What Are UK PPC Consultant Rates?

Many businesses find it challenging to know what UK PPC consultant rates they will pay. It’s not always easy to know what you’ll pay as you look to hire a UK PPC consultant. And it’s not that consultants deliberately hide their rates on their websites. The truth is those rates depend on a number of factors.

So, I’ve written this guide so you can get an idea of what you’re likely to pay for the different services they offer.

The PPC consultant rates I discuss here don’t include your Google Advertising costs. Those are separate and you’ll pay them directly to Google when you get clicks to your website and an invoice from Google each month.

So, I’ve put together this guide to help you know what UK PPC consultant rates to expect.

 

What are the average UK PPC consultant hourly rates?

UK monthly PPC consultant rates depend on a number of factors and so will vary. So, it’s important to know what you require and what the consultant does to help you reach your goals.

This also depends on the type of PPC consultant that you require. Some consultants are freelancers and some are agencies with multiple consultants on their teams.

With freelancers, the average hourly rate is £56 per hour. And you’ll see this on freelance websites, with some charging much less and some much higher. But, it’s important to hire the best PPC consultant that meets your needs and not a cheaper one that could affect performance. Some of the best freelancers charge about £120 per hour.

With agencies, the average PPC consultant hourly rate is £86 per hour. And there are many that charge a lot more and a few that charge about £180 per hour. Agencies are usually more expensive because of their operating costs like staff and office space costs.

 

What is the monthly management retainer fee?

Some PPC consultants charge a monthly retainer fee based on your goals and the size of your campaigns. They also base their fees on the amount of work that they will do in your account and the value you’ll get from that. So, the actual rate will vary from one consultant to another.

However, monthly retainers start from £300 per month for small accounts to over £1,000 per month for larger and more complex accounts.

But, it’s important to know there are retainers that are much higher at £2,000+ for large accounts that require a lot of management work. And the actual amount you charge will depend on a number of factors which will be included in the proposal and quote that you receive.

The work that will be done will depend on your campaign types like Search, Shopping and others and will include:

– optimising the campaigns to make sure they are structured correctly

– updating the ad groups to ensure they are tightly-themed and targeted

– changing bid strategies in line with campaign changes and performance

– blocking irrelevant search queries by adding them as negative keywords

– adding new keywords to target more and better searches for your products or services

– updating responsive search ads including the headlines and descriptions

– and much more including updating the recommendations

So, this is what you can expect to receive as part of the monthly management. But there will be a lot more, depending on the campaign types you’re running.

 

What are the research and planning fees?

Before any campaign set up work is done, the research and plan should take place. This should include keyword and competitor research and then a strategy and plan should be created that explains how your customers will be targeted.

The PPC consultant rates will depend on the amount of work to be done. The cost of this will be about £500 to £1,000 and will be a one-off charge. And this will usually be all inclusive and you’ll receive a proposal or document with the findings and strategy plan.

Google Ads research and planning services include:

– keyword research with Google tools and third-party tools

– competitor research to find out what strategies and keywords they use and how much they spend

– creating a digital marketing strategy to target the audiences through Google Ads

– researching your products or services to find the best promotional strategies

– creating a proposal and document to share the strategy and more

 

How much is it to set up new Google Ads campaigns?

For campaign set up, UK PPC consultant rates will depend on the type of campaigns required. And the  campaign types available in Google Ads are Search, Shopping, Display, Video, Performance Max and a few others.

Search and Shopping are the main ones and I’ll now discuss what costs you can expect for setup:

Search campaigns
With Search, the rates to set up a campaign start from about £300. And this is a one-off fee. And it can go up to about £800 for a larger campaign that requires more work. And the campaign should have between five to 15 ad groups.

The set up of the Search campaign includes:

– creating the campaign and updating the goal and other settings

– carrying out keyword research to find targeted keywords to bid on

– setting the right bid strategy to appear in the best positions

– allocating a suitable budget to help drive sufficient traffic to achieve the goal

– setting up conversion tracking to track your sales, leads or enquiries

– choosing the best days and hours to run the ads, with the Ad schedule feature

– and more.

Shopping campaigns
With Shopping campaign set up costs, there is usually a lot more work involved. And the time it takes to set up the product ads take significantly longer than Search and other campaign types.

First, the Google Merchant Centre will have to be set up and this is where the product feed will be created and uploaded. The cost to set this up varies widely and will depend on how many products you have and what type of products they are. You can expect this work to cost at least £800 one-off, and a lot more if you have thousands of products.

Then the Google Ads account and Shopping campaign will need to be set up, and this will cost at least £400 per campaign. And it will be more for multiple campaigns. And then there will be monthly management costs to consider too.

However, if you require multiple campaigns to be set up, then you’re likely to get a discount depending on how many they are.

The Shopping campaign Setup includes:

– set up of a Google Merchant Centre (GMC) account

– creation of a product feed to submit to your GMC account.

– creation of a Google Ads account and link it to the GMC account

– setting up of the Shopping campaign in Google Ads to start advertising

This is a basic outline of the set up and some PPC consultants will approach this differently. But these are the costs that you can expect to pay.

 

What are the PPC consultant rates for auditing and training?

Google Ads auditing and training are also important services provided by Google Ads specialists. And the costs of this will also vary and depend on a number of key factors.

With a Google Ads audit, the costs start from £450. And it can go up to £1,000 or more for a large account with many campaigns that need an audit and review. This is a one-off fee of course and there are no extra charges except if you need help implementing the recommendations in the audit.

A Google Ads audit service includes:

– checking search terms and keywords to ensure you’re targeting the correct ones

– reviewing your bid strategy to see if there are better opportunities with a new one

– looking at your conversion metrics to see how to improve them

– checking text ads to see if the headlines and descriptions can be improved

– seeing how new campaigns can help your business increase sales or leads

– reviewing recommendations to find opportunities to improve your campaigns

– and much more

The UK PPC consultant rates for Google Ads training start from about £475 for all day training and can go up to about £800 depending on what you need to learn and your level of experience.

The training includes:

– how to set up new campaigns including Search, Shopping, Display and others

– how to manage your campaigns to get the best results

– how to write effective ads that will attract the right visitors

– which keywords to choose as you carry out the research

– steps to find out how to do competitor research to find which keywords they use

– and much more

 

What skills and experience does the PPC consultant have?

PPC consultant rates are usually determined by the experience and skills of the consultants. And the most experienced PPC consultants usually charge the most. And this can be significantly higher than less experienced consultants.

So, it’s important to check the experience of the PPC consultants you may want to work with. And checking reviews, case studies and testimonials can help you see how experienced they are.

As mentioned above, the leading experts charge about £120 per hour. And the average PPC consultant rate in the UK is £56 per hour for freelancers and about £86 per hour for agencies.

 

What is your monthly advertising budget?

Some PPC consultants charge fees based on your advertising budget. This is usually between 10-20% of your monthly advertising budget. And can be higher or lower depending on the amount of work to be done.

So, if you have a Google Ads monthly advertising budget of £2,000 for example, you’ll likely pay between £200 to £400 per month for management. However, what is most likely is that many PPC consultants have a minimum management fee and this is usually £500 per month, but could be more or less.

 

Conclusion

So, these are the PPC consultant rates that you can expect from UK consultants. However, because every business is different with different goals, what you pay may vary from what I’ve described above. But this guide will help you as you look to hire a PPC consultant for your business.

My name is Mike Ncube and I’m a Google Ads specialist and I’ve worked with many businesses for over 15 years. Contact me to discuss your requirements and to receive a proposal and quote.