Should my marketing agency charge separately for advertising management? Yes, separately — but as a flat fee, not a percentage of your ad budget. Percentage billing pays the agency more for spending more, whatever the spend produces.
Under percentage billing, the agency's recommendation to increase your budget is also a recommendation to increase its own fee. That conflict never goes away.
- Published pricing — $2,500, $3,500 and $4,500 a month, on the site.
- Month to month. No contract is holding you anywhere.
- A former attorney of 17 years who filed 5,000+ cases works your account.
- You see your rankings move for 14 days before you are billed a dollar.
- Law firms only — no other industries, ever.
| Attorney Pro Marketing | Scorpion | FindLaw | Typical legal agency | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing published on the website | Yes — $2,500 / $3,500 / $4,500 per month | Not published | Not published | Rarely published |
| Contract term | Month to month, 30 days’ notice | Not published | Not published | Commonly 12 months |
| Who works on your account | A former attorney of 17 years, in every account | Assigned account team | Assigned account team | Account manager, often across industries |
| Your website is built on | Standard, portable code | Proprietary platform | FirmSite platform | Varies — ask before signing |
| See results before you are billed | Yes — 14 days, then you decide | No | No | No |
| Ad spend billed by Google directly to you | Yes, no markup | Ask | Ask | Often passes through the agency |
“Not published” means the figure does not appear on that company’s own website as of October 2026 — check for yourself before you sign anything, with them or with us.
Why Separating It Is Reasonable
Running paid campaigns is different labour from organic work, and it behaves differently. Organic and local work compounds slowly and keeps producing. Paid campaigns need weekly attention — search term review, negative keyword additions, bid adjustments, ad testing, landing page iteration — and stop producing the day the budget stops.
A firm that runs no paid advertising should not subsidise the capability, and a firm running $15,000 a month through Google needs materially more attention than one running $1,500. Separating the charge makes both of those honest.
So separation is not the issue. What the separate charge is calculated on is the issue.
The Percentage Problem
The industry default is 10 to 20 percent of ad spend. It is simple and it scales with workload, which is the argument for it.
Here is the argument against, stated as plainly as possible: under percentage billing, every recommendation to raise your budget is also a recommendation to raise the agency's fee.
- Spending more, not earning more. A budget increase pays the agency whether or not the extra spend produces a signed case.
- Keeping expensive keywords alive. Pausing a costly term that is not converting reduces spend, and therefore reduces the fee.
- Broad targeting over tight. Tight targeting spends less. Less spend, less fee.
- Silence about cheaper channels. If local search would produce the same cases at a fraction of the media cost, a percentage-billed agency is paid less for saying so.
None of this requires anyone to act in bad faith. It only requires people to respond normally to the structure they are paid inside, which is what people do.
What a Flat Management Fee Looks Like
A flat fee for campaign management, set by scope rather than by budget size, removes the conflict. The agency earns the same whether your media budget is $2,000 or $8,000, which means a recommendation to cut spend costs it nothing to make.
Scope the fee honestly on things that actually drive the work: number of campaigns, number of practice areas, number of geographies, how many landing pages need iteration. Revisit it if the account genuinely grows into something larger. What you are avoiding is a formula where the fee moves automatically with the budget.
If an agency insists on a percentage, three mitigations are worth asking for: a cap above a stated spend level, a floor so small accounts remain viable, and a written commitment that budget recommendations will be accompanied by cost-per-signed-case figures rather than impression and click counts.
Who Should Be Billed by Google
Separate from the fee question, and arguably more important: the advertising itself should be billed to your firm's card directly by Google, in your firm's own Google Ads account.
- No markup is possible. You see Google's actual invoice, so there is nothing to add a percentage to quietly.
- You keep the conversion history. Campaign learning accumulates in the account. If the account is the agency's, you lose all of it on departure and the next agency starts from zero.
- You can audit the spend. Search terms, costs, conversions — all visible to you, not summarised for you.
- You can stop immediately. Your card, your account, your decision, without waiting for a billing cycle or a notice period.
Attorney Pro Marketing works this way as standard. Google Ads management is included in the flat monthly fee at the Growth and Dominate tiers — $3,500 and $4,500, published — with no percentage of ad spend at any tier, and advertising is billed to your firm directly by Google in an account registered in your firm's name, with no markup. The fee does not move when your budget moves, which means a recommendation to spend less costs us exactly nothing to make. Month to month, 30 days' notice. Our Google Ads management page sets out the structure.
See it before you pay for it.
We snapshot your rankings on day 0, build and launch your site within three days, and show you the movement on day 14. If it has not moved enough to be worth continuing, you owe nothing for that period and you keep the Google Business Profile work.
Related Questions
Yes, and it is reasonable. Managing paid campaigns is distinct recurring labour from organic work — weekly search term review, negative keywords, bid adjustments, ad testing — and a firm running no advertising should not subsidise the capability. The structure of the separate charge matters more than the separation itself.
It pays the agency more for spending more, regardless of what the spend produces. Every recommendation to raise the budget also raises the fee; pausing an expensive non-converting keyword reduces the fee; and an agency billed a percentage earns less by telling you a cheaper channel would produce the same cases.
The industry default is 10 to 20 percent of advertising spend. A flat management fee scoped to the actual work — number of campaigns, practice areas, geographies and landing pages — achieves the same coverage without tying the agency's compensation to the size of your media budget.
Yes. Direct billing to your firm's card in your firm's own Google Ads account means no markup is possible, you keep the conversion history that campaigns accumulate rather than losing it on departure, you can audit search terms and costs yourself, and you can stop spending immediately without waiting for a billing cycle.