Is it worth paying an agency for Google Ads?

It depends on three things: how much you spend, how complicated your market is, and how much your own time is worth. The question isn't whether an agency costs money. It's whether the account makes more with one than without.

Google Ads is easy to start and hard to run well. Anyone can launch a campaign in an afternoon. Keeping it from paying for the wrong clicks, week after week, is the part that takes skill and time.

Plenty of businesses run their own ads well. DIY makes sense when most of these are true.

• Your budget is small, so an agency fee would be a large share of it.
• You sell one simple service in one area, with a short list of obvious searches.
• You have a few hours a week to check the account, and you enjoy it.
• You've set up conversion tracking, so Google knows which clicks become enquiries.
• You're willing to learn. Google's own Skillshop training is free.

An agency earns its fee when it fixes problems that quietly cost you more than the fee does.

• You're paying for clicks from searches that have nothing to do with what you sell.
• Tracking is missing or broken, so Google is optimising for clicks, not customers.
• Your market is competitive, and every click is expensive.
• You run several campaigns, products or locations, or Shopping and Performance Max.
• Your landing pages don't match the ads, so the clicks don't turn into enquiries.
• You haven't looked at the account in weeks, because running the business comes first.

Most of the value is in the unglamorous work. Structure campaigns around what you sell. Track forms, calls and sales, and send them back to Google. Read the search terms report, which shows the real searches behind your clicks, and block the ones that waste money. Write ads for each group of searches, and make sure each one lands on a page that matches.

Then keep doing it. Budget moves to what's working, tests run on the ads and pages, and you get reports that lead with enquiries and sales, not clicks and impressions.

Usually a fixed monthly fee, a percentage of your ad spend, or a mix of the two, sometimes with a set-up fee. A percentage of spend can reward the agency for spending more rather than spending better, so ask how they're paid.

However they charge, your ad spend should go directly to Google on your own card, separately from the agency's fee. We price Google Ads management at a fixed price agreed after a short call.

Work through these steps in your own account. They'll tell you whether you need help, and how much.

1. 1Check conversion tracking: does Google count enquiries, calls and sales, or only clicks?
2. 2Open the search terms report for the last month and mark every search you wouldn't want to pay for.
3. 3Add up what those searches cost. That's money an agency could save straight away.
4. 4Look at the landing page for each campaign. Does it match what the person searched for?
5. 5Count the hours you spend on the account each week, and what that time is worth.
6. 6Compare the wasted spend plus your time with an agency's fee. If the first is bigger, it's worth talking to one.

Five questions sort the good agencies from the rest.

• Who runs my account day to day, and will I talk to them directly?
• Do I own the account and keep it if we part ways?
• How do you track enquiries and sales, not just clicks?
• How often will you be in the account, and how often will I hear from you?
• How long is the contract, and what happens if it's not working?

Backpedal, a UK stolen bike recovery and insurance company, had ads that got plenty of clicks, but many came from people searching for something else.

We rebuilt the account: cut the searches that brought clicks but no customers, moved budget to high-intent searches, rewrote the ads and fixed tracking so every quote and sale was counted. The conversion rate rose 7x in the first full month after the rebuild, and sales tripled the month after.