As I continue to build my Google Ads client base, I have taken on a lot of already-existing accounts, some that have been up and running for years. Often, I am hired because the account quality and performance drops, either all at once or over the course of many months. One day, many business owners realize they do not know how to effectively run their ads, and it begins to show in the results.

As Google realized this - the presence of a lot of business owners who want ads but do not know how to manage them - they started to provide calls with ‘experts’ to diagnose issues and ‘optimize accounts.’ I decided to hop on a call with one of these experts, and I personally was less than impressed. On the one hand, I’m sure they have a lot of ads knowledge, and have been trained by Google…but on the other hand, they do not know YOUR business or YOUR goals, so any advice should be taken with a grain of salt.

One thing they will advise in a lot of cases is to use the ‘Auto-Apply’ feature under Recommendations. Please, do not use auto-apply in Google Ads. Here’s why.

One thing I love is seeing so many people start, grow, and run successful small businesses. In the years following my graduation from Virginia Tech I lost touch with a lot of my former classmates, as is fairly normal when everyone charts their own path and moves around the country.

This summer, I had the absolute joy of reconnecting with my friend Dr. Kendra O’Hora, who owns a therapeutic and educational practice based in Bel Air, Maryland, called Wellness & Co. The mission at Wellness & Co. is to provide top-notch wellness services from a place of passion and purpose. Their team of qualified and compassionate therapists meets the needs of couples both local to Hanford County, Maryland, and virtually all across the country.

When Dr. O’Hora contacted me, she just had a few basic questions about Google Ads…

In a lot of ways, Google’s number one goal is to make people’s lives easier. Sit with that for a minute and think about how true that statement is. How much more difficult would it be to fix things, look up that fact you forgot, find the information for the service you want, eat at a restaurant, or go about your life without being able to quickly and easily look it up on the internet first?

This concept applies to the average user as well as business owners, and when Google rolled out Smart Campaigns, one of its biggest selling points is that literally anyone can set up a Google Ads campaign - even if you know nothing about the platform in the first place! I won’t go into all the details of how to create a Smart Campaign (you can read more about them here), but let’s just say it takes about 5 minutes and a credit card number before your ads are rolling.

Easy, however, does not always mean better - or even good…