Short answer
- Hire someone who asks about your margins and what a customer is worth before talking about clicks.
- The ad account must be yours, with the expert added as a user. Never let your history live in someone else's account.
- Common pricing: flat monthly fee, percentage of ad spend, or hourly for audits and setup.
- Judge them by cost per lead or sale, reported clearly, not by clicks or impressions.
Are you ready to hire?
A PPC expert can only work with what you give them. Before hiring, check you have:
- A page worth sending traffic to. Fast, mobile-friendly, with a clear call or form. See PPC landing pages.
- A way to track results. Calls, forms or purchases recorded as conversions.
- A test budget you can afford to learn with for at least a couple of months.
- Capacity. If you can't answer the phone or take more jobs, ads will waste money.
Not sure if paid search is the right channel at all? Read SEO vs SEM vs PPC first.
Freelancer, consultant or agency
| Freelance PPC specialist | Google Ads consultant | PPC agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What they do | Builds and runs your campaigns | Audits, plans, trains; may or may not run them | Full management with a team |
| Best for | Small to medium accounts | Fixing a struggling account, training staff, second opinions | Larger budgets, many campaigns or locations |
| Contact | Direct | Direct | Usually an account manager |
| Main risk | Single point of failure | Advice without follow-through | Less attention for small accounts |
If you sell online, look for ecommerce PPC experience specifically: Shopping campaigns and product feeds are a different skill from lead generation for a local service.
How PPC experts charge
Typical models you'll see (ranges vary widely by experience and country, so treat them as rough guides, not data):
- Flat monthly fee. Predictable. Small-business management fees commonly start from a few hundred dollars a month.
- Percentage of ad spend. Often around 10–20%, usually with a minimum fee. Simple, but it rewards raising your spend, so ask for a cap.
- Setup fee. A one-time charge for building the account, tracking and first campaigns.
- Hourly. Common for audits, consulting and training.
- Performance-based. Per lead or share of sales. Read carefully what counts as a "lead".
Questions to ask
- "What would you need to know about my business before setting up campaigns?" Listen for margins, customer value, service areas, busy seasons and capacity.
- "How will you track a lead or sale?" They should mention conversion tracking for calls, forms or purchases, and ideally importing offline results.
- "Would you start with Search or Performance Max for a business like mine, and why?" There's no single right answer, but the reasoning matters. Background in Performance Max vs Search.
- "How do you handle wasted searches?" Expect talk about search term reports and negative keywords.
- "What will your monthly report show?" Cost per lead or sale, what changed, what's next.
- "If we stop working together, what do I keep?" The right answer: everything, because the account is yours.
- "Can I talk to a current client?" Not always possible, but worth asking.
Many good specialists hold Google Ads certifications or work at agencies in the Google Partners program. Those show training and activity, not results, so use them as a minimum, not a decision.
Red flags
- Guaranteed results, positions or "page one in 24 hours"
- They want to run ads from their account, or won't give you admin access
- Reports full of impressions and clicks, nothing about leads or sales
- No questions about your business before quoting
- Long contracts with heavy cancellation fees before any results
- Pushing a much higher budget before proving the current one works
What the first 60 days should look like
- Week 1: account access, audit of any existing campaigns, conversion tracking checked or set up.
- Weeks 2–3: campaigns built or restructured, with clear keyword themes, locations, schedule and ad copy that matches your landing pages.
- Weeks 3–6: learning period. Expect changes: negative keywords added, budgets shifted, weak ads paused.
- Weeks 6–8: first meaningful report with cost per lead or sale and a plan for the next month.
Want to check an existing account first? Run through the free Google Ads checklist to spot the basics before you hire anyone.
Honest note from me
I do manage Google Ads ($250/month plus your ad budget, account in your name), so hold me to the same questions in this guide. If your ads send people to a weak page, a $149 landing page or a full $397 website fixes that first, and Facebook and Instagram ads can be a second channel. Whoever you choose, a page that converts makes every click cheaper.