Navigating Paid Search Management

Whether you’re a founder mapping out your first marketing budget, a tradesperson who keeps hearing you “need to be on Google,” or an entrepreneur whose ads are running but not really working, this is for you.

Paid search can be one of the most powerful tools a business has. It puts you in front of people who are actively looking for exactly what you offer, at the exact moment they’re ready to act. Done right, it’s not an expense, it’s a growth engine.

But the gap between running ads and running them well is bigger than most people expect.

The path from “I want to run Paid Search” to “my Paid Search is working” isn’t always straightforward, and the options for getting there each come with their own tradeoffs. This is an honest look at those options: the strengths, the genuine limitations, and why I eventually built something different.

The Three Ways Most Businesses Approach Paid Search

1. Do It Yourself

DIY paid search is more viable than many people think, but it requires more than most people expect.

The platforms themselves are sophisticated, well designed, and genuinely useful. Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising give you access to powerful targeting, detailed analytics, and a level of control over your marketing that didn’t exist a generation ago. If you’re willing to invest the time to learn how they actually work, managing your own campaigns is a completely legitimate path.

The nuance worth knowing: These platforms are also businesses. Their default settings and “smart” recommendations: like “Auto-apply keywords”, are designed to perform well by their metrics: maximizing reach, impressions, and spend.

That’s not inherently bad, but it’s often fundamentally different from maximizing your Return on Investment (ROI). For example, an auto-recommendation that increases your impressions by 40% sounds like a win on a platform dashboard, but if it doubles your spend by bidding on irrelevant “broad match” terms without moving the needle on your leads, it’s a net loss for your business.

None of that is insurmountable. A business owner who takes the time to understand the difference between what the platform wants and what their business needs can run effective, efficient campaigns independently. The investment is real, both in learning the platforms initially and in staying current as they evolve, but so is the payoff when it works.

Best fit for: Business owners with time to learn, interest in the tactical side of marketing, and lower budgets where keeping management in-house makes financial sense.

2. Hire a Freelancer

Freelance Pay Per Click (PPC) consultants can be excellent. Many are experienced strategists who freelance on the side or left agencies to work independently, and they bring genuine expertise at a price point that’s often more accessible than a full agency relationship.

The practical considerations are worth thinking through honestly.

First, capacity. Most freelancers are managing multiple clients alongside other work. When your account is one of many competing for a finite amount of attention, the difference between proactive strategy and reactive maintenance starts to matter. Reactive management: fixing problems after they surface rather than preventing them, is a natural consequence of limited bandwidth, not a character flaw.

Second, if you’re in California or working with someone based here, it’s worth understanding how the engagement is structured. Under AB 5, hiring an individual who doesn’t operate as an established, independent business entity can create worker misclassification exposure depending on your business; which can mean liability for back taxes, benefits, and penalties. It’s not a reason to avoid freelancers altogether, but it is a reason to ask how they’re set up before you sign anything. A freelancer operating as a properly structured LLC with their own business infrastructure is a different legal relationship than an individual doing side work.

(Note: I am a PPC Strategist, not an attorney; laws like AB 5 have specific exemptions and nuances, so always consult legal counsel for your situation. You can learn more about the CA ABC Test here).

Best fit for: Businesses that have found a specific person whose expertise and availability align with their needs, and who have confirmed the engagement is structured appropriately.

3. Work With an Agency

Agencies are genuinely excellent, at the right scale.

If you’re spending significantly on paid media every month, an agency’s infrastructure starts to make real sense. They have teams, tools, reporting systems, and cross-account pattern recognition that’s hard to replicate elsewhere. For large, complex accounts, that depth is worth paying for.

The honest reality for smaller budgets: the agency model is built around a certain scale, and when you’re below it, the economics don’t always work in your favor. Senior strategists pitch and close. Junior account managers execute; often across 30, 40, or more accounts simultaneously. Your strategy can become a template. Your questions can go into a ticketing queue. And a meaningful portion of your retainer covers the overhead of a full-service business, not your campaigns.

This isn’t a criticism of how agencies operate. It’s just how the model works at that price point. When you’re not yet at the scale where your account commands senior attention, you can end up paying for infrastructure you’re not fully using.

Best fit for: Businesses with substantial monthly ad spend who need the depth, infrastructure, and team capacity that agencies are genuinely built to provide.

Why I Thought There Was a Need for Another Option

After years of watching this play out: talented founders with real businesses and real budgets falling into the gaps between these options, I built Kirsten Bohn Growth Performance Strategy LLC around a different question: What would PPC help look like if it were designed specifically for the businesses that need it most?

The answer looked like this:

One person, fully committed. I’m the only one who works on your account. Not a senior strategist who hands off to a junior. Not a team of specialists who each own a piece. Me, with your account, your goals, and your results as my complete focus. PPC isn’t one of several services I offer; it’s the only thing I do, and that depth shows in the work.

Enterprise tools without enterprise overhead. I use competitive research and intelligence tools that most growing businesses don’t have independent access to. That means I can show you where your competitors are winning, where they’ve left gaps, and where your next dollar has the most room to work.

A process, not intuition. I’ve managed accounts spending over a million dollars a month at the enterprise level and built campaigns from the ground up for startups working with a thousand. What that range teaches you is that the fundamentals don’t change with the budget: clean data, a strategy built around your specific business, and a process for finding and eliminating waste are what separate accounts that grow from accounts that just run. That’s the foundation I bring to every engagement, whether you’re just starting out or trying to figure out why a mature account has stopped performing. I also apply Six Sigma’s DMAIC framework to the work, a structured approach to continuous improvement that ensures nothing gets optimized on guesswork.

Built to hand you the keys. My goal is never dependency. Whether you eventually want to manage your own account, hire ongoing support, or grow into an agency relationship, every engagement is designed to leave you with something you own and understand.

Honest about fit. Online growth is my lane, and I prefer to stay in it. If what you actually need is heavy creative or video production, a major email initiative, or billboard marketing, I’ll tell you that directly rather than stretching into work I can’t do at the level you deserve. I can also connect you with trusted partners I’ve personally vetted, so you get the right help either way.

Where This Fits in Your Journey

There’s no single right moment to invest in professional paid ads help. But a few situations come up again and again:

You’re starting from scratch and want to build it right the first time: with clean tracking, smart architecture, and a foundation that’s yours to own and run. And someone in your corner you can come back to when the next question comes up.

You’ve been running ads for a while and something feels off. The spend is there but the results aren’t, and you’re not sure whether the problem is the strategy, the setup, or something else entirely.

You’ve built something yourself and want a serious second set of eyes before you scale; someone to tell you honestly what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do next.

Or you just want to think through a decision with someone who’s seen a lot of them.

Whatever the starting point, the goal is the same: PPC that’s built around your business, your goals, and your budget: not around a platform’s defaults or a service model designed for someone else.

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