This week, I’ve been working on scaling up our google ads capacity as we continue to grow, and thought some of you might appreciate how a google ads expert goes about hiring other google ads specialists.

I’m either their least favorite interview because I absolutely tear them apart live as they go thru their “strategies“ to manage a google ads account. (I had one guy spend 30min talking about how how his “unique edge“ is focusing on keywords and search terms in an account. He did not hear back from me)

Or I’m their favorite because they actually get to talk to someone about their passion (as passionate as you can be about google ads and data, I’m not an insane person), at a peer level instead of re-explaining what a bidding strategy is.

If you have little to no knowledge in google ads, or any field for that matter, it can be very difficult to assertain who is BSing you and who actually knows what they are talking about. Often times, the people who are great are selling you on how good they are the exactly the people you want to avoid (except for me lol).

The diamonds in the rough are the ones that are so technical they may find it hard to sell someone one why they are the best, especially when that person doesn’t speak the same “language“ as them. These are the ones who it’s my goal to find and add them to my team.

to be fair there are alot of people out their who are bad at both, but those people are easy enough to avoid

Questions to ask in the application phase to weed out the “scammers“ or the people who are just trying to tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth. This is just some of my process for google, but also applies to the meta side of things as well

What is your typical timeline for results for a new account, starting from scratch? I'm talking about the time for the account to be running full speed at a profitable CPA, not when you first start getting conversions

anything less than 1 month and the person is either lucky, dumb, or lying. consistent, high-performing campaigns take 60 - 90 days to work. yes you can get results quicker than that, but expecting that is setting yourself up for failure. A true pro would expect you to give them time to iterate and test angles to find what works and what doesn’t.

You are competing with people who have been advertising for years with hundreds of thousands of dollars. expecting to compete with them out the gate with the fraction of the budget like expecting to win the lottery. It happens, but don’t count on it

Ask them to share a loom video of an account they are currently managing. If you aren’t a pro in this space, it’s hard to tell much from the video content itself, as most people will sound pretty awesome with a cherry picked example. however, if they won’t share one because of “confidentiality“, 99% of the time they just don’t have good result to share, or are too lazy to record a video for you. They are very easy ways to protect client confidientiality while still showing your actual expertise

Ask if they have experience in your niche. while not mandatory, this will help you pick between 2 relatively equal canidates.

Get them to also send over reporting from a client they work with, as this will be a window into what it looks like to work with them. If they have a solid reporting dashboard, that’s a green flag. if not, they may be inexperience at working with larger clients, because this is mandatory as you scale, to be able to effectively keep a business in the loop.

Finally, (this isn’t everything, but once again, I could write a small book on this) what do they track as conversions. If they don’t mention anything about offline conversion tracking or connecting to your CRM, run.

A say this all the time in my calls with leads/clients. Who cares how many people visited the site, filled out a form, called you, etc. The only thing that matters at the end of the day is how much money you made, and/or how many customers you got. If your ads expert isn’t discussing/optimizing for this, he/she is either inexperience and/or an idiot.

Another bonus tip. ask if they help on the landing page or for an ecom biz, your merchant center. these play a huge role in the success of your campaigns, and if al they are focused on is google ads, they are missing a big piece of the puzzle.

On another note, I would love to be able to answer any of your most pressing questions in one of the editions of this newsletter. I read every email that comes in, so don’t be shy, you could be famous. So if you’ve got something you’re just dying to know more about, just respond to this email and I promise I’ll answer, whether directly or in the next edition.

mr. steal your girl/guy/ad expert,
peterson