If you run a small trade business — plumbing, electrical, building, heating, roofing — you’ve probably had a call from someone offering to “get you to position one on Google” for a few hundred pounds a month. There’s a whole industry doing this, and it preys specifically on small business owners who don’t have time to evaluate marketing claims properly.
Most of the calls follow the same pattern. The promises are similar. The contracts are similar. The outcomes are similar. And the outcomes are almost always bad for the trade business and great for the company on the other end of the call.
Here’s what to watch out for.
The pitch: “we’ll get you to position one for £200 a month”
The first sign you’re being sold by one of these companies is that the price is too good and the promise is too specific. “Position one for [specific keyword] in [your town] for £200 a month.” Sometimes £100. Sometimes £400. The exact number doesn’t matter.
This kind of guarantee is, almost without exception, either a misunderstanding of how Google Ads works or an outright lie. You can’t guarantee a position in organic search. You can sometimes guarantee a position in paid search if the budget is high enough and the competition isn’t — but £200 a month doesn’t buy you that in most trade categories.
What you’ll typically get for that money is your ad shown a small number of times for very low-competition long-tail keywords nobody’s searching for, while the sales company invoices you and pockets most of it. The ad spend going into Google Ads might be £50. The £150 difference is their margin.
The lock-in: 12, 18, or 24-month contracts
Real marketing services should be month-to-month. The relationship works only if the agency is genuinely earning their fee every month. The moment you sign a long-term contract for marketing services, the incentive flips — they’re getting paid whether the work is delivering or not.
These companies will push for long contracts because they know the service won’t be working in six months and they need to keep collecting. Common patterns:
- 12-month minimum, with automatic renewal unless cancelled with 90 days’ notice
- Early termination fees that make leaving cost more than staying
- “Set-up fees” that are due regardless of cancellation
- Renewal clauses buried in the terms
Read the contract before you sign. If the contract is more than two pages, or if cancellation requires written notice with specific timing, or if there’s an automatic renewal — these are red flags.
The account ownership trick
This is the most damaging one, because most trade business owners don’t realise it’s happening.
When a PPC company sets up your Google Ads campaigns, the account itself can be either:
- Owned by you, with the agency given user access to manage it (the right way)
- Owned by the agency, with you receiving reports but never having access (the wrong way, but very common)
The second one is the trap. If the agency owns your account, then:
- They own the historical data, conversion data, audience lists, and creative assets you paid for
- If you leave, you can’t take any of it with you
- They can charge you to “release” the account back to you
- They can hold your data hostage in disputes
If you’re already with a PPC company and you’re not sure who owns the account, log into Google Ads using your own Google account. If you can see your campaigns, you own it. If you can’t, they own it.
The fix is to own your own Google Ads account, then give the agency manager access. Any honest agency will agree to this immediately. Any agency that refuses is telling you something important about how they operate.
The “lead generation” promise without lead quality
The next pattern: “We’ll generate you X leads per month.”
Lead count without lead quality is meaningless. A trade business doesn’t need 50 form submissions a month if 49 of them are people who want a quote for a job in a different town, or with a budget of zero, or for a service you don’t even offer.
When a PPC company talks only about lead count, ask what they’re doing about lead quality. The honest ones can tell you. They’ll have:
- Conversion tracking distinguishing real leads from junk
- Negative keywords to filter out tyre-kickers
- Geographic targeting that actually matches your service area
- Call tracking so phone leads can be evaluated
If their answer to “how do you handle lead quality?” is “we’ll talk to you about that later” — they don’t have an answer.
Vague reporting designed to obscure
Most of these companies send monthly reports that look impressive and tell you nothing. Lots of charts. Big numbers in green. “Brand awareness,” “impressions,” “engagement,” “reach.”
What the reports won’t tell you clearly: how much you spent, how many actual paying customers came from the campaigns, what each customer cost to acquire, and whether the campaigns made you money.
Those four numbers are the only ones that matter. If they’re missing from the report, they’re missing on purpose.
The “premium” or “VIP” account manager
Watch for the sudden appearance of “Senior Account Manager” titles when things start going wrong. Often this is just the same sales process happening again from a different person, trying to keep you in the contract by promising things will be different now. They won’t be.
What to do instead
The good news is that running PPC properly for a small trade business is not that complicated. You need:
- Your own Google Ads account. Set it up under your own Google account. Give the agency manager access if you’re using one.
- A monthly contract. No lock-ins. If the agency isn’t earning their fee, you should be able to leave.
- Conversion tracking that tracks real outcomes. Not just form submissions or phone calls — qualified leads that turned into customers.
- Geographic targeting that matches your actual service area.
- Reporting that shows cost per acquisition for each campaign and lead source.
Any honest agency will tick all five of these boxes without you needing to ask. Any company that resists any of them is signalling something important.
If you’re already in one of these contracts and you’re stuck, talk to a real marketing person about how to get out and what to set up instead. There’s almost always a way back. The damage is rarely permanent — but staying in the bad contract longer makes it worse.