What Does a Google Ads Manager Actually Do?

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. There are dozens of reasons to hire a Google Ads manager (and you’re reading about one now!) but rather than making the case of ‘us versus them,’ I thought I would give a little peek behind the curtain of how a Google Ads manager actually improves campaigns and gets your ads in front of more qualified prospects. Here are just a few things we do:

• Initial research.
  Before even getting started, your Google Ads manager should conduct some initial research on keywords, competitors, and more. If you’re a small business owner you likely did not even think of this step - which should be the first clue that you may need to hire an expert to run your online ads!

• Creating a custom landing page.
  While this isn’t always necessarily, it can be incredibly effective. Believe it or not, sending a Google user to your homepage is often a bad decision that can lead to fewer leads and eventually lower the quality score of your ad, which is hard to reverse. Hiring an expert to create a landing page that matches with your Google Ads is an incredibly worthwhile investment!

• Writing effective, unique ad copy.
  Not everyone is good at writing ad copy, especially within the constraints of Google Ads. There are character limits, headline adjustments, keywords, quality scores, and more that you likely will not know as a business owner - because that’s not your job! Leave it to an ads expert to write the best ad copy for your business.

• Using targeted ads to the exact customers you want.
  Location, demographics, ad copy, and more all play into the kind of customers you want to attract to your business. Only a few of these options are available with Smart Campaigns, and because it is marketed to the masses, it can’t be fully customized for your best customers. Hiring a Google Ads manager can ensure you’re targeting the customers you actually want on your website!

• Adjusting bids.
  Your budget is not just a monthly metric - it’s broken down by the day and by keywords within each ad group. Your Google Ads manager can put more value on certain words and less value on others so you can prioritize the best value for your money.

• Looking at the results and making adjustments to keywords, ad copy, and more.
  If none of those other points seem valuable to you, this is the biggest one. A huge downside of setting up your own Smart Campaign is that you are not able to see detailed analytics about what worked, what didn’t, and who is clicking on your ad that is a worthwhile prospect. Because you can’t see these details you can’t make adjustments. This won’t matter much if the first ad campaign smashes it out of the park, but that’s unlikely to happen, and even less likely to stay true long-term. Yes, Google Ads learn and change as they run, but having a human who knows both the ad space and your business will create a quicker, more effective turnaround and a much better way to troubleshoot issues.

I may be a bit biased, but even from this short blog I think it’s obvious that hiring a Google Ads manager is 100% a worthwhile investment if you have the right budget and mindset!

Not sure if you’re ready, or if your customers are on Google? Schedule a chat with me and I’ll point you in the right direction, even if you decide to start running ads on your own!