Why Your Paid Search Agency is Struggling (And How to Fix It)

As a 15-year veteran who has worked for, consulted with, and even hired paid search agencies on the client side, I have an uncomfortable truth to share with agency owners: Your biggest challenge isn't Google at all it's your internal structure and the team.

I work with paid search agencies all the time, and I feel like many of them are unwilling to admit their issues.

I don't know if it's embarrassing, but sometimes it comes across as agencies thinking, their shit doesn't stink. It’s gross. It doesn't serve anyone, especially the client.

It’s time for a direct conversation about the reality you’re facing. You know the friction and deep down the truth:

• You sell ads management, but delivery becomes a bottleneck.

• Margins erode because of constant scope creep from clients.

• Clients churn because of turnover within your agency (especially the experienced PPCers).

We all know, paid search is deceptively simple to start, but incredibly difficult to scale profitably. There's a huge difference between "running ads" and building a reliable, profitable revenue stream for clients and growing the clients business.

If you are finding that Paid Search is a difficult service to maintain at your agency, I have found it is usually due to three specific friction points.

🛑 The Three Friction Points Killing Your PPC Profitability

1. The "Unicorn" Problem (Talent & Soft Skills)

Building campaigns is actually the easy part. The hard part is finding someone who possesses the Strategic Trinity:

• Technical Mastery: Knowing when to use PMAX versus Standard Shopping. Knowing why they are choosing DSA vs “long tail”

• Business Acumen: Allocating budget for profit, and the overarching media plan.

• Client EQ: Explaining that strategy to a nervous business owner.

Most agencies try to solve this by hiring junior buyers and layering "Client Managers" on top to buffer them. This fails.

It creates a game of telephone that frustrates your clients. I have seen clients churn simply because they went through five account managers in two years. This approach turns your valuable paid search service into an unpredictable, high-risk churn machine.

Client relationships are not solved by layers; they are solved by competence and ACCESS. You simply cannot scale a premium service on the back of junior talent or disjointed communication.

2. The "Defensive" Data Trap

Paid Search is a high-stress environment. Costs (CPC) are rising, competition is fierce, and algorithms change weekly. And clients come to the agency having been burned repeatedly.

When performance dips, inexperienced paid search teams go into "Defense Mode." They hide behind jargon, excuses, or vanity metrics to explain why ROAS is down.

• Clients see ads as an investment. This is stressful.

• Agencies often treat ads as a task list and lack compassion.

This misalignment makes the client feel unheard and unhappy, even if the numbers are decent. Defensive data communication is basically just reporting what happened, not strategizing what happens next.

The Novice Team: The client asks, "Why is my CPL up?" The novice team says, "Auction competition." The Expert Team: The expert team says, "CPL is up, but we saw a 40% rise in lead quality, so we're shifting budget to the top 5% of converting campaigns."

That is the difference between handing off a task list and being a true business partner who owns the solution.

3. The Operational Black Box

Google Ads is complex, and clients don’t want to wait for your junior team to "figure it out" via trial and error.

Without vetted processes, fraud protection, and standardized reporting, your paid ads team is reinventing the wheel every week. This burns out your staff and wastes your client's budget. When your processes are a black box, every client escalation has to land on your desk, the agency owner.

✅ The Solution: Stop "Managing" and Start "Owning"

You don't need to replace your entire team. You need a veteran to stabilize the ship, install a world-class system, and train your current talent to be able to talk strategically.

As someone who has spent 15 years in the trenches navigating "worst-case scenarios" where PPC was the last hope before a business folded, I know exactly how to turn this chaos into a profitable, scalable revenue stream.

Here is how I partner with agency owners to build a stable, high-growth PPC division:

1. Knowledge Transfer and Strategic Communication

I don't just "do"—I transfer knowledge. I implement my proprietary Strategic Communication Model right into your workflow.

This model trains your team to move from defending data to owning the business conversation. I mentor paid search teams on how to talk to a CMO about ROI and business impact, not just a Google Ads report about impressions and clicks.

This is exactly what I helped a paid search agency owner fix after his junior team was drowning him in escalations. After working with me, his churn went down to ZERO the next quarter.

2. Operational Stabilization

When client relationships get tense, I step in. I act as the senior, high-level resource to de-escalate stress, interpret the data, and set realistic, profitable expectations. I stabilize the chaos and free you, the owner, from being the default point of escalation.

I work side by side of the team to help them understand what the client is really asking.

3. Infrastructure Installation

I bring the proven processes, vetted reporting solutions, and fraud mitigation strategies that I have developed over a decade. We stop guessing and start standardizing. Your PPC division runs on a system, not on hope.

Paid Search should be your agency’s most powerful retention tool, not your biggest headache. With all the automation it really should and CAN be easier.

More and more companies and brands are pulling away from agencies and bringing paid search in-house. The same systems and training I implement for those companies—the 90-Day Build & Train Program—can be applied to your agency team before it's too late.

If you are ready to stabilize your operations and transform your junior paid search team into confident, strategic business partners, let's talk.

We'll stop the chaos and install the systems and talent that allow your PPC division to run itself and answer the hard questions for clients.

— Sarah Stemen