Should you manage your own Google Ads or hire an agency?

Should you manage your Google Ads yourself or hire an agency? In Episode 43 of Inside Google Ads, host Jyll Saskin Gales explores the pros and cons of each option, emphasizing the importance of factors like time, budget, and campaign complexity. She also shares insights into red flags to watch out for when hiring an agency, including dubious claims about proprietary technology and account ownership.

Key Topics:

• DIY vs. Agency management for Google Ads
• Time and budget considerations
• Red flags when hiring a Google Ads agency
• Google rep recommendations and practices

Tune in to learn how to make the best decision for your business and avoid common pitfalls. And be sure to stay tuned 'til the end of the episode for a new Insider Challenge to solve!

You can get episode transcripts delivered to your inbox each week by signing up for free at https://free.jyll.ca/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode43

Inside Google Ads is exclusively sponsored by Optmyzr, the ultimate platform for managing your paid ads. Start your free full-functionality trial at https://optmyzr.com/blog?ref=ywu3y2m?utm_source=insidegoogleads&utm_medium=sponsorship

Google Ads Coaching
Want to learn how to manage your own Google Ads? Book a Google Ads Coaching call with me! Learn more at https://jyll.ca/pages/google-ads-coach?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode43

Find Jyll on social media
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https://www.threads.net/@the_google_pro
https://tiktok.com/@the_google_pro 

Transcript

Managing Google Ads is a lucrative business. I should know. I no longer manage ads for clients because my focus is now on coaching and teaching, but boy, when I did, I matched my Google salary very quickly!

As a business owner though, finding someone to manage your ads for you is treacherous territory. I should know. My courses and coaching practice are full of hardworking folks who were burned by an agency one too many times and decided to take their accounts back into their own hands. 

So which should you choose? Should you manage your own Google Ads or hire an agency?

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you. 

This is Inside Google Ads Episode 43: Getting Help. 

And a quick note before diving into this episode, to celebrate hitting 10,000 followers on LinkedIn, I am giving away 3 free Google Ads account audits. Yes, completely free!

And the catch? I will be live streaming the audits live on YouTube and LinkedIn. So if you or someone you know would like a free Google Ads account audit by me in exchange for letting your account be shown online, please contact me via my website. It's jyll.ca/contact or message me on any of my social media platforms. I'm accepting candidates until the end of November, 2024 and I'll be doing the audits in December 2024. 

Our first question today comes from Boris Beceric on LinkedIn, and he asks, how to determine if you should hire an agency or freelancer for Google Ads versus running it yourself or in-house? 

Deciding whether or not to manage your Google Ads yourself comes down to two key things: time and budget. Basically, do you want to hire an expert or become an expert?

Let's start with time. If you're going to manage your own Google Ads, or ask someone on your team to do it, then you or they will need to get trained up and make time for ongoing management, as well as ongoing learning and development, because Google Ads is constantly changing.

Complexity also has something to do with time. If you're planning to run one or two Search campaigns and one Shopping campaign, then yes, you can probably get away with training up and doing it yourself. But if you're starting to get into lead gen with Offline Conversion Tracking, or you want to get into video and image-based ads, or complicated audience structures, or you're in a niche space, then at a minimum, you're going to want to have someone like me to ensure you get it set up correctly and show you how to optimize and what to look for, so you can manage it yourself on an ongoing basis. 

The other consideration is budget. Agency and freelancer rates vary wildly, but for good, solid management, you're looking at a bare minimum of $1,000 a month for management (if we're looking at places like the US, Canada, UK, Australia). So unless your ad spend is going to be at least $3,000 a month, which is $100 a day, then it's probably not worth it to hire someone to manage it for you. Because $3,000 a month in ad spend and $1,000 a month in management fees means you are now spending $4,000 a month on ads. Every one of your ad dollars will have to be a third more efficient to make up for those management fees. That is a tall order. Whereas, if you're spending five or six figures a month, then sure, the management fees will be a bit higher too, but that ratio starts to look a lot more worth it. 

It all comes down to asking yourself this key question. Do you want to hire an expert or become an expert? You gotta choose one of those options.

Now, please forgive me, but I have to plug my coaching services here because this is exactly who they're designed for. 

I actually have two retainer clients who joined me this month. One is a business owner who's been cycling through agencies and freelancers for years and finally said, “Enough, no one will care about my business the way I do, so I need to learn to manage this myself.” I'm guiding him through analyzing what the last agency did, setting up a new campaign and how to optimize so that he can now own his own ads destiny.

The other retainer client who joined me this month runs a digital marketing agency, and they're experts in web development and SEO, but they've outsourced the PPC management for their clients to a white label freelancer. Well, the PPC results were inconsistent at best, bad at worst. So now I'm training the agency owners on Google Ads, using their actual client accounts, so they can now manage it in-house, saving money on freelancers and driving better, holistic results for their clients.

You can book just an hour with me or sign on for a consulting retainer. Learn more on my website, jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or follow the link in the episode description to learn more about Google Ads Coaching.

Our next question today comes from Marketing on TikTok and they say thoughts on [a certain agency] using proprietary technology so they don't take over your existing ad accounts, but instead create a new one. 

I have removed the name of the agency for this question since I don't want to get sued, but any ads manager who tells you they have some proprietary technology is full of BS.

You know, what's proprietary? Google's bidding algorithms, Google's targeting algorithms. Nothing we as practitioners do in Google Ads is proprietary.

We may have our own strategies or methods or even scripts we like. For example, I coined the Rule of 2, and Indirect Competitor Targeting, but in no universe can I pretend that those strategies are proprietary to me somehow. 

You should always own your own ad account.

You should always pay your own Google Ads bill.

If an agency or freelancer wants to create a new account for you, or - here's a crazy one I actually heard a few weeks ago - if they want to install a pixel on your site that you'll share with hundreds of other sites in their portfolio in your industry so that you can benefit from their data set… no, run for the hills!

No matter how much you love this agency or freelancer in the beginning, these relationships inevitably come to an end at some point, and you will completely lose access to your Google Ads account if you don't own it in the first place.

To be clear, I'm not trying to be negative on hiring help. I think for so many business owners, it makes sense to hire the expertise of a skilled agency or freelancer. But as with any relationship, whether it's a business or a romantic relationship, there are some red flags to look out for. So when hiring help, a huge red flag is if they insist that they need to own your account or if they insist that they have some proprietary magic that you need.

This podcast is exclusively sponsored by Optmyzr, the ultimate platform for managing Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and paid social ads through automation layering. A friend of mine, we actually worked at Google together and he specializes in the auto industry, he’s been consulting since leaving Google in his network of car dealerships, and people kept asking him, can you manage my ads? Can you manage my ads? And so after a while, he thought, “I should start to say yes to these opportunities.” He'd heard me talk about Optmyzr on the podcast so he sent me a message in GChat and said, “Hey Jyll, is Optmyzr legit?” 

Yes! I would not talk about it like this on my podcast if I did not think it was legit. 

So he reached out to Optmyzr and started his free full functionality trial, worked with the sales rep from Optmyzr to understand the key features, and now he's off to the races with his new agency and his new Google Ads management clients. You can do the same at optmyzr.com. That's O-P-T-M-Y-Z-R dot com or follow the link in the episode description. And hey, tell them you heard about Optmyzr from Jyll. 

Our third question today comes from Andy Youngs on LinkedIn, and he has a little bit of a horror story. Something about Google Ads reps and their recommendations and practices, as we've just had a Google rep actively make changes to a client account without authorization from us or the client. The changes they made included writing new ad copy, adjusting headline pinning and changing a bid strategy and they don't even show in the account change history. 

This was a terrible story that Andy shared a few weeks ago on LinkedIn. Thankfully, this is an anomaly, not the norm, but I'm happy to share a bit about Google reps and what to expect. 

Sneak peek though, Episode 48, five episodes from now, it'll come out on December 26th, 2024 is going to be all about Google reps and what you need to know from an Ex-Googler.

For today, I'll say that Google reps are salespeople, not support people.

Their job is sales. The job of the recommendations you see in the Google Ads platform is sales. That doesn't mean they're bad or evil or trying to cheat you. They do want you to succeed. These are good people with good intentions, but you do not need to ever open the Google Ads interface in order to actually become a Google sales rep. Keep that in mind. 

It's like the difference between hiring a chef and hiring a food stylist. Both of them work with food, right? But the chef's goal is delicious food. The food stylist's goal is pretty food. So food stylists will do some disgusting things, I've seen this on TikTok, like mixing cheese with glue on pizza to get the perfect cheese pull, or making fake ice cream that won't melt out of flour and… I can't even remember what.

The point is, the food stylist's job is to make it pretty, just like the Google rep's job is to upsell. We don't get mad at a food stylist for making food that would poison you because that's not their job. Hire a chef if you want delicious food. So we shouldn't get mad at Google reps for upselling because that's their job. Hire an independent expert if you want personalized Google Ads advice for your business.

I shared a lot of red flags to watch out for and counterpoints to consider in this episode. I hope this provides you with more clarity on whether you should manage your own Google Ads account or hire an agency, and what to look for when entrusting your hard-earned dollars to someone else to manage. 

Today's Insider Challenge is this. Let's say you decide to outsource your Google Ads management. You are a lead gen business and you're looking to spend $10,000/month on ads. You interview a few agencies and freelancers and these are the rates they give you. Keep in mind, a lot more goes into choosing a partner than just their rates, but for this challenge, we're focusing on pricing.

Which of these three options would you choose? 

Option A, freelancer, $2,000/month flat management fee plus a $4,000 first month setup fee. 

Option B, agency, you'll pay them 15% of ad spend. So with $10,000/month ad spend, you're going to be paying the agency $1,500/month on top of that. 

Option C, freelancer, 20% of sales. So let's say you close $100,000 in sales that first month, they make $20,000 on top of the $10,000 ad spend. But if there are no sales, they make $0. 

Which would you choose? Option A, flat fee? Option B, percent of spend? Or option C, percent of sales?

The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real life Google Ads problem solving.

Next week, it's Thanksgiving in the US and I've got a special episode for you where I'll be introducing something new. So I'll share my response to this challenge in Episode 45. 

Last Episode's Insider Challenge was this: Target Impression Share is an automated bid strategy, not a smart bidding strategy. What is the situation in which you might want to use a Target Impression Share bid strategy? Or would you never use Target Impression Share? 

My answer is that I would never use Target Impression Share.

Remember, your bid strategy is how you tell Google what you want your campaign to achieve. I just can't think of a scenario where impressions is my goal. My goal is always conversion driven. And if I have an awareness goal, then I wouldn't be using a Search campaign in the first place, so this would be a moot point.

But hey, I welcome disagreement. There's no right or wrong answers here. Is there a situation where you would use Target Impression Share bidding?

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.