Most Google Ads agencies give near identical answers on a sales call. The questions that actually separate them aren’t about strategy at all. They’re about who does the work day to day, how the agency gets paid, who owns the account, and what happens on the day you leave.
Below are the questions I’d ask if I were comparing three agencies, roughly in the order I’d ask them. I run a small consultancy, so take the conclusion with that in mind. The questions still work whoever you end up hiring.
Why does every agency sound the same on the call?
Because the sales call is the one part of the service that’s been practised hundreds of times.
Everyone says data-driven. Everyone has a case study with a big percentage on it. Everyone promises a senior team. None of that is a lie exactly, it’s just the same rehearsed forty minutes, and it tells you very little about what happens in month four.
The real differences between agencies are commercial rather than tactical. Two agencies can run more or less the same strategy on your account and give you completely different results, because one of them gives each manager eight accounts and the other gives them thirty.
So ask about the structure, not the strategy.
Who will actually be in my account every week?
This is the most useful question on the list, and the answer is rarely the person sitting in front of you.
Ask for a name, a job title, how many other accounts that person handles, and how long they’ve been at the agency. Then ask what happens if they leave. Churn in agencies is high, and an account that changes hands three times in a year never really gets managed at all.
A good answer sounds specific. “Sarah, senior account manager, she runs eight accounts, she’s been here four years.” A weaker answer redirects to the team, the process or the pod. Pods are often a polite way of not answering the question.
None of this means a junior can’t do good work. It means you should know what you’re buying, because the fee is usually priced as though you’re buying senior time.
How does the agency get paid, and what does that pay them to do?
Three models are common, and they’re not three ways of pricing the same work. They’re three different sets of incentives.
Percentage of media spend. The most common, and the one with the obvious problem. It quietly pays your agency to spend more of your money, forever. Nobody involved has to be cynical for this to bend decisions.
Flat monthly fee. Cleaner, because the fee stops moving when the budget does. The trade is that it pays for a scope rather than an outcome, so the scope needs to be written down.
Performance-based. Sounds like the fairest of the three and usually isn’t, because it’s priced off a metric the agency also gets to define and report. If you go this way, agree the measurement source first and make it yours, not theirs.
I’d take a flat fee reviewed annually against scope. Then ask what triggers a fee increase, and get the answer before you sign rather than in month seven. Our own pricing page shows how a spend-banded flat fee works in practice if you want a reference point.
Do I own the ad account and the data?
Yes is the only acceptable answer, and it’s worth checking rather than assuming.
If the agency created the Google Ads account under their own manager account and you leave, you can lose the whole history with it. Not just the reports. The conversion data, the campaign history, the learning that automated bidding sits on top of. Starting a new account from scratch after three years of spend is an expensive way to change supplier.
Ask who owns the Google Ads account, the Merchant Center, the GA4 property and the tag manager container. Get all four in writing.
What will they ask me for?
Turn it round for a minute. The questions an agency asks you are more revealing than the ones you ask them.
A good one wants your gross margin, your average order value or average deal size, your lead to sale rate, and some sense of what you can actually handle. Those numbers are what a sensible target return is built from. Without them, any ROAS or cost per lead target is just a number somebody invented.
If nobody asks what a customer is worth to you, they’re going to optimise towards their own guess. That’s the single most common reason an account looks fine in the platform and disappointing in the bank.
What does the reporting actually contain?
Ask to see a real report from a real client, redacted. Most will send one.
What you want in it: what changed, what it did, what’s happening next, and the number that matters to your business. What you don’t want is a monthly deck of impressions, click-through rate and a quality score slide. If a report doesn’t contain a decision, or a number that affects one, it’s theatre.
Ask how often you’d get one, and who writes it. A report written by the person in the account is worth more than one assembled by an account director who last opened it in March.
The questions, in order
- Who is in my account every week, how many other accounts do they have, and how long have they been here?
- What happens if that person leaves?
- How are you paid, and what does that pay you to do?
- What triggers a fee increase?
- Do I own the ad account, Merchant Center, GA4 and tag manager?
- What do you need from me about margin and customer value?
- Can I see a real report before I sign?
- What’s the notice period, and what does handover include?
- What would you not do for us, and why?
What happens when I leave?
Ask this while they still want to win you. The answer is much harder to get later.
Thirty days notice is normal and fair both ways. Ninety is common with larger agencies and worth pushing back on. Anything longer than that on a Google Ads retainer is protecting the agency’s revenue, not your account.
Then ask what handover actually includes. A proper one means documentation of what was changed and why, access transferred cleanly, and someone available for a week of questions. A poor one means an email with a login in it.
The question that settles it
“What would you not do for us, and why?”
It’s the one question nobody prepares for, and the answer is usually the most honest forty seconds of the call.
An agency that tells you your budget is too small for what you’re asking is thinking about your account rather than the sale. So is one that says Shopping matters more than the display campaign you asked about. So is one that wants to fix your tracking before it touches a bid.
An agency that says it can do everything is telling you it hasn’t looked yet.
- The sales call is rehearsed, so ask about commercial structure rather than tactics.
- Get the name and the account load of the person who’ll be in your account each week.
- A percentage of spend fee pays your agency to spend more of your money. A flat fee doesn’t.
- You should own the ad account, Merchant Center, GA4 and tag manager in every case. In writing.
- The questions an agency asks you about margin and customer value tell you more than any case study.
- Ask what they’d refuse to do. It’s the least rehearsed answer you’ll get.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I ask a Google Ads agency before signing?
Start with who’ll actually be in your account each week and how many other accounts they handle. Then how the fee works and what it pays them to do, whether you own the ad account and the data, and what the notice period and handover look like. Those four cover most of the difference between agencies. Strategy questions sound better and separate them far less.
How much should a Google Ads agency cost in the UK?
Retainers commonly start around £500 a month for a small single-market account and rise with scope rather than with spend alone. The more useful test is what proportion of your media budget the fee represents, and whether the arrangement pays the agency to increase that budget. Our pricing page sets out a spend-banded flat fee if you want a worked example.
Is a bigger Google Ads agency better than a small one?
Not automatically, and often not. Size buys you cover when someone’s ill or on holiday, and a wider spread of specialists for multi-market or multi-platform work. What it tends to cost you is seniority, because the economics of a large agency push mid-sized accounts towards junior managers. If your account is big enough to deserve senior attention but not big enough to buy it from a large agency, a small one or a consultant usually puts a better person in the account for the same fee.
Should I hire an agency or a freelance consultant?
It depends which failure you can least afford. Agencies dilute your account across a team, consultants are a single point of failure. We’ve written the longer comparison separately, including the cases where the agency is the right call.
What are the warning signs on a first call?
Nobody asks what a customer is worth to you. Nobody will name the person who’d run the account. The fee is a percentage of spend and there’s no cap. The notice period is longer than ninety days. And they can do everything, including the channels you haven’t mentioned yet.
Comparing agencies right now?
Happy to be one of the three, or just to tell you what to ask the other two.
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