Our Top Ten UK Google Ad Agencies
Google search and shopping ads are a fantastic way to generate sales, however, as digital advertising increases in complexity and competition online gets tougher, outsourcing to a top advertising agency becomes a necessity to make your google advertising campaigns a profitable investment. But where to start in finding a reliable ad agency? Recommendations are often helpful, but sometimes completely inappropriate, wasting valuable time and money.
To help you compare some of the better service providers out there, here are some of the ad agencies whose work we admire.
So, now you have seen some of those ad agencies we think are doing great work, let’s look at your check list for choosing your own preferred partner.
1. ADSRUNNER
You didn’t expect us not to mention our leadership did you?! Of course we believe in our multi-disciplinary teams’ power to transform our client’s business development and boost their market competitiveness! Our teams of accredited experts have been in the digital marketing industry for over ten years, combining all aspects of digital advertising and brand building. We love what we do and value the trust our clients put in us to help them achieve their business goals.
You can see from our service overview AdsRunner’s wide scope of expertise. However, none of our hundreds of satisfied customers would be recommending their network partners to us, if it were not for our helping them build sustainable profitability and longevity via Google Search Ads and Google Shopping. As a Google Partner, you have peace of mind of knowing you’re are working with an advertising service provider who Google values.
Being certified as a Google Partner, means Google Ads customers can expect excellent ad performance from our search services team. Our Google Ads experts enable our business partners to appear pre-eminently in Google search results positioning, based on thorough analysis of yours and industry data we leverage to inform strategy.
Similarly, we ensure Google shopping campaign investments exceed the expectations of our clients too, through maximising your inventory databases, ensuring your graphics are enticing enough to trigger sales from static and carousel imagery. Combining Google tools, constant monitoring of metrics and split-testing, we continually optimise your results, so you achieve the best possible return on ad spend.
Given that Google is the search engine global leader, we help you galvanise the largest search and shopping audiences, with Ads display that offer immediate results. With AdsRunner as your preferred ad agency, achieve faster growth, minimise losses and watch where your returns are coming from in real-time with your customised dashboard.
It isn’t just our technical wizadry that we are proud of, however, because we know it isn’t just about us. Without you, we learn nothing and we have no business. We put our clients at the forefront of our operations. We allocate a dedicated consultant to communicate with and report regularly to your marketing teams. Regularity is key to staying abreast of any changes happening in your business and in your marketing landscape. Remaining flexible is essential to out-competing others in your sector.
We also want you to be confident of where your investment is going and to be able to see what is happening with your campaigns in real-time. We ensure transparency by sharing bespoke tools with your teams, so you can gain insights into a particular direction any single campaign is taking, or to have an overview at the push of a button. We understand your need to report to your stakeholders, so your customisable dashboard means you can run off a report at a moment’s notice in a variety of formats, for ease of understanding and decision making.
You will see how your investment is maximised and campaigns consistently optimised whenever you need to know. Track AdsRunner campaign management and see how we continually tweak to deployment of tools and techniques to incrementally improve at every opportunity. If you aim to bring campaign management in-house, learn in real-time by looking over our shoulder at how we optimise your campaigns via your dashboard. Alternatively, ask us about bespoke training packages for your teams. Which ever way you wish to proceed, we work alongside you… Regular communication with your teams means you are getting what you need from our advertising and marketing services and your schedules and returns are on track to continue building your online dominance.
2. Pepper Agency
Pepper Agency is another competitor AdsRunner’s sponsored ad team keep an eye on. Based in London and Leeds, they are helping local brands really build their brands nationally through Google Ads.
Their focus on profit means they have the financial awareness and operational know-how to make traffic convert into buying customers. Optimisation of new and existing leads and campaign structure is gaining them a reputation for building strong returns for clients’ investments. We appreciate this team’s approach of treating clients like business partners.
Their expertise runs to expertise in Microsoft and Amazon advertising, as well as Google Pay Per Click (PPC) for paid search Display and Shopping. Social media marketing is also part of their offering, which means that as a business, they will be tying together your campaigns wherever your customers can be found, with consistency of keywords and brand.
They specialise also in remarketing, which involves tracking customer journeys after they have left your website, to remind them of the good stuff they were checking out on your site, while they are considering making a purchase. This means that whichever platform they visit afterwards, they may see your ads displayed, specifically focussing on the product they previously viewed, or similar via carousels.
This team also offer support in Google comparison shopping services (CSS) for EU clients. This means they make the most of the fact that Google cannot abuse its market dominance to constrain competition in the shopping market, particularly for those clients in competitive niches, where choice of CSS partner really counts.
Their audience targeting is based on data from Google Analytics and monitoring of the key metrics that count for sustained returns on PPC ad investment. Getting into the often confusing detail of data from a variety of sources and being able to meaningfully interpret this means that your business gets a clearer of the variety of pathways your diverse customers may take towards the ultimate goal of making a purchase.
Having granular insights means that you can then optimise every stage of the customer journey to smooth and speed their transition to a conversion. Obviously, improving your customer’s experience throughout their journey means that those converting customers are also more likely to become returning customers and that ultimately cuts your cost of acquiring them.
3. Digital Uncut
Digital Uncut is among our favourite award-winning PPC ad agencies; in 2021, they were a Search Awards finalist. They are also a Google Premier Partner and a Microsoft Advertising Partner, so you can be assured that you are working with a competent PPC partner in your Google display and shopping campaigns, as well as when extending into Microsoft’s platform reach, via Bing and elsewhere.
Their expertise extends to SEO and website building too, which means they are a great partner for start-ups looking to scale. They have helped a number of small and medium enterprises, including Hero, for example, to build their brand presence online through combining PPC ads and other optimisation methods that have helped reduce ad cost. When small brands are bidding too much, or not setting up their campaign architecture correctly, sponsored Google Ad campaigns can get very costly quickly and burn through constrained advertising budgets.
Through helping businesses around the U.K. starting out, they have focussed on data to achieve consistent campaign improvement. Consistency is important, because incremental enhancements to online ad set ups means they increase market reach and individual purchase value, factors which build better marketing campaign profits. Finding those margins is also essential to compete with others in your niche, particularly when margins are tight and competition is strong for your preferred keywords.
4. Cato Marketing
Cato Marketing are both PPC and SEO experts who have also won recognition for their work from Clutch PPC agency comparison website in 2020 and 2021. As a Google certified Partner, you know the quality of their PPC campaigns will be worth the investment. As a small team based in Burnley, they are committed to building the presence of their clients online, because this also ensures they can build a national reputation and boost their range of expertise into new areas of digital marketing. We fully expect them to expand their services in the foreseeable future, given the glowing testimonials from a diverse range of clients on their website.
Their SEO services are accredited by a leader in the SEO Market, famed for their analytics tools and cutting-edge methods. SEO is a huge digital marketing discipline, where there is constant change happening at a rapid rate across a range of platforms. Gone are the days where focussing on keywords was the whole game, particularly with the arrival of social media marketing.
This company must be doing something right to be used by sectors as diverse as law firms, such as JMR and an IT software company, Nibbr. If a software company endorses their services, you can be sure Cato Marketing are technical experts, because their software service clients will understand more than most the value of Cato’s technical expertise.
E-Commerce is also a specialism of theirs. They leverage Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube ads in conjunction with smart SEO data analysis tools to achieve maximised growth potential for their e-commerce and service industry clients.
They boast their expertise in helping online stores grow their revenues, regardless of their client’s business sector. Their claims to glory include “repeatedly” scaling revenues from zero to anywhere between “$100,000-$300.000 in just 4-10 month– yes, you read that right! We think this is legitimate bragging rights as well as proof this small agency packs potentially massive punch when put to work. One to watch for the marketing awards circuit according to our PPC and SEO teams.
5. LimeLight Digital
LimeLight Digital are paid search experts, plus. We respect this bijou ad agency because they are building an international reputation, as much as being respected by their U.K. clients. They are accredited by Google and Bing, helping small and international scale brands across a range of industries.
Their success is built on harnessing client data to inform sound marketing strategies, utilising proven methods, as well as not being afraid of testing innovative approaches.
While PPC is definitely their specialism, they can also help businesses with video ad productions, which can rocket campaign spend returns. To create a compelling video that works, it is essential for any agency to really work closely with their client, to understand their business.
That collaborative approach is an aspect of their work they highlight on their website. We like this, because we understand how important it is to work with, rather than for, because it demands more commitment of time and means that an agency is invested in your success as a client.
This agency also look to build strategies that are bespoke to the specific circumstances of their clients. As no two businesses are the same, this is important to ensure that ad spend is not wasted on irrelevancy. For instance, Lime Light Digital also focus on social advertising, where presence and levels of engagement vary between businesses and organisations.
Their personalised approach means that you are more likely to achieve the best possible return on ad spend (ROAS). Given how quickly PPC ads can explode accounts, attention to maximising profits from campaigns that speak directly to your customers and that are set up optimally is vital for you to continue building campaigns over time.
6. Impression
Impression also rank as one of AdsRunner’s top digital marketing agencies generally, but are particularly renowned and award-winning for the Google ads campaigns. Providing key digital ad services since 2012 from their Nottingham base, their 50 permanent staff offer some assurance that they have you covered for most digital advertising campaigns.
We class them as a mid-ranged digital agency, providing for SME’s across a diversity of sectors. Clearly confident of their capacity to deliver on their clients’ investments, their minimum project cost comes in around £20,000; their hourly rate is around £125.00, minimum.
Being able to boast client successes such as: Clarins, Funky Pigeon, Topps Tiles, plus Cancer Research, these guys have, as you would expect, gained the rare status of multi-award winners, including: winner of Best Large Global PPC award, 2022, Best use of PR in a Search Campaign 2022, U.K. Content Awards Winner. The Drum’s Elite Independent Agencies 2022, 2022 winner of European Search Awards; there are more, not least commendation for their culture, making them a sought-after employer too.
Their focus is fairly evenly spread, with 30% of their (awarded) work being PPC based, the same for SEO and digital strategy (including helping bring this in-house) is around 20%, with additional services, such as CRO and split testing, for the remainder of their working day. PPC includes paid search, social and Google Shopping, Amazon, plus programmatic display. Their SEO services include eCommerce, technical, internationalisation and as you would expect, consultancy. They of course cover, analytics, tag management, data science, together with thought leadership creative content campaigns and more.
7. Push Group
Push Group also rank among the elite in terms of paid ads leaders. They have won awards for their paid ad performance. They are Google accredited, but also cover Amazon sales growth, paid social and as you might expect from the best partners out there, conversion rate optimisation.
Having been around since 2007, back then AdWords was the key route for business growth and low-cost customer acquisition. This was the bedrock of their product development and as a Premier Partner, this ad agency enjoy an elite position of being one of the 1% of Google specialists. Working directly with Google on product development, they understand the direction of innovation and pass those benefits to their clients.
They work with mid-tier businesses and start-ups ready for rapid growth. Their claim to success of their skill-set lying in the “speedy execution of the very latest marketing techniques & processes”. Naturally, faster results also mean, not only faster returns, but better rates of return on your campaign investment with this agency.
Their pricing structure is negotiable, according to the types of products your sell and also performance incentive related. They do not promote their hourly rates on comparison sites because of this, but Clutch offers the insight that their minimum project fee will come in at £4,000.
For this you can expect a highly personalised, collaborative experience of working with them. It is this close-partnership approach that has won them awards for customer satisfaction. That said, this team is not for you if you are not able to shift focus fast and keep up with the demand they will generate for your business.
For small businesses with big aspirations, you cannot put a toe wrong with this top U.K. ad agency.
8. PPC Geeks
With a name like this, you know PPC Geeks have to perform with PPC ads and they have the awards to back up their commitments. They offer a free audit up-front on each of your Google, Amazon and social media ad campaigns.
They boast an expert team, who operate transparently, so you know what you are getting when you need to know. Their tracking of results mean that you can be confident of how your investment in your paid ad campaigns are working and what needs to be your priority.
Despite their amazing credentials, including 5/5 from Trustpilot, their fees are reasonable, with a circa £4,000 minimum campaign and a basic £40 per hour. If even this makes you twitch, then look at the returns possible. They made on average, ten times return on ad spend for their eCommerce customer so far this year. They are in the top 3% of Google Ads Agencies as a Premier Partner and manage over £1.5 million each month alone in Google Ads campaigns. Clutch comparison site have awarded them twice over in 2019 and 2021. If you are serious about growth, it’s time to step up to the plate with PPC at your side.
9. Maple Forest
Maple Forest London have been serving businesses’ ad displays since 2009. The founders were experts in Google AdWords and search engine marketing SEM. Since then they have continually grown in success, but remained fairly small as an agency, which has worked well for them.
They now specialise in “ROAS-focused Google PPC, Facebook Ads and Instagram Advertising for Ecommerce and Lead Generation businesses of all sizes”. They focus on health and beauty sectors, aside from eCommerce and sticking to their expertise earns them good client reviews and their reputation for getting results. Strong client retention rates also invite confidence of their reliability.
We always appreciate when an agency sees themselves as “strategic growth partners”, because that is a statement of commitment to performance, accountability and transparency.
For eCommerce startups who might baulk at over £50ph fees, or minimum project fee of around £4,000, it’s worth asking them what the average rate of return is that your business can expect with PPC ad campaigns set up and manages by them. Chances are you will at least double your returns on investment, within a week or two, (profit margin dependent).
If you are serious about rapid growth, PPC advertising campaigns are the way forward, bringing immediate returns and demand you need to have your inventory and logistics ready for. The immediacy of PPC is incredibly powerful and outsourcing the headache of set up ensures you make no newbie mistakes that lose essential returns.
So what do we look at when comparing ourselves with our digital marketing competition? We believe five key factors determine quality of digital services. In no particular order, these are:
Reliable and Regular Communications. Your relationship with your chosen agency should feel like a true business partnership. They should undertake a comprehensive analysis of your business and audit of your online and offline marketing efforts in order to optimise your investment and enhance cohesion across all your channels.
Industry Expertise. Understanding your competition and market is essential to appropriate targeting and campaign prioritisation. Opportunities vary between sectors, awareness of your sector saves time and money.
Proven Track Record. Achievement of Google Ads Partner accreditation is a must, because this demonstrates capability. Your preferred partner will also be able to provide examples of previous results, or even discuss comparable case studies with your teams.
Data Driven. Without data to drive incremental, measurable improvement, you are fishing in the dark and potentially losing lots of advertising revenues. We utilise your existing data and compare to industry standards, to ensure your campaigns out-compete wherever possible. What’s important too is that we can demonstrate results through data transparency to your teams with objective analysis that proves our recommendations work and show you opportunities to continue moving ahead.
Specialists in Google Ads set up, management and reporting. Google advertising is a constantly moving feast, with the search and shopping platforms continually evolving. Your Google Ads partner should offer proven strategies and stay ahead of innovation and change in this specialism too. Knowing how well your Google campaigns complement other campaign efforts is a bonus. AdsRunner offer expertise across a wide array of disciplines, which means that our clients can expect to be served by specialists across all digital channels and more.
10. The Social Shepherd
We keep our eyes on The Social Shepherd and not just because they have such a cool name! We recognise their genuine desire to support their clients across a number of channels. Their multi-skilled team manages various aspects of marketing, including: Google Search Ads, Google Shopping, Google Display, plus other key platforms.
They too focus on bottom-line issues, like your returns on ad spend and lowering costs of customer acquisition. When an agency cares about your profitability, you know that you have found a true business partner and we think these guys are the real deal.
Their Google Ad bidding strategies work on the basis of targeting the “right user at the right stage” in their customer’s journey towards making a buying decision. They keep an eye on costs per click in sponsored ads to ensure these remain sustainable and generate sufficient conversions to make a campaign successful enough to build out keyword campaigns on budget.
Their apparent knowledge and understanding of different industries mean that they can help you compare your performance against those of your competitors, an essential part of your marketing game plan. When an agency has supported a number of clients in any particular sector, it means that they have a range of strategies from which to draw upon for ad plans that are likely to succeed.
NEXT!!!
Yes, it’s a difficult task to choose the right partner for your particular business circumstances, particularly if your objectives are still being worked through. If you’re still unsure of who to call, why not arrange a free no-obligation consultation with AdsRunner’s Google advertising team. We will answer all your questions, or amaze us with something we have never come across before! (Unlikely we haven’t seen it in some form, in all honesty!) Call us today and we’ll get your Google Search and Shopping campaigns rolling in the returns faster than you can imagine!
