What to look for in a Google Ads partner
Most small businesses in Switzerland come to Google Ads after being burned once — either by an agency that charged too much and delivered too little, or by trying to manage it themselves and watching budget disappear with no results to show for it.
The right partner for a small business looks different from the right partner for an enterprise. Here's what actually matters:
- Transparent reporting — you should be able to see exactly what's being spent and what it's producing, not just a slide deck of vanity metrics.
- Conversion tracking that works — this sounds obvious but the majority of small business ad accounts have broken or missing conversion tracking. If nobody's verified that form submissions and calls are being tracked correctly, you have no idea what's working.
- A realistic attitude to budget — a good partner will tell you if your budget is too low to produce meaningful data, rather than taking the work and letting you pay for the lesson.
- Direct communication — the person you speak to in the pitch should be the person managing your account.
Agency vs. freelancer — the honest breakdown
For most small businesses with budgets under CHF 5,000/month, a specialist freelancer outperforms a full-service agency. Here's why:
Agencies have overhead. Junior account managers. Internal handoffs. Your CHF 1,500/month management fee is paying for a lot of things that aren't your account. A specialist with lower costs can spend more time actually managing your campaigns.
The caveat: a specialist needs to genuinely specialise. Someone who does Google Ads, Meta, SEO, social media, content, and web design is not a specialist. They're a generalist with a long service menu.
Red flags to avoid
Walk away if you hear any of these:
- "We guarantee results" — nobody can guarantee Google Ads results. Markets change, competition changes, seasonality changes.
- "We have a proprietary optimisation system" — this usually means automation they don't understand either.
- Minimum 12-month contracts with no performance clauses.
- Reports that show clicks and impressions but never conversion data.
- No mention of conversion tracking in the onboarding process.
Questions to ask before hiring
These five questions will tell you most of what you need to know:
- Who specifically will be managing my account day to day?
- How do you set up and verify conversion tracking?
- What does your reporting look like — can I see an example?
- What happens if results aren't where we expected after 60 days?
- Can I speak to a current client in a similar industry?
If any of these questions get vague answers, that's the answer.
Frequently asked questions
The most common questions we get about Google Ads for small business in Switzerland: