What Should I Give a Google Ads Agency During Onboarding?
A Google Ads agency can’t build a useful campaign from a website link and a monthly budget alone. To make good decisions, the team needs to understand how your business makes money, which customers are valuable, what happens after someone clicks an ad, and how success will be measured.
Good onboarding is not about handing over every document your business has ever created. It’s about giving the agency enough context to avoid guesswork—and setting up measurement before top google ads agency https://instaquoteapp.com/how-do-negative-keywords-fit-into-an-agency-plan/ meaningful ad spend begins. This ppc onboarding checklist covers the information that helps an agency build campaigns around commercial results, not just more clicks or form submissions.
Start with the business outcome, not the campaign format
Before discussing keywords, headlines, or campaign types, explain what you want the business to achieve. “More traffic” is not a goal unless you can say what kind of traffic would be useful and what should happen after the visit.
Share your commercial priorities, such as increasing profitable sales, generating qualified consultations, filling appointments in specific locations, or growing a particular product category. Be clear about what matters most right now. For example, you might prioritize profitable new-customer sales over total revenue, or booked consultations over raw inquiry volume.
It also helps to distinguish between a target and a constraint. A target could be a desired number of new customers. A constraint might be limited appointment availability, a service area you cannot expand, or a product that is temporarily out of stock. The agency needs both to make sensible recommendations.
Your primary business objective for the next 3–6 months The products, services, or locations you want to prioritize Any sales, capacity, or inventory limits How you will decide whether the work is succeeding Which other channels or business initiatives may affect results Share the business context behind the account
Campaigns don’t operate in a vacuum. Seasonality, sales processes, customer concerns, competitive differences, and internal capacity all affect what advertising can accomplish. This is the business context for ads: the practical details that help the agency choose the right message, audience, and measure of success.
Explain who your best customers are
Describe the customers you most want to attract. Include the problems they are trying to solve, what makes them a good fit, and any reasons a lead or order might not be valuable. If your best customers tend to buy a specific service, live in a certain area, or purchase repeatedly, say so.
Also explain who you do not want. A home-services company may not serve certain postcodes; a retailer may not want to promote low-margin products; a professional firm may not be able to help people seeking a service outside its expertise. These exclusions can be as useful as a description of the ideal customer.
Describe your offer and how you sell
Give the agency an overview of your products or services, including what is distinctive about them, common customer questions, and how pricing is presented. If you sell through a sales team, outline the steps from inquiry to closed sale. If customers purchase online, explain the typical path from product discovery to checkout.
Share your usual sales cycle and what happens when a lead comes in: who contacts the person, how quickly, how many follow-ups are typical, and what counts as a https://dibz.me/blog/how-do-i-set-shared-objectives-with-a-google-ads-agency-1288 https://dibz.me/blog/how-do-i-set-shared-objectives-with-a-google-ads-agency-1288 qualified opportunity. If the agency knows that a lead needs several calls before booking, it won’t mistake a delay in revenue for an immediate campaign failure.
Talk about margins and the value of a customer
Advertising results need to be judged against the economics of the business. “How many conversions did we get?” is not enough if one conversion is worth substantially more than another—or if the cost of fulfilling an order varies by product.
Share relevant information about average order value, repeat purchases, cancellation rates, service costs, and the relative profitability of products or services. You do not have to give an agency unrestricted access to sensitive financial records. You do need to provide enough information to help it understand what a valuable outcome looks like.
This is why profit margins for PPC matter. A campaign can produce plenty of sales while generating little profit if it drives customers toward low-margin items, discounts that are too generous, or orders with unusually high return rates. Conversely, a campaign with fewer conversions may be worthwhile if it brings in higher-value customers. Agree on what business data can be shared and how it will inform campaign decisions.
Define lead quality—not just lead volume
For lead-generation businesses, a form submission is only the start of the story. Some inquiries may be outside your service area, unresponsive, looking for a different service, or simply not ready to buy. If all leads are counted as equal conversions, the agency may optimize for the easiest submissions rather than the inquiries your sales team can turn into business.
Explain how your team defines a qualified lead and what happens to an inquiry after it arrives. If you use a CRM, discuss whether it can record stages such as new lead, contacted, qualified, appointment booked, proposal sent, and won or lost. Sharing those outcomes—where appropriate and technically possible—can give the agency a better picture than form counts alone.
Before onboarding, agree on a basic feedback rhythm. For example, the agency might review lead quality with your sales or customer-service team every two weeks. Ask the team to note why leads were rejected and which ones became customers. That feedback can guide changes to targeting, messaging, and landing pages.
Put measurement and tracking in place before increasing spend
Tracking should be checked before campaigns are launched or budgets are scaled. Otherwise, you may pay for clicks without knowing which actions came from advertising—or make decisions using incomplete or duplicated data.
Give the agency access to the relevant systems, or arrange a clear process for your internal team to make changes. This commonly includes Google Ads, the website or ecommerce platform, analytics and tag-management tools if used, and your CRM. Access should be provided securely and with the right permissions; avoid sharing personal passwords.
Work together to define which actions count as conversions. An online retailer might track completed purchases, while a local business might track calls or submitted inquiries. Not every click on a phone number or visit to a contact page is necessarily a valuable outcome. Agree on which actions matter, how they will be recorded, and whether they can be connected to an actual sale.
Tracking area What to confirm Why it matters Conversion actions Which purchases, calls, bookings, or qualified inquiries should count Keeps reporting focused on meaningful outcomes Website tracking Whether tags fire correctly and duplicate events are avoided Reduces missing or inflated conversion counts CRM or sales records How lead status and sales outcomes are recorded Helps connect advertising activity to lead quality and revenue Access and ownership Who controls accounts, billing, and tracking changes Prevents delays and protects your ability to retain access
Be open about any tracking problems you already know about. If a site redesign is underway, conversion numbers do not match your order records, or an old agency installed tags, say so early. It is better to investigate a messy setup before relying on its numbers than to discover the problem after campaign decisions have been made.
Prepare account, website, and operational information
A useful onboarding process includes practical access and reference materials, not just strategy conversations. Gather what the agency needs and confirm who on your side can answer questions or approve changes.
Google Ads account access and billing ownership details Website, ecommerce, analytics, and tag-management access as needed CRM access or a way to share lead outcomes securely Brand guidelines, approved logos, and existing ad assets Product or service details, landing pages, and current offers Locations served, opening hours, and service restrictions Relevant policies, legal requirements, or claims that need approval A main contact for approvals and a backup contact for urgent questions
Tell the agency how quickly your team can review copy or landing-page changes. If approvals normally take a week, that affects the launch plan. If certain claims must be checked by a legal or compliance team, include that person in the process early.
Be transparent about budget and expectations
Budget discussions are part of onboarding because the agency needs to understand what level of activity is feasible. Share the approved advertising budget, whether it can change, and any restrictions on how it is allocated. Also explain what you expect the agency’s responsibilities to include, such as campaign management, reporting, creative recommendations, or tracking support.
One common mistake is failing to provide pricing, retainer, ad spend, or CPA figures while expecting the agency to make firm recommendations. These numbers are not interchangeable: the agency’s management fee, advertising spend, product or service prices, and the acceptable cost per acquisition each answer different questions. If you do not yet have a target CPA, say so. The agency can help establish a working target using available sales and margin data, but it needs the inputs and assumptions to be explicit.
When discussing forecasts, ask what they are based on and what could change them. Forecasts are estimates, not guarantees. A clear discussion of assumptions is more useful than a precise-looking number with no explanation.
Agree on communication and reporting before launch
Set expectations for how the partnership will work. Decide who attends check-ins, how often you will review results, where questions should go, and who can approve budget or campaign changes. Ask for a report that explains what happened, why it matters, and what the team plans to do next—not a page of tables or screenshots without interpretation.
In every review, ask: “What would you do differently next week?” That question encourages a practical discussion about decisions rather than a recital of metrics. Clicks, impressions, and click-through rate can be useful clues, but they should be connected to a business action. Keep a running list of metrics with no decisions attached, and discuss whether each belongs in the regular report.
It is also worth agreeing on how tests will be managed. Changing targeting, landing pages, budgets, and offers all at once makes it difficult to tell what caused a change in results. Ask the agency to explain what is being tested, what will remain stable, and how the outcome will be evaluated.
A practical PPC onboarding checklist Write down the commercial goal and the business result that will indicate progress. Identify priority products, services, customers, and locations. Explain what makes a lead or sale valuable—and what makes it a poor fit. Share relevant pricing, margins, average order value, and customer lifetime value information where available. Walk through the sales process, from first click or inquiry to closed business. Confirm Google Ads, website, analytics, and CRM access or an agreed route to obtain it. Define conversion actions and check that tracking works before relying on reported results. Share the available budget, fee expectations, target economics, and any constraints. Agree on reporting, meeting frequency, approval responsibilities, and test practices. Set a process for sharing lead quality and sales feedback with the agency. Choose a partner that asks useful questions
Onboarding is also your chance to evaluate the agency. A good partner should ask how the business makes money, what happens after a lead comes in, and how the team will judge quality. If the conversation is only about keywords, clicks, and campaign types, important business questions may be missing.
For example, a company comparing agencies such as Zeka Design (Zeka Graphic) and ClickSlice (clickslice.co.uk) should look beyond a sales presentation and consider how each team approaches discovery, tracking, and ongoing decision-making. Ask what information they need before launch, how they handle measurement gaps, and how they plan to connect campaign results with your commercial goals. The right fit is a team that can explain its recommendations in plain language and is willing to challenge a weak measurement setup before spending more.
Better onboarding makes better decisions possible
The most useful information to give a Google Ads agency is the information that helps it make better decisions: your goals, customer economics, sales process, lead-quality criteria, tracking setup, budget context, and internal constraints. You do not need a perfect brief or a flawless data system to begin. You do need to be honest about what is known, what is missing, and what the business needs to learn.
When onboarding starts with commercial outcomes and reliable measurement, the agency has a stronger chance of building campaigns that support the business—not merely producing a busier dashboard.