What to ask an agency before you sign anything

Choosing a PPC agency is difficult because almost every agency sounds good during the sales process. They will tell you they are data-driven, results-focused, transparent, proactive and different from other agencies. None of those statements tell you very much. The important questions are about what happens after you sign.

Why the sales call is not enough

A pitch is designed to be persuasive. That is its job. What it will not tell you is how your account gets managed on a wet Tuesday in month seven.

These are the things you actually need to know.

• Who actually manages the account?
• How experienced are they?
• How many other clients are competing for their attention?
• What happens when performance gets worse?
• Will they care about lead quality or only the conversion numbers inside Google Ads?
• If you decide to leave, do you keep everything?

Those are the questions that tell you what the relationship will actually look like.

Do not choose an agency based on how polished the pitch is. Choose it based on how the account will be managed after the pitch is over.

1. Who will actually manage my account?

This should be one of the first questions you ask. The person selling to you is not always the person managing the work.

That is not necessarily a problem. Agencies need salespeople. But you should know who will be responsible for your campaigns.

Ask:

• Who will be my day-to-day PPC manager?
• How experienced are they?
• Can I speak to them before signing?
• Will they be on our regular calls?

A common agency model looks like this. Senior strategist joins the pitch. Senior strategist impresses the client. Contract gets signed. Account gets passed to someone considerably more junior. The senior person disappears.

Again, junior does not automatically mean bad. There are excellent PPC managers early in their careers. The issue is expectation.

If you believe you are buying senior strategic expertise, you should know whether that expertise will still be involved after week one.

A good answer

"Sarah will manage the account day to day. She has four years' paid search experience. I will remain involved in the strategy and review the account with her monthly."

Clear.

A weak answer

"You'll have access to our wider paid media team."

That may mean nobody really owns it.

2. How many accounts does each PPC manager handle?

This question tells you a lot about the agency business model.

A very experienced PPC manager can handle multiple accounts. That is normal. But there is a limit. If one person is managing 35 clients, your account is not getting much individual attention.

The exact number is less important than the complexity. Someone managing six huge ecommerce accounts may be extremely busy. Someone managing fifteen small Search accounts may have plenty of capacity.

Ask how many clients your account manager typically works across, then ask how much time they would expect to spend on an account like yours.

Do not expect an agency to log eight hours every week adjusting bids for the sake of it. Modern PPC does not work like that. But you should understand whether you are buying thoughtful management or simply a place in a very large portfolio.

3. How do you measure whether PPC is actually working?

This question separates agencies that optimise advertising metrics from agencies that understand business performance.

If you are a lead generation company, the answer should go beyond cost per lead. The agency should care about:

• Lead quality
• Contact rate
• Qualification rate
• Sales rate
• Customer acquisition cost
• Revenue
• Profitability

If the agency only measures what happens inside Google Ads, it may optimise towards the wrong thing.

For example, Campaign A produces leads at £40 and Campaign B produces leads at £70. Campaign A looks better. But if Campaign A closes at 5% and Campaign B closes at 25%, Campaign B is probably far more valuable.

Ask how they would connect advertising performance with your actual sales results.

The answer might involve:

• CRM integrations
• Offline conversion tracking
• Qualified lead imports
• Revenue values
• Call tracking
• Regular sales feedback

The exact setup will depend on your business. Google's documentation on qualified leads and converted leads shows what is possible, so an agency that has never considered it is worth questioning.

What matters is that they are thinking beyond the dashboard.

4. What happens when performance drops?

This is one of my favourite questions. Every agency looks good when performance is good. You learn more when things go wrong.

Ask what they would do if CPA suddenly increased 30%.

A strong answer should involve diagnosis. They might investigate:

• CPC changes
• Competition
• Search demand
• Conversion rate
• Search term quality
• Tracking
• Budget allocation
• Bidding changes
• Website changes
• Lead quality

A weak answer usually jumps directly to random optimisation. "We'll adjust bids." "We'll refresh the ads." "We'll optimise the campaign." Those answers sound reassuring without saying anything.

You want an agency that identifies the problem before treating it.

Also ask how they communicate bad news

You do not want an agency that hides problems until the monthly report. If something meaningful changes, you should know.

Good communication is not constant communication. It is communication when something matters.

5. How often will you actually work on my account?

Avoid asking how often they optimise accounts. You will probably hear "every day". That sounds impressive. It can also be meaningless.

Most accounts do not need daily changes. Constant tinkering can actually hurt automated bidding.

A better question is what ongoing PPC management actually involves. Listen for things like:

• Search term analysis
• Budget allocation
• Campaign structure
• Ad testing
• Creative testing
• Conversion tracking
• Bid strategy
• Landing page feedback
• Performance Max analysis
• Lead quality
• Competitor changes
• Testing roadmap

The goal is not activity. The goal is useful activity.

Lots of changes do not mean an account is being well managed. Good management means knowing when to change something and when to leave it alone.

6. What will you need from us?

This question is often overlooked. The agency-client relationship is not one-way. A good agency should need information from you.

That might include:

• Sales data
• Lead quality feedback
• Customer profiles
• Margins
• Product priorities
• Creative assets
• Offers
• Sales objections
• Website access
• CRM access

If the agency says "nothing, we'll handle everything", I would be slightly concerned.

• How will they know whether the leads are good?
• How will they know your best customers?
• How will they know whether one service is twice as profitable as another?

Some businesses want an agency they can completely ignore. That sounds convenient. It usually leads to worse marketing.

The best agency relationships involve good information flowing in both directions.

7. Who owns the accounts, tracking and data?

Get this clarified before signing. Your business should ideally own:

• Google Ads
• Microsoft Ads
• Meta Business Manager
• Google Analytics
• Google Tag Manager
• Merchant Center
• CRM data
• Creative assets

The agency should normally have access. Not ownership.

Both platforms are built for this. Google's documentation on account access levels and Meta's guidance on adding partners to your business both let an agency work inside assets you continue to own. If an agency insists on holding the assets itself, ask why.

This matters because if the relationship ends, you should not have to start again.

"If we leave in two years, do we keep the Google Ads account and all of its history?" The answer should be straightforward.

Also ask what happens to:

• Landing pages
• Tracking
• Call tracking
• Reports
• Creative
• Scripts
• Third-party software

Some agencies provide proprietary systems as part of their service. That is fine. But you should know what disappears when the contract ends.

8. What happens if we want to leave?

Read the contract. Do not just listen to the salesperson.

Ask:

• What is the notice period?
• Is there a minimum contract?
• Are there cancellation fees?
• What happens during the handover?
• Will you cooperate with the new agency?

Long contracts are not automatically bad. There are situations where agencies invest heavily upfront and need contractual protection. But understand what you are committing to.

Personally, I would be cautious about an agency that needs a 12-month lock-in simply to manage an existing PPC account. If the service is good, clients should generally want to stay.

Also check automatic renewal

You do not want to discover that missing a cancellation deadline has locked you into another six months.

These details seem boring during the sales process. They become very important later.

Red flags to watch for

The answers themselves matter. So does the way the agency answers. I would become cautious if you hear things like these.

"We guarantee results"

Nobody can guarantee PPC results. They do not control Google, competitors, your website, your market or your customers. They can guarantee standards of work. They cannot guarantee a specific commercial result.

"We have a secret strategy"

There are no secret Google Ads tricks. Good PPC management is expertise, analysis, testing and execution. Not magic.

"You don't need access to the account"

You do.

"We optimise every campaign every day"

Perhaps. But ask what that actually means.

"We can definitely halve your CPA"

Based on what? If they have not properly audited the account, be sceptical.

"Our AI handles most of the optimisation"

Google already has plenty of automation. You are paying the agency for judgement.

"We don't really need your sales data"

For lead generation, this is a major warning sign.

Ask to see how they report

Before signing, ask for an example report. Not because reporting is the most important part of PPC, but because it shows you how the agency thinks.

Does the report simply list clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions and CPA? Or does it explain:

• What changed?
• Why?
• What matters?
• What happens next?

That second type of reporting usually reflects a more thoughtful approach to account management.

Ask what they would change first

Give them access to your existing account if you are comfortable doing so. Then ask what the first three things they would investigate would be.

You are not looking for them to give away an entire strategy for free. You are testing whether they have actually looked.

A strong agency should be able to identify specific areas of interest.

"Your non-brand Search campaigns look fundamentally healthy, so I wouldn't rebuild them. I would first investigate the drop in conversion rate on mobile, the amount of brand traffic going through Performance Max and whether your offline sales data can be fed back into Google."

That tells you far more than "we see huge opportunities to optimise the account".

Should you choose a specialist or full-service agency?

It depends on what you need. A full-service agency may make sense if you need branding, SEO, web development, social media and paid advertising all under one roof.

A specialist agency can make more sense when PPC is commercially important enough that you want deeper expertise, whether that is a managed service or a PPC consultant working alongside your team.

Neither structure guarantees quality. Ask who will actually do the work.

A company offering twenty services may have an excellent PPC team. A company calling itself a PPC specialist may have three inexperienced employees.

Judge the people. Not the label.

Do not choose purely on price

Agency fees matter. Of course they do. But the cheapest agency can become extremely expensive if it wastes £10,000 per month in media. Likewise, paying £5,000 per month for an agency that produces no meaningful additional value makes little sense.

The question is what capability you are getting for the fee. Compare:

• Experience
• Time
• Strategic input
• Tracking expertise
• Reporting
• Communication
• Commercial understanding
• Testing
• Contract flexibility

Then compare the price. That gives you a much more useful view of value. For typical fee models and bands, see how much do PPC agencies charge.

The eight questions to take into your next agency meeting

If you remember nothing else from this article, ask these.

1. Who will actually manage our account?
2. How many other accounts will they manage?
3. How will you measure whether PPC is producing valuable business, not just conversions?
4. What do you do when performance deteriorates?
5. What does ongoing account management actually involve?
6. What information will you need from us?
7. Who owns our accounts, tracking and historical data?
8. What happens if we decide to leave?

You do not need perfect answers. You need clear ones.

Conclusion

Choosing a PPC agency is not really about choosing the company that gives the best sales presentation. You are choosing the people who will make decisions with your advertising budget every week.

Find out who those people are. Understand how much attention your account will receive. Ask how they measure commercial performance. Find out what happens when things go wrong. Protect ownership of your data.

And understand the exit before you sign the entrance.

A good agency should be comfortable answering all of those questions. If they become vague when you ask them, that tells you something too.

Choosing a PPC agency?

If you are comparing agencies and want to understand how we would approach your account, we can review your campaigns and talk you through what we think needs attention before you make any decision. No hard sell and no obligation to move.

Book a free PPC consultation See our PPC management services

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