Finding the Google Ads Specialist of Your Wildest Dreams

In the movie Napoleon Dynamite, co-star Efren Ramirez (who plays Pedro Sánchez) delivers one of the film’s signature lines near the end of the film:

“Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true.”

While it was almost certainly the lead character Napoleon’s quirky dance moves that got Pedro elected class president, Pedro’s monotone-delivered soundbite and call to action became part of this cult classic’s water cooler talk.

If you are relatively new to digital marketing, and you are looking to grow your business more aggressively,  you may be looking to hire, or you may already have hired a Google Ads Specialist.

However, if you are trying to grow a B2B technology company with a long sales cycle and a considered sales process, contracting with a Google Ads specialist may only be part of the answer.

When to Hire a Google Ads Specialist

To be clear, there is a lot of value in consulting with a true Google Ads expert if you already have a solid go-to-market foundation to build on top of.

For example:

1. Do you have documented buyer personas and an ideal client profile (ICP)?
2. Do you have your buyer's journey mapped out for your core buyer personas?
3. Do you have premium content assets built out to support each of your core buyer personas and each of their buyer's journey stages?
4. Do you have lead generation-centric landing pages with forms created that transform anonymous website visitors into known leads that you can educate and build trust with over time?
5. Do you have a lead nurturing email marketing strategy, with marketing automation workflows, for each of your most important buyer personas and buyer’s journey stages?
6. Do you have other sales cycle accelerators in place, including an inbound sales development playbook, case studies, and a webinar program?

So, yes, the Google Ads specialist that’s hired to drive more leads, sales opportunities, and revenue growth can and should be wildly successful IF those prerequisites are met.

And the Google Ads platform is extraordinarily fast and powerful regardless of whether you’re deploying your paid search investment into the more traditional text ads, display network, YouTube Ads, or remarketing.

Go-To-Market Foundation Needed

But it’s somewhere between a really tall order and delusional wishful thinking for a B2B technology startup CEO to go all-in on Google Ads without first having a solid go-to-market foundation in place.

Also, bear in mind that keyword-triggered ads (SEM or search engine marketing) can attract a considerable amount of entirely unqualified visitors, compared to deploying a similar investment on LinkedIn Ads.

For example, let’s say your company sells fintech SaaS to the hospitality industry.

Sure it makes sense to at least test advertising a premium content offer on an obvious keyword phrase such as “hospitality accounting.” 

However, aside from restricting the targeting to your ICP’s location -- for example, the United States, you’ll have no idea about the company size or demographics of the person you’re reaching.

Targeting and Product/Market Fit

Most often, for a B2B SaaS startup, you’ll have a reasonably well-thought-out idea of what kind of company is too big or too small for your solution.

With LinkedIn, you’ll be able to target based on location plus industry plus company size -- and even among functions or job titles or skills.

With Google Ads, you know it’s someone in your set geographic location that asked Google to see search results for “hospitality accounting.” Maybe it’s a business school student doing research. Perhaps it’s someone from a company way too small to afford your solution or way too large to be qualified.

Either way, If you're truly looking to find the Google Ads specialist of your wildest dreams,  go in with both eyes open. And now that it's highly likely but you need a much more versatile, multi-disciplined approach first before you're ready to start investing significant resources in paid search traffic dash – especially if you're looking for certain kinds of bottom-of-funnel results.

And if you plan to use Google Ads to power your go-to-market playbook, audience targeting, and product/market fit, enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.