The terms, before the pitch
A PPC management company you can leave, with the account intact
Pay Per Click Management is a UK PPC management company that runs Google Ads and Microsoft Ads accounts for a flat monthly fee from £249, on terms written for the business signing them: a 3-month minimum then monthly, a month's notice, the account in your name with our access removable by you, and a written handover if you go. The service is described elsewhere on this site; this page is about the arrangement, because the arrangement is what you are stuck with if the service disappoints.
In one line each
- Fee: flat, by spend band, never a percentage.
- Term: 3 months, then monthly.
- Notice: one month, either side.
- Account: yours, on your login, your card.
- Access: our manager link, removed by you in one click.
- Data and reports: yours, kept when you leave.
- Handover: written, in the last month, at no charge.
The terms in full
What each line of the agreement means in practice
- Minimum term
- 3 months. Month one is the rebuild and the first fortnight of daily reads; month two is when Smart Bidding has clean data; month three is the first month the numbers can be judged. Shorter would mean judging on noise. Longer would be for our benefit, not yours.
- After the minimum
- Monthly, with a month's notice from either side. Nothing renews into a new fixed term. The fee for a month is the fee on the price list for your spend band that month.
- Account ownership
- The Google Ads account is created on, or stays on, your own Google login, with your card on the billing. We never create an account for you inside our manager account, because that is how a company keeps your history when you leave.
- Our access
- A manager-account link that you approve. It gives us the same screen you see. You can see every change it makes in the change history, and you remove it yourself from Access and security in your account when the arrangement ends.
- Ad spend
- Paid by you to Google or Microsoft directly. It never passes through us, it is never marked up, and the fee does not change when the spend does, except when the spend crosses into another band, which we tell you about in the report before it happens.
- Data
- Search Terms, conversion data, audience lists, Merchant Center feeds and the analytics property are yours. We hold your contact details and the reports under UK GDPR (ICO registration ZC207002) and delete our working copies when you leave, unless you ask us to keep them for a return.
- The handover
- A written document in the last month: the account structure and why it is shaped that way, every shared negative list, each conversion action and how it was proven, the bid strategy and target on each campaign, the ad copy and its claims, the landing page notes, and the last three reports. Written for whoever takes over, in-house or elsewhere.
- What we will not do in the last month
- Loosen the account to make the next company look bad, or tighten it to make a point. The routine runs as it did, and the last report reads like the others.
The alternatives
In-house, a freelancer, a percentage agency, or this company
None of the four is wrong for every business. The table is what each arrangement usually looks like on the points that matter when things go badly, which is when the arrangement is tested.
| In-house | Freelancer | Percentage-of-spend agency | PPC Management | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | A salary, or a share of someone's week | Usually a day rate or a small retainer | Typically 10 to 20 per cent of spend, often with a minimum | £249, £399 or £599 a month by spend band |
| Who reads the account weekly | Whoever has time that week | One person, if the retainer covers it | A junior on a rota, usually | Daniel Stoychev, every week, named in the contract |
| Account ownership | Yours | Usually yours | Often inside the agency's manager account | Yours, our link removable by you |
| Incentive when spend rises | None | None | The fee rises | None; the fee moves only across a band |
| What you keep on leaving | Everything | Everything, if it was in your account | Sometimes nothing but the login | Everything, plus a written handover |
| Where it falls down | Nobody keeps up with the platform | Holidays, illness, one person's capacity | The fee model | One person's capacity, which is why the spend bands stop at £8,000 |
The last row is the honest limit of a one-person company, and it is the same limit that keeps the fee flat. Spend above £8,000 a month is quoted separately, and sometimes the honest quote is a larger company.
Starting
What the first invoice is for
If the account exists and has been spending, the £150 written audit usually comes first, so that the plan is based on what the account has actually done. If you then go on to a monthly plan the £150 comes off the £199 setup fee, which pays for the rebuild: structure agreed in writing, tracking proven, negatives seeded, ads written, settings checked against the business.
If there is no account yet, it is the setup and then month one. Either way the first monthly fee is invoiced at the start of the month it covers, and ad spend is on your card from day one.
Judging it
The line the arrangement is judged on
Cost per lead, and where you tell us what the leads were worth, return on ad spend plus fee. Both are on every monthly report, and both can be checked in your own account because the account is yours. At month three we write down whether it is working; if it is not, we say what we would change or whether to stop, before you have to ask.
The routine that produces those numbers is on the Google Ads management page, and what you will be asked to do in the first ninety days is on how we work.
Related
Where this connects
Questions about the arrangement
Who owns the Google Ads account with a PPC management company?
It should be you, and with us it is. The account sits on your Google login with your billing details; we link a manager account to it, and you remove that link yourself when you want to. Some companies build accounts inside their own manager account and hold the history, the conversion data and the Quality Score when you leave. Ask before you sign, and ask to see the account's owner in the settings, not a promise in the contract.
What happens if I want to leave?
A month's notice after the 3-month minimum. In that month you get a written handover: the structure, the negative lists, the conversion actions and how each was proven, the bid strategy per campaign and why, and the last report. The account keeps running until the day you say, and our access is removed on that day.
Is there a fee for the handover?
No. It is part of the last month, and it is the same document whether you are moving to another company, taking the account in-house or pausing the ads.
Do you sign a contract?
Yes, a short one: the tier and the fee from the price list (£249, £399 or £599 a month by spend band), the £199 setup where it applies, the 3-month minimum, a month's notice, who owns what, and the data terms under UK GDPR. No auto-renewal into a longer term, no fee for spend increases, no exit fee.
Can a PPC management company run our Microsoft Ads as well?
Yes. Microsoft Ads imports the cleaned Google account and is kept in step with it; it is on the Growth tier when the numbers justify it and included on Scale. Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok are different auctions and we do not run them.
Ask for the terms before the pitch. They fit on one page.
Your spend band sets the fee: £249, £399 or £599 a month. The reply has the fee, the contract and whether your sector and area are free.