Choosing a PPC agency in Manchester
What the badge means, what to check in the account, what to ask
Choosing a Manchester PPC agency: what the Premier Partner badge does and does not prove, four things to check inside an account, and what to ask.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 5 September 2026 · 5 min read
The way to choose a PPC agency in Manchester is to ignore the badges, the awards and the office address, and ask for four things you can verify: who will own the Google Ads account, how the fee is calculated, who will actually read the Search Terms report each week, and what happens to the account when you leave. An agency that answers all four in writing is worth a conversation. One that answers with a case study is changing the subject.
What the Premier Partner badge actually measures
Most of the larger Manchester agencies carry a Google Partner or Premier Partner badge, and it is worth knowing what it takes to get one, because it is less than the badge implies. Google's own requirements, published on its Partners help pages, are a minimum optimisation score of 70 per cent across the agency's manager account, a 90-day ad spend of 10,000 US dollars across all managed accounts, and at least half of the agency's account strategists holding a Google Ads certification. Premier Partner status goes to the top 3 per cent of participating companies in a country each year, judged on client growth, retention, product diversification beyond Search, and total annual spend.
Read those criteria again with a small account in mind. The spend threshold is met by any agency with a few mid-sized clients. The optimisation score is Google's own measure of how many of its recommendations the agency has applied, and several of those recommendations, broad match, higher budgets, display expansion, spend more without producing more customers. Diversification beyond Search rewards agencies that sell Performance Max and Display to clients who may only have needed Search. None of the criteria measure cost per lead, which is the number your account lives or dies on.
That is not an argument against Partner agencies. It is an argument that the badge tells you the agency is large and certified, not that it will run a £1,000-a-month account well. Small accounts at large agencies are usually handled by the most junior person, because the fee does not justify anyone else's time.
Four things to check inside the account, not on the website
If an agency already runs your ads, or if you are asking a shortlisted one to show you an account with the client's permission, four screens tell you more than any pitch deck.
| Where to look | What good looks like | What it means if it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Change history, last 30 days | Entries every week: negatives added, bids moved, ads edited, each by a named user | A month with two entries is a month of billing without management |
| Search Terms report, last 90 days, sorted by cost | The top rows are searches a customer would make. Jobs, courses, 'how to' and towns outside the area are already excluded | Nobody has been reading it, which is where a fifth or more of the spend usually goes |
| Account access | The account is on the client's own Google login; the agency is a linked manager the client can remove | The account lives inside the agency's manager account and leaving means starting from nothing |
| Conversion actions | A short list: calls over a set length, forms, bookings or purchases, each tested once | Page views and button clicks counted as conversions, so the reported cost per lead is fiction |
Flat fee or percentage: the question that reveals the incentive
Ask how the fee is calculated before you ask how much it is. An agency paid a percentage of ad spend earns more when you spend more, whatever comes back, so its recommendation to raise the budget is never disinterested. A flat fee set by a spend band removes that, and it also makes the agency indifferent to whether the waste it cuts lowers your spend. Neither model guarantees good work, but only one of them is structurally on your side when the question is whether to spend less.
The follow-up is whether ad spend passes through the agency. It should not. Your card on Google's billing page means you can see every penny in Google's own interface and the agency cannot mark it up.
Local office, or a person who answers
Manchester has agencies with real offices in the city centre, and it has many more that put a city page on a website run from somewhere else. Neither tells you how the account will be run, because Google Ads is managed in a browser and the office is for meetings. The question worth asking is who you will speak to when the cost per lead doubles in a week, and whether that person is the one who set the bids. An account manager who relays your question to a team you never meet adds a day to every answer.
We say this as an agency without a Manchester office, run from Wrexham about an hour away, so read it with that in mind. What we would want in your position is the person who did the work on the phone, the same day, and a visit by appointment when a screen is not enough.
The questions to ask, in writing
- Whose Google account will the Ads account sit on, and can I remove your access myself?
- Is the fee a flat amount, a percentage of spend, or a mix, and does ad spend go to Google on my card?
- Who reads the Search Terms report, how often, and can I see the change history to check?
- Which conversion actions will you count, and will you show me each one firing once before the first campaign goes live?
- What will you refuse to do? A good answer names auto-apply recommendations, Performance Max as the only campaign, and reporting clicks as results.
- What is the minimum term and the notice period, and what do I keep when I leave?
- Will you tell me, in the report, when Google Ads is not the right spend for my business?
The last question is the one most agencies fail. An account that cannot produce a lead at a price the margin supports should be told so within three months, with the numbers. An agency that never says it is either lucky or not looking.
Our answers to all seven are on this site, in writing, and if you want them for your account specifically, send us what you sell and what you spend.
Questions on this topic
Do I need an agency based in Manchester?
No. The account is managed in a browser and the auction does not care where the manager sits. What matters is whether the person who sets the bids answers the phone, and whether they know the boroughs well enough to set the radius and the negatives properly.
Is a Google Premier Partner better than a Google Partner?
It is larger and more diversified, by Google's own criteria: the top 3 per cent of participating agencies in the country, judged on growth, retention, spend and selling more than Search. Neither badge measures cost per lead.
Should I ask for case studies?
Ask, but read them with the spend shown. A case study that reports a return on ad spend without the spend, or a percentage rise without the base, tells you about the agency's copywriting. The change history in your own account tells you about its management.
What is a fair minimum contract?
Long enough for Smart Bidding to gather a month of clean conversion data and be judged on it, which is around three months. A twelve-month lock-in on a new account protects the agency, not the client.
Can I keep the campaigns if I move agency?
Only if the account is yours. If it sits inside the agency's manager account on their login, you leave with the data they choose to export. Ask before you sign, not after.