Google Ads optimisation

[Philsy]

We're paying a company around £400 a month to manage our two Google Ads campaigns, and I'm doubting how helpful it is.

A quick search came up with an interesting post from Google suggesting that AI will help with this. Does anyone have any experience or advice, please?

Thanks

Phil

 

[fisicx]

AI won’t help. Except to spend more of your money.

If your Google ads are bringing in new business why are you still paying the agency? If it’s all working well it will only need the occasional tweak.

Are they constantly adjusting the campaigns, keywords and most importantly the landing pages? If not, what exactly are you paying for?

 

[Graham Mac]

I totally agree. I'm an SEO specialist so on the other side of the coin from PPC and I see how much money is wasted on performance max campaigns due to AI.

You should try split testing your ads against split tested page layouts, also come up with unique offers that differ from your competitors and promote those.

Pages on a website these days appear for lots of different search queries organically, whereas you get these when you do SEO, targeting them all with PPC can be very expensive so I'm biased but certainly allowing AI free control over the ads, headlines, descriptions and which pages it will target is just something Google have set up to take your control and money from you IMHO.

 

[AlanJ1]

If your Google ads are bringing in new business why are you still paying the agency? If it’s all working well it will only need the occasional tweak.

Are they constantly adjusting the campaigns, keywords and most importantly the landing pages? If not, what exactly are you paying for?

We use an agency, the same one for a long time. They are constantly adding new keywords, changing bids, changing strategys, adding new campaigns, changing landing pages, changing ad assets etc.

This is what I would expect any agency you are paying to be doing, however it depends on the size of the account. £400 agency fee for us wouldn't even scratch the surface no mind you paying £400 for two ad accounts.

AI won’t help. Except to spend more of your money.

Totally agree with this, don't let AI anywhere near your account.

Unless you are prepared to learn and have the time to test / constantly change then you will need to use an agency (not saying the one you are using are correct for you, I just can't see them doing much for £200/m per ad account other than initial set-ups, there's just no money in it).

 

[Philsy]

AI won’t help. Except to spend more of your money.

If your Google ads are bringing in new business why are you still paying the agency? If it’s all working well it will only need the occasional tweak.

Are they constantly adjusting the campaigns, keywords and most importantly the landing pages? If not, what exactly are you paying for?

Good question which I was also asking. They say they tweak things every month. The landing pages they produced were very obviously written using ChatGPT so I've tidied those myself. They argue that constant tweaking is needed but then I guess they would say that.

 

[AlanJ1]

They argue that constant tweaking is needed but then I guess they would say that.

Constant tweaking is needed or you will have wasted spend.

What is your actual ad spend per month?

 

[fisicx]

They argue that constant tweaking is needed but then I guess they would say that.

But it has to be the right sort of tweaking. If their twekaing increases the number of leads and reduces your ad spend then they are doing the right thing. If not then you are wasting your money.

The fact they used CHastGPT to create then landing pages should be enough for you to wave goodbye. Don't mess about, stop paying them today.

 

[HFE Signs]

We're paying a company around £400 a month to manage our two Google Ads campaigns, and I'm doubting how helpful it is.

A quick search came up with an interesting post from Google suggesting that AI will help with this. Does anyone have any experience or advice, please?

Thanks

Phil

Can I clarify - Is the £400 per month their fee or is this the cost of the campaigns too? Overall spend would help understand the scale of the account and amount of work to maintain efficiency

 

[Philsy]

Can I clarify - Is the £400 per month their fee or is this the cost of the campaigns too? Overall spend would help understand the scale of the account and amount of work to maintain efficiency

Thanks for the reply. That’s just the cost to the management company. We pay around £500 to Google. We do get good responses and it’s our most effective form of advertising but I’m concerned that we are paying too much for monthly tweaks.

 

[fisicx]

Thanks for the reply. That’s just the cost to the management company. We pay around £500 to Google. We do get good responses and it’s our most effective form of advertising but I’m concerned that we are paying too much for monthly tweaks.

Yes you are!

 

[hilldavenport]

Thanks for the reply. That’s just the cost to the management company. We pay around £500 to Google. We do get good responses and it’s our most effective form of advertising but I’m concerned that we are paying too much for monthly tweaks.

Hi Philsy

What is the nature of your business? We may be able to help you achieve better results; please share your products or services offered and I will do a bit of research and revert with the results.

Regards,

Miguel

 

[HFE Signs]

Thanks for the reply. That’s just the cost to the management company. We pay around £500 to Google. We do get good responses and it’s our most effective form of advertising but I’m concerned that we are paying too much for monthly tweaks.

You are paying them too much - £500 per month on Google is a very small budget, you would expect to pay between 5 and 10% to the agency.

 

[AlanJ1]

You are paying them too much - £500 per month on Google is a very small budget, you would expect to pay between 5 and 10% to the agency.

I totally disagree (not with the £500 budget amount).

You have to think for an agency what is worth there time?

He is paying £200 per ad account. If they are charging you £25/h (which is low) for someone to manage, that's 8 hours a month per ad account? No mind that the initial set-up is usually a lot longer and accounts for some more hours.

I am not saying they are the right people for the job ( have no idea what tweaks / changes are being made) but I doubt you will find anyone who would look after it on an agency side for less than being paid.

 

[Paul Carmen]

@Philsy No one can answer these questions without seeing the two ads accounts, this is because there are so many factors that influence performance; e.g. initial research for keyword selection & type, ad text & calls to action (CTAs), CTR, quality score, negative keywords, the landing pages & the page copy/CTAs, plus what your competitors are doing.

There is then the whole tracking of performance and sales/lead data, which has got worse in Google Ads due to cookie changes & iOS privacy settings. 90% of ads accounts we look at have significant waste due to poor targeting, tracking and non converting irrelevant keywords generating significant clicks.

Google's AI can be good, but only if you've researched and tested to optimise keywords & performance first, plus are tracking leads/sales in Google Ads with a high degree of accuracy, otherwise it will be broad match money pit.

We offer an initial free performance overview, and can carry out a full detailed audit if you want to really understand what is happening in your Google Ads accounts: https://insiteweb.co.uk/ppc-audit-service/