One of the most depressing things I’ve learned in this industry is how many small businesses piss away money every month from their Google Ads management. Whether it’s because of Google itself or marketing agencies, there’s a lot of unfortunate situations going on. In fact, this was something I touched on in the first blog I ever wrote! Finding Google Ads management can be tricky so we’ll go over managing Google Ads yourself, hiring someone, or outsourcing it to an agency.

The Problems With Using Google Ads Management Provided by Google

A lot of business owners get introduced to Google Ads through Google themselves making sure you know about it. If you register a business with Google MyBusiness they will send a promotional code. Inside your my MyBusiness account there will always be the link to create the ad. Google wants you to get sucked into their advertising platform because that’s how they generate a significant portion of their revenue.

Google Smart Campaigns: AI-Powered Google Ads Management

I’ll be the first to say that Google Smart Campaigns are an excellent place to start when you’re looking to utilize Google AdWords to explore new digital marketing opportunities. These smart campaigns utilize artificial intelligence to help generate ad copy, identify target keywords, set bids, and so much more. The problem is that AI is not in its science-fiction level stage yet. Meaning, a digital marketer like myself who creates a campaign will have undoubtedly better results than a smart campaign.

The problem is that AI doesn’t know niche information about industries. For example, the technology isn’t advanced enough to recognize that a tattoo studio in Boston doesn’t need to show advertisements for when someone searches “tattoo studio in Providence.” A significant portion of your budget gets wasted on these unrelated searches.

A list of negative keywords as well as only targeting phrase and exact match keywords is essential for making sure your ads get shown to the appropriate searches. Unfortunately, Google Smart Campaigns doesn’t allow you to tweak these settings. Smart Campaigns have some ability to not target certain phrases but you are still limited by the fact it only uses broach match keywords.

Google Loves To Spend Your Money With Its Google Ads Management

Regardless if you have a smart campaign or standard one, Google will provide reccomendations for your campaign settings based on its perfomance. These can be super useful to somebody managing a campaign themselves but if they don’t know what they are doing it can be a huge waste of money.

Remember, a significant portion of Google’s revenue as a company comes from its advertising platform. There is an incentive for Google to make you spend more money. These recommendations, although helpful, typically encourage you to spend more. For example, this recommendation below says it will keep costs the same but from experience I know that’s not 100% true.

A professional in charge of Google Ads Management will help make sure your campaigns get the most exposure, clicks, and customers for the least amount of money possible. Google recommendations will get you more exposure, clicks, and customers without telling you how to spend less money. For example, the most common recommendation Google provides is to increase your daily ad budget. (I have this permanently deactivated in my accounts) The trick is to set up bid adjustments so you pay significantly less for unlikely clicks and the least amount possible for your target demographics.

Hiring Somebody On Staff For Your Google Ads Management

Back in 2016, I took a job in Denver, CO to help out with a painter’s digital presence. He needed help with general office work, website stuff, and digital advertising. I had no experience in Google Ads at this time so he encouraged me to learn it. Within one month, we started to bring in an additional 10k in revenue from it. Then it doubled, tripled, even quadrupled to the point we were getting a 40X return on investment.

I’ll be honest, Google Ads was just something I had a knack for. The tagline for my business is “Jack of all trades, master of some!” Google Ads management happens to be one of those things I’m a master at. The point is though, if you have an employee interested in learning and you have faith in them, they can be in charge of your Google Ads management.

Keep in mind that there is a learning curve to it. My boss never knew I accidentally spent an unnecessary ~$3,000 in the early stages by using broad match keywords instead of phrase match keywords. The benefit to his business was that I was only spending 1/10th of my time on Google Ads management while still assisting in everything else I had to do like make phone calls, schedule appointments, and make basic website edits.

In my strategy sessions with clients who are interested in Google Ads management, I often recommend this alternative to them as a cheaper option. Think about it this way, if you can pay someone $20/hr to learn and manage it for you, it is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying an agency to do it. Then you can have a professional like me go in and audit the account on a yearly basis to make sure everything is set up properly and make optimizations myself or instruct your employee on what they need to do.

Using A Marketing Agency For Google Ads Management

Marketing agencies are going to charge you a lot more than $20/hr for Google Ads management. Standard rates are about $1,000/month or 50% of ad spend. Just for the ads management, not the cost of how much you are actually spending! Not to mention, ads management gets easier and easier each month because after about three months all possible optimizations can be made by then if somebody knows what they are doing.

Website Management and Google Ads Management Should Be Performed By The Same Agency

Half the battle with effective Google Ads management isn’t the campaigns themselves, instead, they are the landing pages you are sending leads to. Setting up the campaign and getting the most clicks for the least amount of money is fairly simple in my experience. The hardest part is building a landing page around those ads that get visitors to become actual leads!

Having the same agency be responsible for your ads as well as your website ensures that they build landing pages that convert. A lot of Google Ads management agencies will build your ads, take their commission, and tell you that your website isn’t functioning properly to get leads.

This is why my pricing is currently set up as $675/month which covers all your website expenses, manages all your marketing campaigns beyond just Google Ads, and offers system management. In fact, I’m so confident that my pricing is so competitive that I’ll match any price that includes as much as I do.

Marketing Agencies Love To Hide Bad Information In Their Google Ads Management Reports

This was something I saw happening way too much. I’ve performed hundreds of audits and agencies love to use what you don’t know against you. They’ll send over all these reports with these big numbers and fancy vocabulary to make it seem like they’re doing a great job. For example, the most common thing I see is that they say your ads got X amount of clicks. They don’t tell you how many of these clicks left your website immediately after entering which is something called bounce rate. If your bounce rate is over 75% then you are showing your ads to the wrong people.

It’s little tricks like these to make it seem like they are doing their job for Google Ads management when in reality they’re just spending that management fee to generate a five-second report. When I do reports for clients, I go into detail about what’s performing and more importantly what isn’t working. If something isn’t performing as it should, I believe it’s my duty as someone in charge of Google Ads management to explain what’s going on and what the plans are to fix it.

Need Help With Google Ads Management?

Whether you are looking to manage Google Ads yourself, hire someone, or outsource to an agency, there’s a variety of ways DOS-M can help. With a specialization in all types of digital optimizations, we can audit an existing campaign as well as help build/manage a new one. Schedule a free discovery call or reach out anytime with questions you might have about Google Ads management.