Should you run Google Ads yourself or have someone manage them?

Google Ads looks simple from the outside: set a budget, write an ad, get clicks. Then you open the dashboard and there are match types, negative keywords, quality scores, and a credit card quietly draining. So, do it yourself or hand it over?

You can run Google Ads yourself if you’ve got time to learn and a small, simple campaign, you’ll save the management fee but risk wasting spend while you learn. Paying someone to manage them costs a monthly fee but usually means less wasted budget and tighter results. The decision comes down to your time, your budget size, and how much waste you can stomach while learning.

There’s no shame in either choice. Plenty of owners run their own ads well. Plenty also burn a month’s budget before working out why. Here’s how to land on the right call for you.

What does running Google Ads actually involve?

Running Google Ads well involves keyword research, writing ads, setting bids, adding negative keywords, sending clicks to a strong landing page, and then optimising every week based on what converts. It’s not “set and forget”. The platform happily spends your money on the wrong searches if you let it, so the ongoing tightening is where most of the result, and most of the time, lives.

The single biggest beginner mistake is sending paid clicks to a weak page. You’re paying for every visitor, so if your page is slow or your offer unclear, you lose money faster than with free traffic. That’s why we always say fix the foundations before you advertise.

DIY vs managed: the honest comparison

The maths often turns on budget size. On a tiny budget, a management fee can swallow too much of your spend, so DIY makes sense. On a larger budget, an expert who cuts waste by even 20% can more than cover their fee.

When should you run Google Ads yourself?

Run them yourself when your budget is small, your campaign is simple, and you have the time and patience to learn. A single service, one location, and a modest monthly budget is very learnable. If you enjoy fiddling with data and can give it an hour or two a week consistently, DIY can work well and keeps every pound of spend on actual clicks rather than fees.

Good signs DIY suits you:

• Small, focused campaign (one or two services, one area).
• You can protect a couple of hours a week for it, ongoing.
• You’re comfortable reading numbers and adjusting.
• Your budget’s too small to justify a fee.

The catch is consistency. Ads left unattended drift and waste money, and “I’ll check it next week” is how owners lose budgets.

The beginner mistakes that burn budget fastest

Most DIY ad waste comes from a short list of avoidable errors, and knowing them up front saves real money. None of these is hard to fix once you’ve seen it, but the platform won’t stop you making them. Watch for these four:

• Broad keywords. Bidding on “plumber” instead of “emergency plumber Leeds” means paying for clicks from people miles away or shopping for parts, not booking a job.
• No negative keywords. Without them, you pay for “plumber jobs”, “plumber salary”, “plumber course”. A negative-keyword list quietly blocks the searches that never convert.
• A weak landing page. Sending clicks to a slow homepage instead of a focused page about the exact service. You’ve paid for the visit and then lost it.
• Set and forget. Not checking for a fortnight while the budget drains on whatever Google decided to spend it on.

A worked example: an electrician sets a £300 monthly budget, bids on the broad word “electrician”, and adds no negatives. Within a week half the spend has gone on “electrician apprenticeship” and “electrician near Birmingham” (he’s in Bristol). Tightened to “emergency electrician Bristol” with a proper negative list, that same £300 reaches far more of the right people.

When is it worth paying someone to manage them?

It’s worth paying a manager when your budget is large enough that wasted spend hurts, your market is competitive, or you simply don’t have time to optimise weekly. A good manager earns their fee by cutting waste, improving what converts, and freeing your hours for the business. The fee is typically a flat monthly amount or a percentage of spend, separate from the spend itself.

Worth knowing before you compare quotes: your ad spend always goes to Google directly and stays your cost. A manager’s fee sits on top, for the work. Anyone vague about which money is which is a red flag. And no honest provider, us included, will promise you a fixed number of leads; ads are bought activity, not guaranteed outcomes.

How do you work out if a manager pays for itself?

The simplest test is whether the waste a manager cuts is worth more than their fee. On a small budget the fee is a big slice; on a larger one, even a modest reduction in wasted spend covers it. Run the rough sums for your own numbers before you decide. It’s usually clearer than it feels.

Take two cases. On a £200-a-month budget, a 15% management fee is £30, and there’s only so much waste to recover from £200, so DIY often wins if you have the time. On a £1,500 budget, that same percentage is more, but an expert who trims 20% of wasted spend frees £300 of budget to reach real customers, comfortably more than the fee. The bigger and more competitive the spend, the more the maths tips towards management.

If you’d rather not touch any of it, ads management sits on the top tier of what we run, alongside the website, SEO, content, and email that ads depend on to work. You can see what’s covered on the pricing page. For the wider picture of how paid fits with everything else, the complete playbook for promoting a small business online and SEO vs paid ads both help.

The gut-check: small and simple with time to spare, run them yourself. Bigger, competitive, or time-poor, get help. And whatever you choose, make sure the page those clicks land on actually earns the call.