Most agencies will not tell you what PPC management costs until you have sat through a discovery call. That is thirty minutes you spend before learning whether the conversation was ever worth having, and it makes comparing three quotes nearly impossible. When we researched Manchester PPC agencies, only a handful published a number at all. Here is what the market actually charges.
The short answer
For a Manchester business spending £2,000 to £20,000 a month on ads, management costs £950 to £3,000 a month, on top of the ad spend itself.
That range comes from two places. The first is what agencies publish. Of the 26 firms we checked while building our shortlist of the best PPC agencies in Manchester, only three put a starting figure on their website:
| Firm | Published starting fee |
|---|---|
| Dark Horse | £1,250 a month |
| Victor Serban | £1,500 a month |
| Gorilla Marketing | £1,500 a month |
The second is the wider UK market. Regional data puts Manchester management fees around £950 a month on average against roughly £1,200 in London, which matches what we saw: the city is cheaper than the capital and not by as much as people expect.
Below about £750 a month, nobody is in your account weekly. At that price you are buying an automated rules script and a monthly PDF.
The three pricing models
How an agency charges you matters more than the headline number, because each model fails in a different way.
Flat monthly retainer
A fixed fee regardless of spend. Common in the £800 to £5,000 range for small and mid-market accounts.
This is the cleanest model. You know the cost, the agency knows the revenue, and neither of you has an incentive to argue about the media budget. The weakness is that it can become poor value if your spend drops, or if the account stabilises and genuinely needs less work than it did during the rebuild.
Percentage of ad spend
Typically 10% to 20% for SME budgets, falling to 5% to 10% at enterprise scale. Spend £10,000 and you pay £1,000 to £2,000.
The incentive problem is obvious once you say it out loud: the agency earns more when you spend more, and it is the same agency advising you on how much to spend. That is not an accusation of bad faith, it is a structural conflict, and it bites hardest at exactly the moment you need someone to tell you to stop.
If you accept this model, cap it. A percentage with no ceiling on a scaling account is an open cheque.
Hybrid
A lower base fee plus a percentage above a threshold, or a base plus a performance bonus tied to return on ad spend. This has become the most common structure, and it is a reasonable compromise: the base covers the work that happens whether or not spend moves, and the variable part follows growth.
Watch the definition of the performance trigger. A bonus paid on blended return on ad spend, with brand traffic left in, pays out on traffic you were winning for free.
What actually drives the price
Two accounts spending the same amount can be quoted twice as far apart, and the difference is almost always one of these.
Number of platforms. Google alone is one job, and a Google Ads specialist will price it as one. Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn and a shopping feed is four or five, and each carries its own creative, audience and reporting work.
Feed complexity. For retail, the product feed does more to decide performance than the bidding does. A 40,000-product catalogue with poor titles and missing GTINs is weeks of work before a single campaign improves.
Creative volume. Paid social in particular now lives on how many variants get tested each month. Some agencies include creative, some charge for it, and the ones that include it are quietly more expensive per hour of media work.
Landing pages and tracking. If conversion tracking is broken or the landing page converts at half the sector norm, that gets fixed first. Some agencies do that work, others hand you a document. Worth knowing which before you sign, because if the answer is a document you will also need help with web design before the ads can pay for themselves.
Seniority. The largest single variable. A senior specialist working directly on your account costs more per hour and less per result than a director selling it and a graduate running it, which is the whole argument for hiring a freelancer over an agency at smaller budgets.
Management fee versus ad spend
These are separate payments and should stay separate. You pay Google or Microsoft directly, on your own card, and you pay the agency for the work.
A useful sanity check is the ratio between them. Ad spend is usually three to ten times the management fee. A £1,500 fee against £5,000 of spend is a reasonable, common shape. A £1,500 fee against £1,200 of spend is not: you are paying more to manage the money than you are spending, and the account cannot generate enough data for the management to be worth anything.
Be careful with anyone who wants to bill a single blended figure covering both. It hides what the management costs, it puts the billing relationship with the platform in their name rather than yours, and it makes leaving harder than it should be.
What is not in the fee
The quote covers management. These usually do not, and they are the most common source of a budget overrun:
- Landing page design and build, frequently quoted separately
- Creative production for paid social, especially video
- Feed management software such as a third-party feed tool
- Call tracking and any conversion tracking software
- Ad spend on testing, which is real money spent on campaigns that will be turned off
Ask for the exclusions in writing. An agency that lists them without being pushed is telling you something useful about how the rest of the relationship will go.
Give every agency the same brief: monthly ad spend, platforms, number of products or services, target locations, and whether you need creative. Quotes built on different assumptions cannot be compared, and the cheapest one is usually the one that assumed the least work.
When you are too small to buy this
Below roughly £1,000 a month in media, a management retainer is the wrong purchase, and any honest agency will tell you so.
Two reasons. The fee swamps the spend, so most of your budget goes to management rather than to reaching anyone. And there is not enough conversion data for a human or an algorithm to make decisions from. Google's own guidance on Smart Bidding notes that automated strategies need meaningful conversion volume before they perform, which small accounts simply do not generate.
Buy a one-off account build or an audit instead. Expect £500 to £1,500, run it yourself for a few months, and come back when the volume justifies someone in the account weekly. Knowing what an audit should actually cover makes that a much better purchase. Several firms on our Google Ads shortlist sell an audit as a defined product for exactly this situation.
The same applies if your conversion tracking is broken or you do not know your margins. Both sit upstream of the ads, and no amount of clever bidding fixes either.
We research the PPC agencies working in Manchester and rank the ones worth paying. Independently researched, re-checked quarterly, free to read.
See the ranked list
Key takeaways
- Manchester PPC management costs £950 to £3,000 a month for most SMEs, before ad spend.
- Only three of the 26 agencies we checked publish a starting price. Dark Horse begins at £1,250 a month, Victor Serban and Gorilla Marketing at £1,500.
- Percentage-of-spend pricing carries a structural conflict. If you accept it, cap it.
- Management fees and ad spend must be billed separately, with the platform account in your name.
- Ad spend is normally three to ten times the management fee. If it is not, the shape is wrong.
- Below £1,000 a month of media, buy an audit rather than a retainer.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I spend on ads versus management?
Ad spend is normally three to ten times the management fee. If you are paying £1,500 a month to manage £2,000 of spend, the ratio is wrong and you are funding an agency rather than an audience. Either increase the media budget or move to a one-off engagement until you can.
Is a percentage of ad spend a fair way to charge?
It is legitimate and widely used, and it works reasonably at larger budgets where the percentage falls to 5% or 10%. The problem is the incentive: the agency advising you on budget is paid more when the budget rises. Ask for a cap, or a hybrid with a fixed base.
Do I pay Google directly or through the agency?
Directly, on your own card, with the agency added as a user on your account. Never let ads run inside an agency's own account on their billing. Account history feeds the bidding algorithms, so leaving means starting from zero learning as well as zero settings.
What is a reasonable setup or onboarding fee?
£500 to £2,000 for a proper account build, and it is usually worth paying separately rather than having it absorbed into month one. A rebuilt account takes 30 to 60 days of conversion data before its bidding is worth anything, so paying for the build explicitly stops that period being mistaken for poor management.
Why is Manchester cheaper than London?
Lower overheads and lower salaries, mostly. Regional figures put Manchester management fees around £950 a month against roughly £1,200 in London. The gap is real but smaller than people expect, and it narrows to nothing at the specialist end where you are buying one person's time rather than an office.
Should I pay for a PPC audit before hiring anyone?
If your account already spends meaningfully and you are unsure whether it is run well, yes. An audit costs £500 to £1,500, takes a week or two, and is the only way to compare agencies on something other than a sales meeting. You keep the document whoever you hire.
What contract length is normal?
Three months is a fair minimum, because that is roughly how long it takes to rebuild an account and gather enough conversion data to judge it. Twelve months with no break clause is not normal and should be pushed back on. Two firms we looked at state explicitly that they do not use long-term lock-ins.
Does the fee include paid social as well as search?
Usually not, and this is the most common misunderstanding in a quote. Some agencies price per platform, some quote a single fee for a defined channel mix. Establish exactly which platforms are covered and what adding one costs, because adding Meta to a search-only retainer is often a second fee rather than a small uplift.
Who owns the ad account if I leave?
You should, and it should be in writing before the first invoice. That covers Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Merchant Center, Analytics, Tag Manager and any Meta assets. An agency running your ads inside its own manager account is renting you your own history.
Is a cheap agency ever worth it?
Rarely, and the reason is arithmetic rather than snobbery. At £400 a month an agency can afford roughly two hours of a junior's time on your account, which is enough to check it is still running and not enough to improve it. If your budget genuinely is that size, a one-off build plus self-management beats a retainer nobody can afford to deliver.
