Should I Run Google Ads Myself or Hire Someone?

Opening a Google Ads account is free and the interface will walk you through building a campaign. So the question isn’t whether you can — you can. The real question is whether the budget you’ll burn while learning costs less than paying someone.

Set the comparison up properly

Most people compare a single figure: “an agency would charge me this much a month”. The real comparison has three lines:

That third line is often the most expensive one. Three hours a week is twelve hours a month — what would those hours have earned in your own business?

When running it yourself makes sense

• The budget is small and a management fee would loom large beside it
• Your business is one service in one city — few keywords, simple structure
• You want to learn it yourself; this is learnable, there’s no secret to it
• Advertising is a supporting channel rather than your main one

In that case, starting with Google Ads training and running the account yourself is reasonable.

When outsourcing makes sense

• Your monthly budget is several times the management fee — the efficiency gained covers the cost
• More than one campaign type is involved (Search, Performance Max, Shopping)
• You’re in e-commerce; the product feed and Merchant Center are a separate discipline
• You’ve tried before and didn’t get results
• You don’t have the time — the most common and most honest reason

The common mistake: doing neither

The worst outcome isn’t running it yourself or hiring out; it’s setting it up and forgetting it. In accounts that go unopened for months, budget usually drains into irrelevant searches and nobody notices, because the dashboard says the campaign is running. Running and working are not the same thing.

The middle path

There’s a third option, and it fits most small businesses best: pay for the setup and the first round of optimisation, then run the account yourself. Setup mistakes are the expensive ones — conversion tracking, campaign structure, negative keywords. Once those are right, day-to-day management becomes a much simpler job.

Which suits you? I’ll look at your budget and structure and give you an honest answer — if running it yourself makes more sense, I’ll say so. Get in touch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Google’s own reps help for free, isn’t that enough?

They can be useful, but their suggestions tend towards increasing spend — the incentives aren’t aligned with yours. They also don’t go deep on technical setup problems.

Can I just have AI build the campaign?

It’s useful for draft copy and keyword ideas. But account management requires looking at your data; a tool without access to the account can’t get past generic advice.

How long until I can run it myself?

You’ll learn the basic structure in a few weeks. The hard part isn’t setup — it’s reading the data and deciding what to change. That part is measured in months.