How do I know if someone knows what they're doing with Google Ads?

Here's how to tell, even if you know nothing about Google Ads.

The stakes are higher than wasted ad spend. Throwing money away on clicks is one cost. The other is the opportunities you never see because the wrong person is running things. So finding the right person matters.

That doesn't mean the best manager in the world, who will be expensive. It means someone who will do a good job with your money, whatever your budget is.

This is a business full of very confident people. The overconfident ones are more dangerous than the ones who know their limits. Nobody is perfect, and the platform changes constantly, so someone who is certain about everything isn't being straight with you. Go for the quietly confident person, not the loud one. As with most things in life, the loudest tend to know the least.

You want someone with a track record in a business like yours. "Similar" can mean the industry: home services, software, ecommerce and so on. It can also mean the audience, the sales cycle or the ticket price.

Those last three matter more than people think. If your leads take a month to become sales and each sale is worth $20,000 in profit, that's very different from a $100 service sold within two days. Someone who has only done one may struggle with the other.

You want someone who can explain what they're doing in plain language, without being condescending. If you can't follow what they're saying, you can't tell whether it's working.

A red flag is anyone who says the account is theirs, or won't give you access. Some freelancers do this. You then can't see your keywords or anything else that's going on. Your ad account should be yours, and you should be able to log in and look at it at any time. When you speak to someone, simply ask: "Will I have full access to my account?" The answer should be yes.

Fit matters, in language and in culture. You need to be able to understand each other well, because you'll be talking about important things, and there will be moments when things get tense, usually when performance isn't great. That does sometimes happen. At those moments you need to really understand this person, and they need to really understand you. You shouldn't have to struggle to follow each other.

Look for at least a couple of years of experience, or someone who is guided by a mentor with a lot of experience. In theory, someone with less than two years behind them can do a good job, as long as they've been trained by someone who really knows what they're doing.

But the training has to come from a person with real experience. Even with AI, it isn't enough to learn from what's out there, because AI is full of what Google's help centre articles say. Before AI, most articles about Google Ads were mostly repeating Google's own recommendations too. Someone who has only learned from those sources will tend to repeat them back to you, and Google's advice isn't always what works best for your budget.

You don't need to know the answers yourself. You just need to know what a good answer sounds like.

1. "What are the main ways you'd increase my click-through rate?"

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who see your ad and click it. Most people will talk about writing more targeted ads. That's true, but it isn't the whole answer. The simplest way to increase CTR is to bid more and show higher up the page, which naturally gets more clicks. Most people don't think to say that. The best answers will also point out that a high CTR isn't the goal in itself.

2. "How do you find new keywords to add?"

There should be two parts to the answer. They should use Keyword Planner, Google's free tool, to find more keywords. And, if your account already has data, they should look at the search terms report, which shows what people actually typed, and add keywords based on the best-performing searches.

3. "Which match types do you use?"

A match type controls how closely a search has to match your keyword. If the answer is broad match, the loosest type, or phrase match, treat it as a red flag. It's very rare to find a good reason to use broad match, especially if exact match isn't also being used. If they always use broad or phrase match just to get more clicks, that's a fail. If they want more clicks, they should be doing keyword research and adding more exact match keywords. Broad keywords do bring clicks, but they come from rubbish search terms, and your ads end up showing on irrelevant searches.

4. "Is it bad to have a bad ad strength?"

This is a trick question. Ad strength is a rating Google gives your ad, and Google likes you to have a good one. You only get a good rating if you do what Google wants, which means supplying lots of headlines and leaving them unpinned. That tends to give you less relevant ads and worse results. A good manager will know that ad strength doesn't matter much. If they say yes, it's bad, they're probably just following Google.

Trust your gut, and don't stop until someone feels right. Choose quiet confidence over loud confidence. Look for results in a business like yours, and for someone who explains things simply and gives you full access. Then ask the four questions above.