Choosing the best SEM company for your account size

Agencies with a verified published price

How to compare SEM firms in four questions

1. Ask what the fee buys in hours and seniority. Reduce every proposal to hours by a named person at a stated level. A share of spend can hide a very small number of junior hours behind a large budget, and a flat fee that reads as expensive can be cheap per senior hour. Ask all candidates the same question so the answers line up in one column.
2. Ask to see change history from a comparable account. A managed account changes weekly: search terms reviewed, negatives added, budgets shifted, new ad variants tested. Ask for three months of redacted change history from an account of similar size. An account with few changes is unattended rather than stable, and no amount of reporting polish compensates for that.
3. Settle who owns the landing pages. Most poor paid search results trace back to the destination rather than the account. Either buy landing page work inside the engagement or name who in your business owns it and how quickly they can ship a change. Leaving it unassigned is the most common reason a competent account manager cannot improve results.
4. Fix the conversion definition and the accounts before launch. Agree what counts as a conversion, check that tracking records it correctly, and confirm the ads account, analytics and audiences sit in accounts registered to your business with the agency added as a user. Doing this before launch avoids the month six argument about numbers that neither side can reconstruct.

The fee models and their incentives

Three shapes dominate. A flat retainer is predictable and the easiest to compare across candidates, though it does not scale as an account grows and can leave a busy account underserved. A share of ad spend is standard at larger budgets and defensible where spend genuinely drives workload, but it rewards recommending more spend rather than better spend, and the fee rises in exactly the months when results are poor and budget is raised to compensate. Performance pricing appears to align everyone and usually does not, because it requires agreement on what a result is and shared trust in the tracking that counts it.

None of the three is disqualifying. What matters is that you can see the hours behind the fee, that the model does not quietly punish efficiency, and that a shrinking account is not abandoned because the fee shrank with it. Ask directly what happens to service levels if spend halves for a quarter.

What responsibility does not transfer with the invoice

The agency writes the ads, but you are the advertiser. The FTC advertising FAQs for small business are clear that claims in advertising must be truthful and substantiated, and that responsibility sits with the business making the claim. Superlatives, guarantees, comparative claims about competitors, pricing claims and anything touching health or finance deserve a review before they go live, and the review is yours to organise even when the copy is theirs.

The same applies to any endorsements or reviews an agency proposes to use in ads or on landing pages. The FTC's endorsement guides set out what is expected when testimonials and endorsements are used in advertising, including the disclosure of material connections. Ask any candidate how they handle that in practice, because an agency that has never thought about it is one that will hand you the exposure without mentioning it.

Matching the firm to your account size

Small accounts are best served by a small firm or an independent specialist where a senior person touches the account personally, because there are not enough hours in the fee to support a team and the leverage is entirely in judgement. Mid sized accounts benefit from a firm with real process: structured testing, creative production capacity, and someone who has seen your category before. Large accounts need bench depth and coverage, and should be more concerned with turnover of the named team than with the headline fee.

Mismatch runs both ways and both are expensive. A small advertiser inside a large agency becomes the account nobody has time for. A large advertiser at a boutique can outgrow its supplier quietly, and the first sign is usually that nothing has changed structurally in the account for two quarters. Ask where your budget would rank among their clients, and take the answer seriously.

Questions people actually ask

Does SEM include organic search?

It depends who is speaking. In common usage it now means paid search, but some firms use it to cover paid and organic together. Resolve it explicitly in the brief and in the contract scope, because assuming the broader meaning and buying the narrower one is a costly misunderstanding to discover in month three.

What is a fair management fee?

Whatever produces a sensible effective hourly rate for the seniority you need. Compare candidates on hours and level rather than on the share of spend or the headline number, and ask what the fee covers when spend is unusually low or unusually high in a given month.

How quickly should we see improvement?

For an existing account with correct tracking, a quarter is usually enough to see cost per enquiry trending the right way. A new account needs time to gather data before conclusions are fair. Long sales cycles need an agreed intermediate measure, such as qualified enquiries, so nobody is waiting on revenue to judge the work.

Should we run our own brand terms?

Many advertisers do because competitors and intermediaries bid on their name and the click is otherwise lost. Treat it as defensive spend in its own budget line and judge it on incremental enquiries, not on the flattering conversion rate that brand traffic always produces.

Browse agencies by specialty

• SEO agencies with verified facts
• PPC agencies with verified facts
• Social media agencies with verified facts
• Content marketing agencies with verified facts
• Email marketing agencies with verified facts
• Performance marketing agencies with verified facts