Should I Hire a Google Ads Manager or Do It Myself?

Should you do Google Ads yourself or hire a Google Ads manager?

Most small businesses are better off hiring a Google Ads manager. You can do Google Ads yourself if you spend at least $1,500 a month, run a service business, have conversion tracking that matches your CRM and can give the account 6 to 10 hours a month. If your Google Ads conversions don't line up with your CRM, or you've never looked at your search terms report, it's time to hire someone. The mistakes usually cost more than the management fee.

TL;DR:

• You can run Google Ads yourself if the ads bring in new customers at a profitable cost, and your CRM confirms it.
• Hire a Google Ads manager if your search terms are full of irrelevant searches, you rely on broad match keywords, or your conversions don't match your CRM.
• Doing it properly takes 6 to 10 hours a month on a $2,000 to $5,000 budget, and that assumes you already know what to look for.
• A good Google Ads manager costs around $1,500 to $2,500 a month for a small to medium business. Our fee is $1,725 for accounts spending under $10,000 a month.
• Before you sign, make sure you own the ad account, the lock-in is 3 months or less and a senior person is doing the work.

Signs you can keep running Google Ads yourself

The strongest sign is simple. Your ads are bringing in new customers, and each one costs you an amount that's profitable for your business. If you can see that in your CRM and your bank account, you're in a good spot.

Behind that result, a well-run DIY account usually has these in place:

• Conversion tracking that works. Each lead is counted once, and the numbers match back to your CRM.
• Clean search terms. The searches triggering your ads are relevant to what you sell.
• Phrase and exact match keywords. A mix of the two, with no broad match.
• More than one ad being tested. So you're learning which message brings in better customers.
• The right bidding strategy for where your account is at. More on this below.

If you can tick all five, you probably don't need to hire anyone yet.

Signs it's time to hire a Google Ads manager

Most people who come to us aren't getting good results, and the reasons are usually the same. Their search terms are dirty, meaning they're full of searches that have nothing to do with the business. They're using broad match keywords. Or the account is set up in a way that makes it hard to tell what's working.

The tricky part is that a lot of these accounts look good on paper. When we dig in, we commonly find:

• Most of the conversions come from people searching the business name. These are existing customers or people who already knew about you.
• The business is paying for clicks on searches for products or services it doesn't sell.
• Conversion tracking is broken or counting the same lead twice, which inflates the results.
• Nobody has looked at the search terms report since the campaign launched.

The CRM test anyone can do

Compare the conversions Google Ads reports with the leads in your CRM for the same month. Your leads come from lots of places: organic search, referrals, word of mouth, social media and your ads. So Google Ads should only ever claim a share of them.

If Google Ads says 12 leads and your CRM says 12 leads, something is broken. Google Ads is taking credit for leads it didn't bring in, and every decision made from that data is built on the wrong numbers. We go deeper on this in why your Google Ads reporting is probably lying to you.

How much time does it take to do Google Ads yourself?

If you're spending $2,000 to $5,000 a month, plan on at least 6 to 10 hours a month to manage the account properly. That assumes you know what you're doing. If you're not sure what to check when something goes wrong, the hours climb quickly.

The first thing to slip when a business owner gets busy is the negative keyword review. It should happen weekly, because new search terms show up all the time. Miss a few weeks and the account can go off the rails. Google assumes it's doing a good job while it sends you people who never should have clicked.

Case study: a plumber's cost per conversion went up and so did his profit

We took over a Google Ads account from a plumbing business owner who had been running it himself, spending around $2,500 a month.

The account was built mostly on broad match keywords that were pulling in irrelevant traffic. A lot of the conversions were tied to services the business doesn't offer. Those conversions weren't turning into paying jobs, so the ad spend wasn't paying for itself.

Here's what we changed:

1. Removed every broad match keyword.
2. Added negative keywords to cut out the poor traffic already coming through.
3. Rebuilt the ads in a consistent format. The old ads had no structure, which made testing almost impossible, and they weren't very appealing to read.

After the rebuild, the account stopped reporting fake conversions and started reporting the customers won from the ads. The cost per conversion went up on paper, because we were only counting leads that turned into work. Two months after we started, the business had one of its best months.

Today he's getting around $3 to $4 back for every dollar spent, verified in his CRM. He and we can both see what the ads are bringing in, so we can keep improving from there. If you're in the trades, here's how we run Google Ads for plumbers.

Case study: the real estate agency paying $800 for a $300 customer

One of the most expensive DIY mistakes I've seen was a real estate agency that thought it was paying $300 to win a new client. It was paying $800.

The keywords looked right: "sell my house" and "buy a house" type searches. When we opened the search terms report, most of the searches were the agency's own name. People who already knew the agency were clicking the ads, and Google Ads was counting them as new customers.

In real estate that gap is huge. A commission on a sold property is around 3 to 4%, so each new client is worth tens of thousands of dollars. The campaign had run like this for months, and the agency lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission without knowing anything was wrong. It took one audit to find.

If you want to do Google Ads yourself, master these four things

Some business owners are a good fit for DIY. You'll want a budget of at least $1,500 a month, or you won't get enough data to make good decisions. Service businesses are easier to run yourself than eCommerce, because there are fewer levers to pull. And you need to be curious. Google Ads hides answers in hard-to-find places, and a lot of what you learn comes from reading between the lines of the data.

If that sounds like you, these are the four things that make or break an account.

1. Conversion tracking

If your tracking is wrong, every number you look at is wrong, and so is every decision you make from it. Check that each lead is counted once and that the totals line up with your CRM. If you're not sure yours is right, start with our guide to fixing Google Ads conversion tracking.

2. Negative keywords

Negative keywords decide who sees your ads almost more than the keywords you target. Learn the difference between phrase match and broad match negatives, and how each one blocks searches. Google explains the mechanics in its guide to negative keywords. Then review your search terms every week.

3. Keywords, match types and search volume

Learn how match types and search volume decide where your ads show, and how Google splits the budget between keywords in the same ad group. Here's a common trap. Put one keyword with 5,000 searches a month in an ad group with 20 keywords that get 100 searches each. The big keyword will soak up most of the budget, even if it's one of the worst performers on cost per conversion.

We break down match types in broad match vs exact match.

4. Bidding strategies

You need to know which bidding strategy suits the amount of data in your account, and how to use bidding to change where Google spends your money. Maximise clicks is the usual starting point for a brand new account with no data. In a competitive industry like pest control, it can backfire.

The top positions in pest control are expensive, and most advertisers are bidding for conversions. If you choose maximise clicks, Google is likely to hand you the leftover traffic. My view on why: Google judges the person as well as the search. Say someone has clicked through four websites and is on their fifth search, and Google knows people usually convert around the fifth search. That person is worth more than someone typing the same words for the first time. Advertisers bidding on conversions get that person. Advertisers on maximise clicks get the cheaper browsers.

Learn these four things properly and you've got a good shot at running a decent account yourself.

Why Google's recommendations make DIY harder

Google keeps pushing automation: Performance Max, auto-applied recommendations, AI Max and phone calls from Google Ads reps. A lot of this advice doesn't suit the Australian market.

• Performance Max needs a big budget and lots of conversion data to perform. Most small Australian accounts have neither.
• Auto-applied recommendations are often wrong for the campaign. The usual ones add broad match keywords or raise your budget.
• Google Ads reps tend to suggest the same two things: more budget and broad keywords.

Most of these suggestions are designed to get you spending more money with Google. Whether you make a profit from it is up to you. DIY advertisers often take bad advice from people who sound credible, it wrecks the account, and they walk away thinking Google Ads doesn't work for their business.

How much does a Google Ads manager cost?

For a small to medium business running 1 to 3 campaigns, or spending around $5,000 to $10,000 a month on ads, expect to pay a Google Ads manager between $1,500 and $2,500 a month.

Our fee is $1,725 a month for accounts spending under $10,000 a month. Accounts with lots of services and campaigns can cost more. You can see the full breakdown on our Google Ads cost page, and what you get at each price in how much it costs to hire a Google Ads specialist.

Whoever you hire, the test is the same. Add the management fee to your ad spend, then compare the total with the revenue the ads bring in and your gross margin. If you're making money after all of that, the manager is paying for themselves.

There's no minimum spend where hiring a manager starts to make sense. Most of the businesses we audit are losing more each month to common mistakes than a manager would cost to fix them.

Red flags when hiring a Google Ads manager or agency

A bad Google Ads agency usually shows the same signs: no ad testing, negative keywords added now and then, broad match keywords, no clear reason behind the campaign types and conversion tracking that's wrong.

The easiest check is the change history in your Google Ads account. If you only see one or two changes a month, and they're budget tweaks or a couple of negatives, nobody is managing the account. We've taken over accounts where the previous agency did nothing for months except move the budget around.

Also look at how the negative keywords were added. If they're all exact match (in square brackets, like [cheap plumber]), each one only blocks that exact search. Slightly different wording still gets through. It's a basic mistake, and it usually means the wider strategy is weak too.

If you're already with an agency and seeing these signs, here's what to know before you switch Google Ads agencies.

Questions to ask before you hire a Google Ads manager

1. Do I own the Google Ads account? You're paying for all the data and learning in that account. If you leave, it should stay with you.
2. How long is the lock-in? Three months or less is fair. It gives both sides a proper trial. If you're locked into 12 months with someone who isn't performing, you could burn tens of thousands of dollars.
3. How does reporting work? You want a monthly check-in with the person running your account. You need to know what's happening in the ads, and they need to know what's happening in your business.
4. Who will manage my account day to day? It's common to talk to a senior manager on the sales call, then get handed to a junior. A junior will waste your money on lessons a senior learned years ago.

Is there a middle ground?

A one-off Google Ads audit sits in the middle. It tells you what's gone wrong in the account, and you can use it to fix the problems yourself. Whether that's a good idea depends on how serious the problems are. A few loose negatives are easy to fix. Broken conversion tracking is harder.

We don't offer coaching, but there's plenty on YouTube if you decide to manage the account yourself.

Before you do, ask yourself how much leverage you get from running the ads. Would you make more money if you spent those hours on your sales process, your upsells or your delivery? Getting leads matters a lot, but it's one part of the business. It's also one of the easiest parts to hand off. There are far more people who can run your ads well than people who can improve your offer, your delivery or what makes you different.

Jesse's take: what I tell business owners

"Hand professional work to the professionals. Google has spent millions making Google Ads look simple, and it isn't. It's one of the most commonly messed up DIY jobs out there. The ads get people to your page. Everything after that decides whether they buy from you, and that's where your time gives you the best return. Hire someone you trust who does good work, then put your hours into closing deals, improving your offer and delivering for your customers."

Jesse Lees, founder of Senior Ad Managers

A good Google Ads manager will get you a positive return and will want to work with you for the long haul. That partnership is worth a lot to your business, as long as you put the time you get back into the parts of the business that need it.