Hire a Google Ads specialist or employ someone yourself?
Anyone looking for someone to run Google Ads has three routes: employ a member of staff, hire a freelancer or contractor, or bring in an agency. Each model has an honest place. This page puts the three side by side and shows where the hire route with us fits: a specialist by the hour or by the month, with no employer costs and no long contract.
Employ someone, hire a freelancer or bring in an agency. None of the three is always best. This table puts side by side what you buy, when it fits and where it pinches.
| Route | What you get | When it fits | Where it pinches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employ someone yourself | Somebody in your team who knows your business and is there every day | When there is enough volume to fill a role | Salary, employer costs and training time keep running, quiet months included |
| Hire a freelancer | Loose hours from a specialist with no contract of employment | For a defined job or a temporary busy spell | Knowledge leaves with the person, and when they are ill or away it stops |
| Bring in an agency | A team that takes the campaigns over for a fixed amount | When you want to hand the work over entirely | Less direct grip on the daily choices than with somebody in your own team |
Employ someone, hire a freelancer or bring in an agency
This is the decision page for anyone looking for someone. Here you compare employing, hiring a freelancer and bringing in an agency, and see how the hourly hire route with us works. If you want to hand the work over entirely for a fixed monthly amount, that service is on paid search specialist. If you are looking straight away for an agency to take your campaigns over, look at Google Ads agency.
We have been helping companies grow with profitable campaigns since 2017. We never work for your direct competitor, so that our attention goes entirely to your success. That holds for whichever route you choose below.
The three routes side by side
Route 1: employ a Google Ads person yourself
Somebody of your own sits in your team, knows your business and is there every day. Against that, you keep paying salary, employer costs, holiday and training time, including in months when your campaigns need little attention. For most small and medium businesses Google Ads is not a full time job: the real work sits in weekly steering and a good structure, not in forty hours a week of moving bids about. Employing only becomes logical when advertising is big enough to produce daily work.
Route 2: hire a freelancer or contractor
A freelancer is flexible and charges by the hour, but quality and availability vary a great deal from person to person. Look above all at whether somebody looks further than the campaigns themselves: without proper conversion tracking and a landing page that matches the search intent you are paying for clicks that land nowhere. Ask as well who takes the work over during a holiday or a busy spell.
Route 3: bring in an agency
An agency gives you continuity and a team, for a fixed monthly amount. How that works and what it costs is on Google Ads agency. The difference with hiring a specialist: with an agency you hand the work over, with hiring the wheel stays more in your hands.
Where TheSEO fits
Our hire route sits between the freelancer and the agency: you get a specialist who works with you by the hour or for a fixed monthly amount, with no employer costs, no long contract, and a team behind it for continuity. That suits a marketer of your own who wants someone to spar with, a one-off restructure, or an audit of your account.
Four positions on a line, from everything yourself to everything handed over
FIG.01 puts the three routes side by side. This is the other question: how many of the daily choices stay with you. DOC.02 states exactly one ordering about that, namely that our hire route sits between the freelancer and the agency. This page says no more about it, so the line carries no scale and no number: only the order is fixed, the distances mean nothing.
How the hire route works
You start with a conversation in which we set your goals together. After that we draw up a clear strategy that fits your budget and your market.
Our paid search specialist picks the right search terms with you and prepares your website for conversion. Only once that base is in place do we start the campaigns. That way you avoid paying for clicks on a page that will not convert anyway.
- Set the goals and the strategy
- Choose search terms and prepare the website for conversion
- Start the campaigns and monitor weekly
- Discuss results and opportunities every two weeks
Among other things we look at the auction insights to see how you do against competitors in the same auction. That way we steer on facts, not on feel. Hire us alongside a marketer of your own and the fortnightly conversations are where that knowledge lands in your team.
Two steps that happen once, two that keep coming back
The list in DOC.03 reads as four equal points, but they are not. You do the first two once and after that they stand; the last two are a rhythm that keeps running for as long as you hire us. Between them sits a gate: only once the base is in place do the campaigns go live. That separation is the reason you do not pay for clicks on a page that will not convert anyway.
What hiring a Google Ads specialist costs
We are open about the cost, because it is an investment that has to earn its keep. By the hour you pay 65 euro.
Would you rather have a fixed monthly amount? Then you pay 250 euro a month, with a one-off set-up cost of 500 euro. That set-up amount covers the first build of your account, the search term selection and the conversion tracking.
What somebody on your own payroll costs depends on salary and employer costs; you are the best person to do that sum. Our rates are simply on this page and on the pricing page, so that you can put them next to each other honestly.
Amounts are in euro, because that is the currency we invoice in. For a business customer in the United Kingdom the general place of supply rule means you account for the VAT yourself, so we do not charge Dutch VAT; see HMRC VAT Notice 741A. Do you prefer to work loosely and settle hours only when needed? Then the hourly rate suits you. Do you want ongoing attention and steering without fuss afterwards? Then the monthly model is more comfortable, and the agency route is worth comparing as well.
What you can do now
We are reachable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to support or to spar, weekends included. We do not promise a response time in hours, because that is in no contract; what does apply is on the support page. Questions about your account we answer quickly, so that you never have to wait long for an answer.
Still hesitating between employing, a freelancer or hiring? Book a call and we will work out together which route suits your situation. We go through your current campaigns, or your situation without campaigns, and explain which first steps we would take. The same weighing up applies to your website: in hiring a WordPress specialist we put the routes and the costs for that side by side.
So after that one conversation you know exactly where you stand: which route fits, what it is going to cost and when you may expect the first results.
The two steps that keep coming back
This page sets out four steps and says itself that two of them happen once and two keep coming back. Setting the goals and preparing the search terms and the page you do once. The two that come back are below, because that is where an hourly rate or a monthly amount actually goes.
01monitorcampaigns running, checked weekly
02search termswhatever produced nothing goes out
03bidsadjusted towards what does produce enquiries
04auctionauction insights: how you do against the same competitors
05conversationresults and opportunities discussed every two weeks
These five lines are not a delivery but a loop. Step five feeds step one: whatever the conversation produces goes into the account the week after. That is why this list rolls on instead of standing still. It is also the reason hiring is an hourly rate or a monthly amount and not a one-off project: the round does not stop the moment the campaign goes live.
