This is a question I have dealt with on several occasions, and the answer is always the same: it depends.
It depends on several factors, but here are the most important ones:
1. The product or service to be sold.
2. The target market for the product or service.
3. The time factor (both based on where the user is in the sales funnel in terms of the purchase decision and the pressure on the company to generate conversions).
4. Knowledge of Google Ads among the company's team.
Hiring expert staff specialising in Google Ads:
This is the most unusual, as a position like this requires a very technical profile. These individuals are usually freelancers or work in marketing agencies.
In companies I have advised that have in-house marketing staff, there are people trained in marketing and/or digital marketing who have basic knowledge of Google Ads but are more dedicated to various platforms (Meta Ads, Google Ads, etc.) and tasks (community management, content, SEO etc.).
The negative element here is that a salaried person in your company who manages Google Ads does not have several Google Ads accounts of other clients to measure and cross-check data and analyse behaviour flows. Plus, they will not have the time to learn Google Ads in depth because "generic" marketing tasks are constantly being added to their workload.
Hiring a freelancer specialising in Google Ads:
This is quite common, and there are very good freelancers out there.
As in many digital marketing sectors, there is a lot of unqualified practice and smoke and mirrors. I advise you to always ask for account management history, examples, real cases and Google Ads certifications (like ours).
One downside to hiring freelancers is that, in many cases, they are very specialised in Google Ads, both strategically and technically, but with little or no experience in business and far from understanding every detail of the service or product that the client wants to sell.
Remember that good Google Ads campaign performance is a mix of marketing and business.
Hiring a marketing agency:
This tends to be the most common decision. Classic digital marketing agencies offer their clients a wide range of services – the classic 360º – such as web development, SEO, CRM, application development, social media management, mailings, content creators, etc., etc., etc. (yes, I said it 3 times on purpose). In many cases these agencies are perfect for many types of clients, products and services.
The common problem is that by offering such a wide variety of services, they do not excel in any of them. That is why I support some international digital marketing agencies with Google Ads, because sometimes having an 8/10 knowledge about something can be enough, and in other cases it is essential to have a 10/10 (or more) to get results.
Another element of marketing agencies that I don't like (and this is why I want to keep Biriwuanga at its current size) is that once the contract with the client is signed, they'll pass the client to a junior account manager who often changes (I have clients who have changed account managers 3 times in one year).
What is Biriwuanga then?
A mix of all this, honed over the last 10 years to be a Google Partner and member of the Google Ads Product Research Team.
In our case, several of our clients do their own SEO, web and content and then have us exclusively for managing their Google Ads campaigns (yes, they are usually large companies).
For other clients, we manage Google Ads campaigns and analyse behaviour flows in the target market. For others, we do monthly or quarterly consultancy; for others, we check up on their campaigns with their marketing team every X period of time; and for still others, we train their marketing staff.
Then there are also cases where we support only specific or seasonal campaigns, or we support marketing agencies that need help with Google Ads campaigns.
As you can read in our FAQs or in other blog posts, at Biriwuanga we don't have level A and level B clients. We work with multinational companies with large advertising budgets as well as small family businesses with smaller Google Ads campaign budgets.
One element groups all customers together: conversions.
Whether they're international clients with several offices around the world or a small family business, no client would be satisfied without seeing results.
Here are 2 real examples of our customers, with data from the last 30 days:
A family business with an advertising budget of €400/month, working in the luxury sector of a niche market. 8 leads generated in 1 month with a cost per new lead of €38.05. In this case, the value of a new contract for my client starts at €30,000.
A company in the process of international expansion with a Google Ads budget of €5000/month, working in the travel industry.
Generated 960 conversions and €74,000 in conversion value with an ROI of 1673% (€1 invested generated €16).
On to the next conversion!
Dean.