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Is my google ads manager actually doing anything?
Hi Guys,
Just wanted to get some opinions as I know nothing myself. Currently paying someone to manage my ads- when I go to the change history the only adjustments made over the last 6 months is ‘Target ROAS changed from’ and it is adjusted by whatever amount.
Am I being ripped off? Or is it possible that is all that needs to be adjusted month to month?
Thanks in advance
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1 Reply
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Are you getting results? Are they actively making changes in the account (change history) – check your search terms/settings or get someone to appraise (be aware this is only relevant if the first answer here is no).
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How is the performance? If its returning a 5+ ROAS, its fine. I do think there is room for smaller AB testing and optimizations.
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Ignore change history, though one change in 6 months sounds like he’s shit and not doing anything really. Normally daily budgets will need tweaking, irrelevant keywords get discovered and excluded so you’re not wasting money on clicks that don’t matter. A bunch of other stuff.
Has your manager been keeping you informed weekly or monthly via reports or calls on how the Ads account is going? Have they laid out an optimisation roadmap/plan? Have they asked for your input or advice on the industry itself to better target ads to searches your potential customers will make?
If all the answers are “no”, the yes your manager is incompetent and not doing anything.
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> Am I being ripped off? Or is it possible that is all that needs to be adjusted month to month?
Depends on how much you pay, I guess?
Are things going well and you are simply paying for someone to stop things from going wrong, or are you paying a lot to operate and nothing’s happening?
For example, one of my smaller clients doesn’t need much.
They’re happy with their cruising speed, they don’t want to scale and I’m just making sure their site/ads don’t break suddenly, but I’m not charging much for that. I look at the bids, competitors and search terms occasionally, there’s not that much to do.
Is it your case? If not… yeah, you probably need a review. An account doesn’t necessarily need much change, but if you want to scale and all you play with are bids, there’s a problem.
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Maybe he is just observing the data and search terms to make sure everything is working well, So check the Search Terms, and if you identify search queries that need to be negative, then just ask them why it’s not added as negative.
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The change history isn’t a good measure of effort since a lot happens besides making changes. For example, monitoring performance, analyzing data, dismissing invalid recommendations, providing reports, troubleshooting problems, doing client check-ins, etc., all take up a lot more time than actually implementing changes.
But calling a spade a spade, there should be more activity than this. Most accounts should receive regular optimization, meaning a least some activity several times a month.
How do you know if the amount of work is appropriate?
In regular reports the manager should discuss what they are planning to implement or test. The change history is often evidence that work was performed.
If you suspect it’s being “phoned in” you should raise this issue with the provider. Let them explain what work they are actually doing in the account. If that’s not satisfactory they need to start testing/optimizing more or you should consider moving on.
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Without more context around what your ad spend is per month and how much you are paying this person per month. It can be hard to know if you are being under serviced, over serviced or something in between. Plus if we don’t know your goals, that would also factor into the answer.
In general, most brands want to grow or be more profitable right now. If the person is just changing your bid strategy settings, and has not done anything else in the last 6 months beyond maintaining current pace. As long as you are paying low fees to this person… you are getting what you paid for. More work in an ad account requires higher fees paid each month. Low fees would be relative to what your ad spend is each month.
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Sometimes it‘s best to do nothing. Results matter.
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Change history isn’t a good indication of success managing. That being said, even with my smallest, oldest, smooth sailing accounts I’d add some negative keywords.
There really isn’t enough info here for us to say yes / no, but disliking the amount of communication you have with your ads person is also a reason to swap. I send, at the very least, a recap email each month.
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We moved away from manually management and do everything programmatically. We found managers would make random changes on no grounds besides intuition and it was hard to prove if they had positive effect or it was just noise.
So we fired our managers, hired programmers, and have systems in place that manage ROAS bidding based on an algorithm, keep correct stuff pauses or enabled, ext.. only manually involvement we still have is reviewing search terms for negatives and ad copy.
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I think coming here is enough to raise a yellow flag. There is absolutely nothing wrong, in my opinion, with just asking “hey let’s see what has been going on in my account”. I can normally have a break down of exact changes and a SWAT (strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, threats) or what’s working, where I am seeing opportunities, what needs improvement, and competition, within 24 hours.
From their perspective I would say don’t confuse what you see with what may be happening. But, if they can’t back that perspective then may be time to restructure the contract on to an hourly basis. I have no problem using an app like time doctor to keep my billables straight. Even the person who jumps from project to project can at least give you a roughly 30 minute estimate.
Maybe just start with a “where we started and where we are going” to at least have them show results.
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If they’re making changes through an MCC and using Ads Editor software instead of the website UI then it doesn’t show up in change history, at least that’s how it worked two years ago.
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The real question to ask is if you are getting good results and/or can get better results. The amount of changes is not as important as those two questions.
If you are getting good results, you may want to ask your freelancer what can we do to scale or get better results with the current budget.
You can also pay another freelancer for an audit and get a second opinion, I do it all the time for my clients and almost always find ways to improve their current campaigns or add additional strategies to scale.
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Are u happy with the results? If yes, then yes his doing something. If no, then no. U need to communicate with him set goals, etc.
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