How to choose a Google Ads agency in Perth: agency, specialist or freelancer, ten questions with what a good answer sounds like, and a two-week trial.
Three proposals on the desk, all from Perth Google Ads agencies, and they read almost the same. Certified partner, no lock-in contracts, dedicated account manager, transparent reporting. The fees differ by a few hundred dollars a month and every case study graph goes up and to the right.
I know the feeling from the other side of the table. We buy services too, and the last time I shortlisted suppliers for something, every website said the same three things. What told me anything was how each of them answered one specific question I put to them. Choosing an agency works the same way, and the questions matter more than the pitch.
This piece is a fair process for shortlisting a Google Ads agency in Perth: agency versus specialist versus freelancer, what's particular about the Perth market, ten questions with what a good answer sounds like, the CRM question proposals tend to skip, how to run a two-week trial brief, and budgets stated as help.
Agency, specialist or freelancer: which suits a Perth business?
All three run good accounts in Perth. The fit depends on spend, how much else you need done, and whether you want one named person.
A freelancer or independent specialist, of which Perth has many, typically charges A$800 to A$2,000 a month and suits a business spending A$1,500 to A$6,000 on media that needs the ads run well and little else. You get one person and their full attention, and the risk that their holiday is your holiday.
An agency, usually A$1,500 to A$5,000 a month in Perth, suits a business spending A$5,000 upwards, or one that needs landing pages, tracking, a CRM connection or SEO alongside the ads. You get cover, a process and a wider set of skills. The thing to check is who does the daily work, because the person who pitched may not be the person in the account.
A consultancy like ours sits between the two. Small team, senior people in the accounts, and a bias towards strategy and measurement before tactics. My first question on any discovery call is what the commercial target is, because tactics without one cost more and deliver less. That suits a business with a target to hit. It suits less well a business that wants a set-and-forget package at A$500 a month, and we'd say so on the first call rather than sign up and under-serve it. Our post on in-house, freelancer or agency PPC management goes deeper on the trade-offs.
What's particular about the Perth market?
Three things, from running accounts here since October 2024.
The supplier side is thin at the top and wide at the bottom. A handful of large Perth agencies, a long tail of freelancers, and a fair number of accounts run from Sydney or Melbourne. None of that is a problem in itself. The platform is the same wherever the login happens, and a good east-coast manager beats an average local one.
Where location does show up is in the detail. Perth's metro area runs about 150 kilometres north to south, and a business in Joondalup rarely wants clicks from Mandurah. Someone who knows the suburbs will set radius targeting around each service area on day one. Someone who doesn't will set the location to "Western Australia" and pay for a lot of driving. The time zone matters a little too: a pacing problem at 8am Perth time is 11am in Sydney, and you'd like it caught before the morning's budget is gone.
The market is also quieter. On many Perth service terms there are three or four serious bidders where Sydney has ten, and services CPCs here sit around A$3.50 to A$6 against A$4.80 to A$7.50 on the east coast. That's good news for you: structure beats spend, and a well built A$4,000 account can outperform a loosely built A$10,000 one.
Which questions tell you most?
Ten, with what a good answer sounds like. Score each answer out of three.
- Who owns the account? A good answer: it's your Google Ads account, under your billing, and we work in it through a manager account you can remove in two clicks. A less helpful one: we'll set it up under our agency account and give you reporting access.
- Who does the daily work, and how many accounts do they look after? A good answer names a person and gives a number under about fifteen.
- How will you define a conversion? A good answer lists two or three primary actions that match real enquiries, and treats phone clicks and page views as secondary. It should mention testing the form.
- What will the monthly report lead with? Leads, cost per lead and, once the CRM is connected, qualified leads and pipeline. If clicks and impressions come first, ask why.
- What's the contract term and notice? Three months with 30 days' notice is fair for a new relationship. A 12-month term should come with something in return, like a lower fee or a waived build cost.
- What happens to the account if we leave? A good answer: everything stays with you, including conversion tracking and history, and handover takes a week.
- What would you change in our current account in the first month? A good answer is specific, because they've looked. Search terms, match types, location settings and conversion actions are the usual four.
- How will you decide what to spend? A good answer works back from the number of conversions the bidding needs, roughly 30 a month, and your cost per lead target, rather than from what we spent last year.
- Can we see the change history? Yes is the only good answer. Forty changes a month is an account being worked.
- What won't Google Ads do for us? A good answer has a limit in it. Ours is usually that paid search can carry a quarter but shouldn't carry the whole business, because a market that runs on one channel is one policy change from a bad month.
That last one is the steer I'd give about the channel itself. Over-reliance on Google Ads will eventually catch some companies out. The fix isn't to spend less, it's to build organic visibility alongside the ads so that in 12 months the account is one source of leads rather than the only one. We've written about why that matters more in Perth than most places in SEO in Perth as a commercial advantage.
Should your agency connect Google Ads to your CRM?
For any business where a lead isn't a sale, yes. Google Ads on its own knows that a form was submitted. It doesn't know that the form came from a student looking for work experience, or from a A$60,000 tender that closed three weeks later. Offline conversion import, which sends the CRM's outcome back to the click, is how the account learns the difference and starts bidding for the second kind of lead over the first.
In plain terms: the CRM tells Google which clicks turned into money, and Google buys more clicks like those.
An IT services client of ours noticed that companies in their target market were returning to specific service pages three or four times a week, then disappearing when no one followed up. The instinct was to label them "warm". What we set up instead was a task in HubSpot with the company's research attached, so a person made the call, and the outcome fed back into the ads as a qualified conversion. Lead count fell. Pipeline went up. An agency that can build that, or at least explain it, is worth more than one that can't.
Ask any shortlisted agency whether they've done it with your CRM, whether HubSpot, Salesforce or Zoho. A good answer includes the words "offline conversions" and a client they did it for.
Does local sector knowledge matter?
More than the postcode does. Perth's economy leans on mining services, engineering, professional services, tourism and property, and each behaves differently in search. A mining services buyer is often procurement, searches during business hours and takes months to convert, so CRM feedback matters and last-click reporting will undersell the channel. A tourism operator lives and dies on seasonal pacing and mobile landing pages. A property developer needs the lead called within the hour.
The test is whether the agency can describe your buyer without you telling them. Ask what they'd do about "near me" searches for a business with four branches, or how a mining services enquiry should be handled differently from a residential one. You're listening for an answer that starts with the person searching rather than with a bid strategy, because that's the answer that turns into a sensible account structure.
Tourism is a sector we know from the UK side: for Wigwam, a holiday accommodation client, our channels drove 63% of website revenue and a 32% rise in online bookings. Ask any agency for a number like that in your sector, and ask what it was before.
How do you run a two-week trial brief?
Rather than decide on the proposal alone, give the top two agencies the same brief and two weeks. It's the most reliable test I know.
Give both read-only access to your existing account, or the last three months of exports, plus your cost per lead target and average customer value. Ask for three things back in a 30-minute call: what they'd change in month one and why, what they'd spend and what it would produce, and what they'd need from you. Score each on specificity, on whether the numbers connect to your target, and on how they handled something they didn't know. Pay for the two weeks if they ask. A$500 to A$1,500 is normal.
A strong response references your actual search terms and conversion setup. A less useful one is a template with your logo on it.
What should you budget?
Stated as help rather than a threshold. For a Perth services business, A$2,000 to A$5,000 a month in media plus A$1,000 to A$2,000 in management is a sensible first year. For professional services and B2B, A$4,000 to A$10,000 in media, because the clicks cost A$8 to A$20 and one client covers the quarter. For ecommerce, work back from margin and fix the feed first.
Below about A$1,500 a month in media, the account gathers data too slowly to improve, and a A$1,000 fee on top doubles the cost of every lead. At that budget we'd suggest a one-off build and a quarterly review, and putting the difference into the landing page. It's what we'd tell a friend.
Whoever you choose, month two feeling messy is normal. The data is thin, the bidding is learning and the first search terms review always turns up surprises. Judge the decision at month three on cost per qualified lead, and use our Google Ads audit checklist to check the account is being worked in the meantime.
Questions we get asked
Google Ads agency or freelancer?
Under about A$5,000 a month in media, a good freelancer is often the better value, provided you've asked about cover and account ownership. Above that, or where you need landing pages, tracking and a CRM connection, an agency's wider skills start to pay for themselves.
Should my Google Ads agency be in Perth?
It helps and it isn't essential. What you want is someone who knows the suburbs, the sectors and the time zone, and who'll be awake when the budget is being spent.
What does a Google Ads specialist do?
Builds the account structure, writes the ads, sets the targeting and bidding, then does the weekly work of reviewing search terms, adding negatives, testing landing pages and pacing the budget. The good ones also own conversion tracking and produce a report that starts with leads.
How do I check my agency is doing the work?
Open the change history in your Google Ads account and look at the last 30 days. Then count how many negatives were added in the search terms report. Then submit a test enquiry through your own form and see if it shows up as a conversion. Twenty minutes, and you'll know. Our post on what an agency should report every month was written for SEO but the principle is the same.
Do I own my Google Ads account?
You should. If an agency created the account under their manager account and billing, ask them to transfer it or create a new one under your details before you leave. It's a reasonable request and most agencies will agree. The history, the conversion data and the audiences all live in the account, so sort it out on day one.
Where we fit
To be honest about who we are: a small search and CRM consultancy, registered in Scotland with clients in the UK and Australia, and I run the Perth accounts myself from the city. That suits a business that wants senior time on the account and a commercial target agreed before any ad goes live. It won't suit a business that wants a large local team, an office to visit, or a package at the cheaper end of the market, and there are good Perth agencies for each of those.
If a fair process and a two-week brief sound like the right way to decide, our Perth page explains how we work and how to get in touch. And if we're not the right fit, we'll say so and tell you which of the others we'd pick.
