Run Google Ads yourself or hire?

Running Google Ads yourself makes sense when your budget is modest, your business is simple to advertise, and you genuinely have a few hours a week to learn and tend the account. Hiring someone makes sense when the budget is large enough that mistakes are expensive, your market is competitive, or your time is worth more running the business. Between those two sits a middle route that suits many small Canadian businesses: a professional setup, then self-management with occasional expert help.

I manage Google Ads for a living, so I have an obvious bias. I will try to be fair anyway, because owners who choose the wrong route for their situation usually end up unhappy whichever route it was.

What running it yourself really takes

The sign-up takes ten minutes. The real work is ongoing:

• Setup: campaign structure, keywords and match types, ads and assets, location and schedule, conversion tracking. Expect a couple of full days the first time.
• Weekly upkeep: search terms, negatives, budgets, checking that calls and forms still record. Half an hour to two hours a week.
• Monthly review: cost per enquiry by service, ad tests, landing page tweaks.
• Learning: Google changes its interface, campaign types and recommendations constantly. Keeping up is part of the job.

The hidden cost is not the hours, it is the mistakes made while learning. Loose location settings, unchecked broad match or a bidding strategy without conversion data can spend a month's budget with little to show.

When DIY is the right call

• Your monthly ad budget is small and your service area is clear.
• You offer one or two services with obvious search terms.
• You enjoy numbers and do not mind spreadsheets.
• You have time during the week that would not otherwise earn money.

If that is you, start with my Google Ads starter guide and keep things simple: one Search campaign, tight keywords, proper tracking.

When hiring pays off

• Your ad budget is large enough that a 20 or 30 percent improvement covers the fee.
• Your industry has expensive clicks, such as legal, renovation or real estate, so each wasted click hurts.
• You advertise several services, cities or languages.
• You need tracking that connects ads to calls, CRM stages and actual sales.
• You tried it yourself and the account stalled.

The value of a good manager is mostly in what they stop: the wasted spend you would not have noticed for months.

Four options, side by side

With me, those map to: a $650 setup; Google Ads training and one-on-one sessions at $70/hour; and Google Ads management from $750/month. Ad spend is always paid by you, directly to Google. All prices are in Canadian dollars, and the advertising prices page has the complete list.

Freelancer, agency or one-person specialist

If you hire, you will choose between agencies of various sizes and independent specialists. Agencies often have more people and processes; you may also deal with an account manager who passes your requests to someone else. Independent specialists usually mean direct contact with the person doing the work, but less capacity. I wrote a broader comparison in marketing agency vs freelancer.

I work alone and directly with owners: you message me on WhatsApp, Telegram or email and get an answer from the person who changes your account, usually within one business day.

Seven questions to ask before you hire anyone

1. Whose name is the ad account in? It should be yours, with your billing.
2. What is the minimum term and notice period? Long lock-ins are a warning sign.
3. How is the fee calculated? A flat fee or a percentage of spend; know which and why.
4. Who actually does the work? The person on the sales call or someone you will never meet?
5. What will the report show? Clicks and impressions, or cost per enquiry and per customer?
6. How will conversions be tracked? Ask them to explain it in plain words.
7. What happens in the first 30 days? A clear plan beats a vague promise.

My own answers are on how I work: the account is registered to you, there is a written agreement, no minimum term and one month's notice to cancel, reports every month and a check every two weeks.

Signs your current setup is not working

Whichever route you are on now, a few signals suggest it is time to change it. If you cannot say what one enquiry from Google costs you, measurement is missing, whoever runs the account. If you log in once a quarter and are surprised by what you find, the account is effectively unmanaged. If your marketer's reports talk mostly about impressions, clicks and "visibility" and rarely about calls, quotes and jobs, the work is aimed at the wrong target. And if you are spending more evenings on the account than on your family or your actual customers, the hidden cost of doing it yourself has probably passed the cost of help.

None of these signals means the channel is wrong for you. They mean the way it is run needs a change, and that is usually cheaper to fix than to abandon.

A sensible way to decide

Try this: estimate how many hours a month you would spend on the account, multiply by what your hour is worth in your own business, and add an honest allowance for learning mistakes. Compare that with the cost of help. If the numbers are close, choose the route you will actually stick with. An account managed half-heartedly does worse than either option done properly.

And if you want a neutral look first, a free 30-minute call costs nothing. Sometimes my advice is to keep doing it yourself with a few fixes, and that is a perfectly good outcome.