Google Ads: Why Guaranteed Results Are a Myth covers the red flags you should be watching for.
The five questions below won't guarantee you find the right agency, but they will reveal very quickly whether a prospective provider is operating transparently, and the answers they give will tell you a lot about how they'll behave once you're a client.
1. Who owns the ad accounts?
This question matters more than it might seem. Your Google Ads account contains valuable historical data: what keywords have worked, what audiences have converted, what ad copy has performed, and months or years of conversion history. If the agency owns the account and you don't have independent access, you own none of that data when the relationship ends. Agencies know this, and some structure it this way deliberately.
The correct answer: you own the accounts. You should be set up as an administrator on your own Google Ads account from day one, with the agency added as a manager. You can grant and revoke their access at any time. If a provider insists on owning the account on your behalf, that's a significant red flag.
One scenario where account ownership is sometimes muddier: if an agency is using a parent (MCC) account and running campaigns under it, they may technically hold the account while you retain access. Make sure you understand the specific setup and that you could take the data with you if the relationship ends.
2. Who actually manages the campaigns?
Some agencies win clients on the strength of senior-sounding people in the sales conversation, then hand the day-to-day work to junior staff or offshore teams. Ask directly: who will be managing your account week to week? What is that person's experience level? Can you speak to them before you sign?
You should also ask about how the account is managed: how often they review it, what the weekly cadence looks like, what they check in each session. Vague answers ("we're constantly monitoring it") are worth pressing on. Specific answers ("we review the search terms report every Monday, adjust bids on Wednesday, and send a report on Friday") tell you there's a real process.
For smaller businesses, an experienced individual consultant often offers better continuity than an agency: you know exactly who is in your account, and the expertise doesn't get diluted across a junior team.
3. How is the management fee structured?
There are three main fee structures in PPC management. A flat fee is a fixed monthly amount regardless of your ad spend, predictable, and aligns the consultant's incentive with your results rather than your spend. Percentage of spend (typically 10 to 20% of your monthly ad budget) creates a structural incentive to increase your spend, since the provider earns more when you spend more. Performance-based fees tied to conversions or revenue are less common, and can create incentives to optimise for easy conversions rather than valuable ones.
Ask for the full fee structure in writing. Check whether the management fee is applied on top of the ad spend budget you specify, or whether it comes out of the budget. A provider who takes 20% of a £2,000/month budget as their fee, leaving only £1,600 for actual ads, has a very different cost structure to one charging a flat £400/month management fee separately. It's also worth asking whether your agency is running branded search campaigns you don't actually need, since that's one of the most common ways spend gets inflated without delivering real value.
4. What does reporting look like and what does it include?
Ask to see a sample report from an existing client (with client details redacted). Reports that show clicks, impressions, and CTR without conversion data are not useful. They tell you the campaign exists but not whether it's generating any return.
The metrics that matter are: number of conversions, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend or cost per lead. These should be the headline figures in any report. If an agency's standard report leads with impressions and reach, that tells you something about what they consider success.
Also ask: who pulls the report, how often does it arrive, and is there a monthly call to discuss it? Regular communication is how issues get caught early and how the relationship stays productive. If you're unsure what good reporting actually looks like in practice, When Is the Right Time to Outsource Your PPC Campaign Management? outlines the management cadence you should expect from whoever takes this on.
5. What are the contract terms?
Long-term contracts are common in the industry, with 6 or 12-month commitments. They're not inherently wrong, but they do change the dynamic: once you're locked in, the provider's incentive to keep delivering diminishes. Short notice periods (1 month) give you more flexibility; long ones (3 to 6 months) are primarily in the agency's interest.
Ask about:
- Minimum contract length and notice period
- Whether there are minimum monthly spend requirements
- What happens to campaign access and data if you leave early
- Whether there's a setup or onboarding fee and what it covers
A provider who is confident in their results should be comfortable with a short notice period. One who needs a 6-month lock-in to feel secure may be less certain about retaining clients on merit.
Why case studies shouldn't be your main evidence
Most agencies lead with case studies. "We grew this client's leads by 200%" sounds compelling. The problem is that case studies are selected and framed to present the best possible outcome. They never show the clients who left disappointed. And without knowing the starting point, the budget, the industry, or how the results were measured, a case study number tells you almost nothing about whether the agency will perform for your specific situation. The five questions above are more revealing than any case study, because they're about process and transparency, not curated success stories. Process is repeatable. Cherrypicked results aren't.
Final thoughts
These questions won't guarantee a perfect outcome, but they'll give you a clear picture of how an agency operates before you commit. Providers who give clear, confident answers to all five are worth proceeding with. Providers who deflect, generalise, or get defensive should be treated with caution. Those reactions tell you something about how they'll communicate once you're a client and something goes wrong.
For a deeper look at what separates genuinely good PPC management from the kind that costs you money, read What Makes a Good PPC Management Company?. It covers quality signals and red flags to watch for in more detail.
