Search campaign build
Account structure, keyword and negative keyword lists, ad copy, conversion tracking and the initial launch. It's where most service businesses start, since a quote request is worth far more to them than raw traffic.
Google Ads specialist who treats every click as money that has to come back
A Google Ads specialist has one job: turning the money you spend on clicks back into inquiries or sales. Within 24 hours we match a vetted person to your industry and campaign type. We're not an agency, so one named individual runs your campaigns, not whoever is free on a rotating team. We check their portfolio and past accounts first, and a senior project manager with 15+ years in marketing oversees the work. Your first call nails down the goal and the scope.
Free, no obligation. A senior project manager walks you through the analysis.
Free analysis in 24 hours
Send us your website. Within 24 hours, you'll get a written analysis comparing your marketing with your competitors'.
Key takeaways
The short version
Before you read on
- AdWords and Google Ads are the same job. Google renamed the product in July 2018, but the old name lives on in industry slang and job postings.
- What you pay to run the account is always separate from the ad budget that goes to Google. A quote with one lump sum and no breakdown is hard to read and an early red flag.
- Hourly rates in the US run $75 to $150, and ongoing management starts around $500 to $1,000 a month. Agencies are more likely to charge 10 to 25 percent of ad spend.
- A Google certification says little about skill. It's a free online exam you can pass in an hour, so count it as a baseline, not a reason to hire.
- Your business should own the ad account. If it's under the provider's details, you lose the conversion history and everything the algorithm learned when you part ways.
- Under roughly $1,500 a month in ad spend, campaigns in competitive industries rarely collect enough data to learn. An honest specialist will say so rather than take the job.
Worth knowing
What the person running your Google Ads account actually does
The job is building and running paid campaigns on Google Search and the placements connected to it: the Display Network, YouTube, Gmail and Shopping. Day to day it boils down to three things. Setting up the account structure and conversion tracking. Checking every single day which search terms are really eating the budget. Shifting money to wherever a new customer costs the least.
Nearly every conversation about Google Ads blurs two numbers, and you're better off keeping them apart. The first is the ad budget. It goes straight to Google and pays for clicks, nothing else. The second is what the account manager charges. Google doesn't pay commission to whoever runs your ads, so the two never overlap, and a quote should always list them on separate lines.
Knowing the interface rarely separates a strong practitioner from an average one. How they define a conversion does. Count a visit to the contact page as a win and the reports will look great while sales sit at zero. Count a submitted inquiry or a completed order and the account tells you the truth, even when it stings. So the first thing to ask any Google Ads expert is simple: what exactly will we count as a conversion, and how will we verify it?
We match the person to your campaign type and to where your ad account stands today, because projects don't all need the same scope. If you'd rather have a team than one individual, take a look at our Google Ads management service.
Side by side
Scopes of work a matched specialist can take on
Shopping and product campaigns
Building or fixing the product feed in Google Merchant Center, then organizing Shopping campaigns and splitting them by margin and inventory turnover. Online stores need this first, because shoppers see the product and price before they ever click.
Performance Max
A single automated campaign that runs across all of Google's placements. Without solid conversion tracking and audience signals, it spends your money on branded searches you'd have gotten for free.
Remarketing and audience lists
Ads for people who've already visited your site or left something in their cart. They're usually the cheapest conversions in the account, but they depend on stored history that's gone for good if you switch ad accounts.
Audit of a running account
A look at structure, match types, negatives and conversion tracking in an account that's already spending. It's usually a one-time job of several to about fifteen hours, and it tells you whether to fix the account or start over.
Cost per acquisition reporting
A report on conversions, what each customer costs and what the budget returns, without jargon or reach metrics. You agree on it up front, so after three months nobody has to guess whether the work is paying off.
Step by step
How hiring works, one step at a time
Step 1
Describe the account and the goal
Tell us where your ad account stands, what you plan to spend on ads and what you're after: sales, quote requests or traffic. The clearer the goal, the better the match. No account yet? Just tell us what you sell and who buys it.
Step 2
A specialist matched within 24 hours
The project manager chooses someone with documented experience in your industry and in the campaign type you need. You get a real name and a real track record, not a vague promise of a team.
Step 3
A free conversation and an estimate
The first call is free. It settles the scope and picks one number that will show you both whether the campaign is working. It's also when an honest specialist will tell you straight out if a channel doesn't make sense at your budget.
Step 4
Work starts, on an account in your name
The specialist starts on the agreed scope. The project manager, with 15+ years of experience, reviews every stage and steps in if acquisition cost wanders off plan. The ad account is set up under your details, so it's still yours when the work wraps up.
Worth knowing
Certified AdWords specialist: what that badge really tells you
Google Ads certification is a free online test in Google Skillshop. It takes about an hour, you can retake it as many times as you want, and it quizzes you on the interface and on terminology, not on running profitable campaigns. A certified AdWords specialist has cleared a formal bar, and that's all. Someone with no certificate and five years of accounts in your industry is a better bet than a freshly certified beginner with no portfolio.
So what should you look at instead? Start with hard numbers from other accounts, something like: we brought cost per inquiry down from $120 to $65 in four months, on this budget, in this industry. You can confirm a claim like that with one call to the client it mentions. Next, workload. Ask how many accounts they juggle, because nobody checks twenty accounts every day. Finally, listen to how they talk about failure. A specialist who can walk you through an account they couldn't save, and explain why, usually knows more than one whose charts only ever go up.
Google's partner badges for agencies are a different animal. They belong to a firm, require a certain level of client spend plus minimum performance scores, and you can look them up in Google's own partner directory. That's a stronger signal than a personal certificate. Still, it tells you about size, not about how someone will handle your account.
Worth knowing
Fees for running an account, kept apart from media spend
These are typical US market rates for account management, and senior experts in pricey industries charge above them. None of them covers the ad budget you pay Google, so budget for that on its own.
Specialist's hourly rate
$75 to $150 per hour
Ongoing account management
from about $500 to $1,000 per month
Agency percentage model
10 to 25 percent of ad spend
One-off account audit
usually several to about fifteen hours
Smallest sensible media budget
from about $1,500 per month
Matching to your industry and campaign type
within 24 hours
Checklist
Ten things to check during the first call
Each question takes about a minute, and together they weed out most bad fits.
Checklist
- Brings up their own fee separately from the ad budget before you ask.
- Wants to know your margin and what a customer is worth before suggesting a budget, because there's no other way to set a sensible acquisition cost.
- Insists on setting up or checking conversion tracking before anything goes live.
- Agrees the ad account is registered to you and stays yours when the work ends.
- Gives specific numbers from other accounts, with the industry and budget attached, not percentages pulled out of context.
- Tells you plainly how many other accounts they're running right now.
- Can explain why a certain campaign type doesn't fit your budget.
- Suggests one business number to judge success by, and a date when you'll both look at it.
- Won't promise a specific ad position or a fixed cost per click, since the auction reruns with every search.
- Walks you through the report in terms of money, not impressions and reach.
Worth knowing
A matched specialist or an advertising agency
An agency gives you a bench of several people and someone to cover vacations. The downside: a salesperson and an account manager sit between you and whoever actually runs the campaign, and you don't get to pick who handles your account. Agencies also like to charge a percentage of spend, which has a flaw baked in. The more budget you burn, the more they make, even while your cost per customer rises. With a big budget, that's a model to push back on.
Finding a Google Ads freelancer on your own is the cheapest option, and you deal with them directly. The risk shows up elsewhere. Nobody covers when they're sick or away, arrangements tend to stay informal, and there's no one to step in when the work doesn't match what you agreed. Our freelancer and agency comparison lays out the general tradeoffs.
A matched specialist falls between those two. You get a named Google Ads consultant chosen for the task and campaign type, with a portfolio we've already checked, plus a senior project manager with 15+ years in marketing who signs off on each stage. If you and the specialist disagree about scope, that project manager also acts as referee.
Worth knowing
When to hire a Google Ads specialist and when to run the account yourself
Going solo makes sense if you have one simple product, a short list of search terms and a budget under roughly $1,500 a month. At that size a specialist's fee would eat a big share of your total spend. A basic Search campaign with a careful negative keyword list is something you can build yourself over a few evenings.
Somewhere around $3,000 to $5,000 a month, the math flips. Broad match with no negatives, no conversion tracking, a Performance Max campaign living off branded traffic: at that spend, mistakes like these cost more each month than hiring someone who'd avoid them. Online stores also have a product feed to worry about, and feed errors can silently shut down a whole Shopping campaign without any obvious warning.
There's a third situation where paying a pro makes sense even if you keep running the account yourself: a one-time audit. Several to fifteen hours of an experienced person's time will show whether the account has a structural problem or just needs minor fixes. It's usually the cheapest way to start working with someone, and a good way to test them before handing over the account for the long haul.
FAQ
Questions companies ask us
Short answers. The free analysis call covers anything specific to your company.
01What does a Google Ads specialist do?
They build the account structure, pick keywords and negatives, set up conversion tracking, write the ads and check daily which search terms are using up the budget. The point is to lower what it costs you to win a customer, not to rack up impressions or clicks.
02How much does a Google Ads specialist charge?
In the US, hourly rates run from $75 to $150, and ongoing account management starts around $500 to $1,000 a month. Agencies more often take 10 to 25 percent of ad spend. None of that includes the ad budget you pay Google.
03How much does a PPC specialist earn in the US?
A salaried PPC specialist at a US agency or in-house team typically earns about $50,000 to $85,000 a year, depending on seniority, region and the size of the budgets they manage. Working independently, the same person usually bills $75 to $150 an hour. If you're a business looking for help, the monthly cost of management, from about $500 to $1,000, is the more useful number.
04What does it mean to be a certified Google AdWords specialist?
It means they passed a free, roughly one-hour online exam in Google Skillshop that covers the interface and terminology. That's a baseline, not proof of results. Numbers from past accounts, how many accounts they run at once and how they measure conversions will tell you much more.
05Is AdWords the same thing as Google Ads?
Yes. Google renamed AdWords to Google Ads in July 2018, but people still use the old name in conversation, job listings and searches. If you ask about AdWords and get a Google Ads proposal back, it's the same service under its current name.
06How long before a Google Ads campaign shows results?
You'll see first data within two to four weeks, since traffic starts the moment the campaign goes live. A fair verdict usually takes two to three months. That's how long it takes to gather enough conversions for the algorithm to learn who to target and for the patterns to stop looking random.
07What budget do I need to start with Google Ads?
In most industries, plan on at least $1,500 a month for ad spend alone. Go lower and the campaign doesn't collect enough data for the system to optimize, and a dozen clicks can't tell you anything. If clicks in your industry are expensive, the threshold is noticeably higher.
08Should the Google Ads account be registered to my company?
Yes. It's the single most important part of the setup. If the account is in the provider's name, it walks out the door with them, along with your conversion history, remarketing lists and everything the algorithm has learned, and none of it can be rebuilt. Get this in writing before any work starts, because Google has no process to force a transfer later.
09Can anyone promise a fixed ad position or cost per click?
No. Google reruns the auction for every search, and the outcome depends on competitor bids, Quality Score, device, time of day and location. Anyone who promises a set position or a flat cost per click either doesn't understand the system or is deliberately misleading you.
10Is it better to employ someone full time or to outsource account management?
A full-time hire starts to make sense when you're spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on ads across several channels. Below that, outsourcing costs less and gets you someone who's seen many accounts, which a lone in-house employee usually hasn't.
Free analysis
See where your marketing stands, then decide what to do next
Send us your website. Within 24 hours, you'll get a written analysis comparing your channels with your competitors', plus a call with a senior project manager who has run marketing for 15+ years.
- Analysis within 24 h
- No obligation
- PDF covering 5 competitors
- Team picked by your PM