what does search marketing cost in the UK?

Agency pricing comes in three shapes: a percentage of your ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a fixed project fee. Each suits a different situation, and none of them is the number that actually matters, which is your total cost per customer acquired, fees included.

Percentage of spend scales with your budget and keeps the agency interested in growth, but check it does not reward spending for its own sake. Flat retainers buy predictable attention and suit steady accounts. Project fees fit defined jobs like an audit, a site rebuild or a launch. Hybrids are common and fine. What matters is that the model matches where the work actually is.

Competition in your market, the breadth of channels covered, how much content the plan needs, and how senior the people doing the actual work are. Ask who touches your account each week, because a great pitch delivered by one person and executed by another is the oldest disappointment in the industry.

Put every quote into the same sentence: all-in monthly cost, divided by the customers it should produce, judged at the three-month mark. A dearer agency that halves your cost per customer is cheap. A bargain that produces nothing is the most expensive option on the table. Insist each bidder shows the assumptions behind their number.

We have not printed a rate card here, and that is deliberate rather than coy: a fair fee depends on your market's click prices, your customer value and the work required, and any standard number would mislead half the people reading. An agency should derive its price from your situation in front of you. If it cannot, that tells you something too.