Google Ads Agency London: What to Look For Before You Hire One
Hiring a Google Ads agency in London is easy. Hiring one that will improve commercial performance without adding unnecessary complexity is harder.
The useful question is not whether an agency can launch campaigns. Most can. The question is whether it can show how it decides what to spend on, what to stop paying for and how it connects account activity to leads, sales or revenue.
If you are comparing agencies, start with evidence. Digital Womble publishes dated Google Ads results and case studies rather than relying on generic claims. The examples include conversion growth, lower cost per conversion, lower CPC, stronger CTR and revenue-linked results where tracking supports the claim.
Ask for evidence from specific time periods
Whole-account averages can hide what actually changed. A useful case study should tell you the before period, the after period, the metric that changed and the intervention that happened between them.
That does not mean every case needs a ROAS headline. If revenue tracking is incomplete, CPC, CPA, conversion volume, search-term quality and spend efficiency can still be valid evidence. What matters is that the agency does not pretend a metric proves more than it does.
See the Google Ads agency results page for examples of bounded, dated performance claims.
Find out who actually manages the account
Google's negative-keyword guidance reinforces the principle: paid-search optimisation is about excluding irrelevant intent as well as finding demand. Judge changes on query relevance, conversion quality and commercial outcome—not clicks in isolation.
Many agencies sell with senior people and deliver through junior account teams. Ask who will make day-to-day decisions, who reviews search terms, who owns negative-keyword decisions and who you speak to when performance changes.
Digital Womble's Google Ads management service is built around senior-led management, flat-fee pricing and client-owned accounts.
Ask how search terms are controlled
Google Ads performance is not just about finding more clicks. It is also about refusing to pay for demand that is unlikely to become revenue.
A serious account process should include regular search-term review and a deliberate negative-keyword framework. That means excluding irrelevant jobs, free searches, wrong locations, consumer demand against B2B offers, informational queries and other poor-fit traffic before it absorbs meaningful budget.
If you already have an account, the £395 Google Ads Account Review is designed to identify those issues without making changes first.
Understand the agency's pricing incentive
Percentage-of-spend pricing is common. It is not automatically wrong, but it means the agency earns more when the media budget grows.
Flat-fee management removes that particular incentive. The commercial conversation can then focus on whether additional spend is justified by demand and conversion performance rather than whether a larger budget increases the agency fee.
You can see Digital Womble's current Google Ads management pricing.
Check who owns the account and data
You should own the Google Ads account, conversion history and accumulated learning. If a relationship ends, the data should remain yours.
Ask this before signing, not after.
Decide whether you need a review or management
If an account is already running but you are not sure what is wrong, management may be premature. A read-only review can identify waste, structural problems, tracking risks and landing-page misalignment before you commit to ongoing work.
If the problem is clear and you want someone accountable for implementation, management is the next step.
For existing accounts, start with the Google Ads Account Review. For ongoing execution, see Google Ads Management.
The shortlist test
Before hiring a Google Ads agency in London, ask five questions:
- Can you show specific, dated client results?
- Who will actually manage my account?
- How often do you review search terms and negatives?
- Do I retain ownership of the account and data?
- How will you decide whether more spend is justified?
If the answers are vague, the relationship will probably be vague too.
If you want an evidence-led starting point before choosing management, book the £395 Google Ads Account Review.
Apply the idea without creating more noise
Start with the page's actual job and the reader's next decision. Check the evidence already available, identify the gaps preventing that decision, and improve those before adding another page or campaign. A useful change should make the journey clearer, not simply make the estate larger.
Measure the result against a baseline. For informational content that may mean qualified impressions, clicks and progression to a relevant commercial page; for commercial content it should extend to enquiries, sales or another meaningful conversion. This keeps optimisation tied to business value rather than publishing volume.
A practical review framework
Start with the business outcome rather than the platform metric. Define the conversion that matters, its approximate commercial value and the maximum sensible acquisition cost. Then work backwards through campaign, ad group, search term, ad and landing page. This stops a strong CTR or cheap CPC from disguising poor-quality demand.
Review search terms for intent, not just vocabulary. A query can contain the right keyword and still be informational, navigational or outside the service area. Separate terms that deserve a negative keyword from terms that expose a landing-page or offer problem. Where volume is low, avoid making confident decisions from a handful of clicks; use longer windows and conversion evidence.
Next, check message continuity. The searcher's wording, ad promise and landing-page proposition should describe the same job. If the ad promises a specific service but lands on a generic page, improving bids will not repair the conversion journey. Link paid-search learning back into on-page optimisation so organic and paid traffic are not solving the same intent problem separately.
Finally, document the change and review date. Record spend, qualified conversions, CPA and any downstream revenue signal before and after the intervention. That creates an evidence trail and makes the next optimisation decision easier.