Published prices invite a fair question: what am I actually buying? At Pasecom the entry retainer is PPC Focus from £1,250 / month — one platform, weekly hands in the account, a monthly review or visit, and you talk to me, not a junior. This note spells out the work inside that band so East Midlands manufacturers, distributors and trade SMEs can decide whether it fits before they book a diagnostic.
We are an AI and PPC company equally. This article is about the paid-search door. If your problem is stock and feeds lying to Shopping, read the companion note on why Shopping ads sell kit that is not in the warehouse. If organic pages need to compound, that is the SEO pillar. Here we stay with the retainer.
What “from £1,250” means
From means the published floor for a clean one-platform retainer when the account is a sensible size for weekly senior work. Complex Merchant feeds, messy conversion history or a rescue after years of neglect can sit above the floor — we say so after looking at the login, not after a sales call. Media spend is never inside the retainer. Google, Microsoft or Meta bill your payment method. The £1,250 is for running the account properly.
PPC Focus covers one of Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising or Meta Ads. Two platforms is PPC Senior at £1,850 / month. Three is PPC Multi at £2,450 / month. Those bands are on the PPC page. This article is the Focus band in detail.
What is inside the monthly fee
Weekly in-account work
I am in the platforms every week. Search terms, negatives, auction insights, brand protection, budget where targets still make sense, and a waste pass that does not wait for month-end theatre. For Shopping and Performance Max that includes feed hygiene flags and asset discipline — not a hope that automation will forgive a broken catalogue.
Weekly does not mean a fifteen-slide pack. It means decisions in the account: pause what leaks, protect what converts, and write a short note when something material changed. If there is nothing useful to change, I say that too. Silence dressed as “optimisation” is not included.
Tracking and measurement hygiene
If tracking is wrong, the retainer is guesswork. GA4, Tag Manager, conversion actions and Merchant Center hygiene sit inside running the account. We fix broken goals, duplicate tags and “thank you page viewed” events that fire while the sale closes on the phone. We do not invent ROAS screenshots for the website. Live metrics belong in your login.
Monthly review or visit
Once a month you get a plain-English note and a conversation. If you are inside about 40 miles of Hinckley — Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Coventry, Loughborough, Nuneaton, Castle Donington and the named towns on the East Midlands page — that conversation can be on site. Further afield it is a call on your login. Either way you talk to Peter.
You keep the Ads account
Logins stay in your name. I work inside them with you. There is no hostage MCC, no “we built it so we own it”, and no private sheet of passwords. If we part ways, you still have the account.
Honest channel advice
If the chosen platform is the wrong door for the margin or the demand, I say so. Paying a retainer to scale a channel that should be paused is not a win. Focus means one platform done properly — not three half-built campaigns to look busy.
What a typical month looks like
Week 1 after start (or after a diagnostic handoff): access sorted, tracking checked, a waste pass, and one page of notes so you know what I found. Weeks 2–4: search-term discipline, negatives, feed issues where relevant, brand protection, and budget where targets hold. Month end: plain-English note plus conversation — what spent, what converted, what changed, what we will not do next month.
That cadence is the product. It is not a junior reading an automated report into a Zoom. Twenty years on Google, Microsoft and Meta taught the same lesson: accounts improve when a senior person is accountable weekly, not when a deck arrives quarterly.
What stays outside £1,250
- Media spend — always on your Ads billing
- A second or third platform — that is Senior or Multi
- Website rebuilds and CRO programmes — supporting work, scoped separately
- Full SEO retainers — organic is a pillar with its own starting band from £1,250 / month when scoped
- AI First Job build fees — automation projects are priced on the AI page; stock-to-ads sync can help PPC without being free inside Focus
- Creative production studios — Meta needs assets; we advise and place, we do not pretend to be a film crew inside the retainer
If a job needs those extras, we name them. We do not smuggle them into a vague “full service” promise.
Diagnostic first — £350, waived if you start
Before a retainer I usually take ninety minutes on your login — on-site if you are within about 45 minutes of Hinckley. The diagnostic is £350 and waived if you start a retainer. You get a clear view of what is broken and whether Focus is the right band. Sometimes the honest answer is “fix tracking and wait” or “Microsoft is empty and that should be the first door.” See also Microsoft Ads is still empty.
Who Focus is for — and who should step up
Focus fits UK SMEs with meaningful spend on one engine that needs a senior operator: manufacturers and distributors around the East Midlands, trade and plant suppliers, catalogue businesses with a maintainable feed, and owners who are done with juniors and PDF theatre. Step up to Senior or Multi when Google and Microsoft both carry demand, or when Meta prospecting is a deliberate second door rather than leftover budget.
Focus is the wrong buy if tracking is still fiction and nobody will grant access, if you want a junior farm behind another logo, or if the commercial problem is really “our stock feed lies” and you refuse to touch Merchant Center. In that last case, start with availability truth — often with a practical AI workflow — then put paid search back on honest inventory.
How this sits next to AI and SEO
Twin doors: you can hold a PPC retainer and still request an AI demo login for inbox, quotes or stock-to-ads. SEO & AIEO compounds the same product language that Ads already prove. We do not force a bundle. We do not bury PPC behind an AI pitch. Published bands exist so you can compare Focus to Senior and Multi without a discovery maze.
Next step
Bring the platform you care about, a spend ballpark, and what feels broken. We will say whether £1,250 Focus, a higher band, a diagnostic only, or no retainer is the honest call. Direct: contact form · PPC retainers · pete@pasecom.co.uk · Advice Hub.