A consultant is one experienced person working directly on your account. An agency is a team with process, cover and usually a more junior day to day operator. Neither is better in general. The consultant wins where the account needs judgement and continuity; the agency wins where it needs volume, several specialisms, or cover when someone is away.
What the weekly work actually is
Reading the search terms report and excluding what does not belong, adjusting bids and budgets against results, pausing what fails, testing new creative and landing pages, and checking that tracking still reports correctly. On an automated account the judgement moves up a level, to what the automation is told to optimise toward and what data it is fed.
Bid management is not what it was
Platform automation now handles most bidding, so a supplier whose value proposition is manual bid adjustment is selling something the platform does better. The remaining human work is choosing the right objective, feeding accurate conversion data, structuring campaigns so the automation has room, and keeping waste out. That is judgement, which is what a consultant is for.
Continuity is the consultant's advantage
The same person keeps the history of what was tried and why, which is the most commonly lost asset when an agency rotates staff. The corresponding risk is concentration: one person can be ill, busy or leave. Mitigate it by insisting on documentation in your own account and by owning everything.
How to structure it
A fixed monthly fee for a stated number of hours, a written scope of what is reviewed and how often, your ownership of the advertising account, and a documented change log. Percentage of spend is a poor fit for an individual, because it rewards budget growth rather than the efficiency you hired them for.
Questions people ask about pay per click consultant
How much should a consultant cost?
Rates vary too widely to state responsibly. Compare on hours and what is reviewed each week rather than on the monthly figure, since that is where the real difference sits.
Can a consultant handle several platforms?
Many can handle search and shopping well, and paid social is often a different skill. Ask what they actually run weekly rather than what they list, and be willing to use two specialists.
What if the consultant is unavailable?
Agree what happens: who has access, what is documented, and whether they have a colleague who can cover. This is the main risk of the model and it is manageable if named in advance.
Is a consultant enough for a large budget?
Up to a point, after which the volume of work exceeds one person. The tell is when weekly review becomes superficial because there are too many campaigns to read properly.