A promise of lead counts
Search auctions, local competition and your own response speed all affect results. A number promised in advance is a sales line.
For MSP owners and sales leads
Managed IT Services PPC: How to Pick the Person Who Runs Your Google Ads
Managed IT services PPC is easy to buy badly. The searches are expensive to be wrong about, the sale takes weeks, and plenty of agencies will happily report clicks while your sales calendar stays empty. Use this guide to decide who should manage your Google Ads and how to hold them to the work.
Before you interview anyone
Why PPC for Managed IT Services Is Different From Most Local Ads
Pay per click for an MSP behaves differently from pay per click for a drain cleaner. A plumber's ad produces a phone call and, often, a truck on the road by afternoon. A managed service provider's ad produces a conversation that may take a month to turn into a signed agreement. The buyer is usually an owner, an office manager or someone who inherited IT because the person who used to handle it left. They are asking who can take over email, backups, security, help desk and the endless small problems, and they are often doing it after something has gone wrong.
That shapes what a manager must understand. The search terms break into groups that behave nothing alike. "Managed IT services" and "managed service provider" plus a city reach people comparing providers. "IT support for small business" is broader and attracts a mix. Compliance searches, such as IT for a medical office, a law firm or a firm that must answer a security questionnaire, tend to come from buyers with a specific need and a deadline. "Computer repair near me" and "IT help now" bring in people with a single broken machine and no interest in a monthly agreement. A competent manager keeps these apart in separate campaigns so the budget does not drift toward whichever group clicks the most.
The audience in that last group is also the one most likely to fill your report with activity that does not matter, which is why the questions below focus on tracking and qualification, not on click counts. For this trade the useful measures are booked discovery calls, qualified opportunities and the monthly recurring revenue of signed agreements, which usually live in your CRM and not in the ad platform until someone connects them.
Expect a good manager to ask about your sales motion before touching a keyword. Who takes the first call? Do you run a free network assessment, a security review or a fifteen minute fit call? How many people sit at the average company you want, and what do you charge per user or per device? Those answers decide which searches are worth bidding on and how much a booked conversation is worth to you, and a manager who skips them is guessing.
Also decide up front whether the people you want are nearby. An MSP that sends technicians on site cares about a service radius. A provider that works mostly remotely can reach a wider area, but may still care about the industries, the size of companies and the compliance frameworks it serves.
Interview questions
What to Ask a Candidate Manager, and What a Good Answer Sounds Like
Take this table into every call. A manager who has run accounts for providers like you answers quickly and specifically. One who has not tends to talk about clicks and traffic.
| Question | A good answer includes | A weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| How will you split the account? | Separate campaigns for provider-comparison searches, small business support, compliance and industry-specific IT, break-fix kept apart or excluded | One campaign, "IT services", with broad keywords and automation left to sort it out |
| What will you exclude? | Job seekers, training and certification searches, consumer repair, software and tool vendors, home users, free and open source, and a plan to review search terms weekly | We will add negatives as we go, nothing specific named |
| What counts as a lead? | A written definition agreed with you: a business in your area and size range asking for managed support, not a consumer or a vendor | Any form or call counts and we will report the total |
| How will sales outcomes get back into the account? | A plan to record booked calls, qualified opportunities and signed agreements in your CRM and share them with Google over time | We only optimize for form fills, the sales side is your department |
| Who owns the Google Ads account? | You do, with the manager added as a user, and you can see every campaign and every dollar | The agency account holds your campaigns and gives you a login to a report |
| How are calls handled? | Call tracking, recordings if lawful for you, minimum call length, and a review of what callers asked | Phone calls are tracked as clicks on the number |
| What goes on the landing pages? | Pages by service and industry, your real credentials and a clear next step such as an assessment call | The home page of your website for every ad |
| How will you treat competitor and brand searches? | A separate brand campaign, careful and limited competitor terms and no misleading ad copy | Bid on everything near our name and call it a win |
| What does the monthly report show? | Search terms, calls, form quality, booked meetings, what changed this month and why, plus next steps | A dashboard of impressions and clicks |
| What happens if we want to leave? | Month-to-month terms, account access stays with you, and a handover note | A long term, notice windows and fees to export the account |
Hiring questions
Questions MSP Owners Ask When Hiring a Manager
How much does Google Ads management for an MSP cost?
Our paid ads management starts at $895 a month for one platform, $1,595 for two and $2,295 for three. Ad spend is separate and goes straight to the platform. There is no setup fee and no contract. Choosing an ad budget is its own decision: work backward from what a signed agreement is worth over its life and how many conversations it takes.
Should an MSP bid on its own competitors?
Sometimes, with care. Competitor searches often come from customers unhappy with their provider, but they also invite a bidding contest and policy limits on how trademarks may appear in ad text. If you test them, give them their own small budget, honest copy and a separate line in the report, and check the current trademark policy before using another company name in ad text.
Do we need a different landing page for each industry we serve?
If a vertical matters to you, yes. A page for a medical office that speaks to patient data rules reads very differently from one for a manufacturer worried about downtime. The page needs real details from your experience and should not claim a compliance outcome you cannot provide, since your client, not you, is responsible for passing an audit.
How long until we know whether it is working?
Within weeks you can judge whether the right searches are being matched and whether calls and forms look like real prospects. Judging closed agreements takes longer because evaluations, proposals, security questionnaires and onboarding stretch the cycle. Nobody honest can promise a date, and a good manager will say so up front.
Is the monthly report enough to judge Google Ads management?
Only if it ties to your CRM. A good report names the search terms that drove booked calls and shows which campaigns produced meetings that went somewhere. If you only see clicks and cost, ask for the next layer before you renew anything, and ask them to explain every change they made last month in plain language.
Should we run Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising or both?
Start with Google, where most business searches happen, and treat Microsoft and social as paid ads you add later. Microsoft Advertising can reach an older, desktop-heavy business audience and is worth adding once your Google tracking is solid. A third channel such as Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) can help with retargeting people who visited your site. All of them should be judged by qualified conversations and signed agreements.
What about Local Services Ads for IT?
Eligible categories vary by area and trade, and IT support does not always fit. Check what Google currently offers in your location before planning around it. Regular search campaigns are the main tool for most MSPs, and a short call with a manager can confirm whether a Local Services Ads category exists for you.
Can we manage our own ads and just hire help for a review?
Yes. Many owners run the account themselves with a periodic outside audit of search terms, tracking and structure. The choice depends on whether anyone on your team has the hours to check the account every week, which is when most waste is caught.
What should we have ready before a manager starts?
A written description of your best customer, your service area, the services you want to sell, a CRM or at least a shared sheet for leads, and someone who answers the phone and replies to forms quickly. The ads cannot fix a slow response, and a prospect who waits a day for a callback has usually booked someone else.
Warning signs
Red Flags When Interviewing an Ad Agency
The agency keeps the account
If the Google Ads account belongs to them, your history and settings leave with them when the contract ends.
No mention of negatives
Job seekers, consumers and vendors are the usual cost drains in IT. A proposal that never names them is incomplete.
Reports without calls or forms
Impressions and clicks say little about whether anyone wanted to hire you.
One landing page for everything
A visitor who searched for HIPAA support and lands on a general home page leaves.
Pressure to raise spend first
More budget before tracking and negatives are fixed just buys more of the wrong clicks faster.
Long contracts with exit fees
A good manager earns the next month. Terms that punish leaving usually mean the work does not hold up on its own.
No interest in your sales process
Ads feed a funnel. A manager who never asks how calls are answered or deals are tracked is managing in the dark.
A fair trial
How to Run the First Sixty Days With a New Manager
Write the lead definition together
Agree in writing on who counts: company size, industries, area, services wanted and who is excluded. Share it with whoever answers the phone.
Audit before changing anything
Review the current account for search terms, wasted spend, tracking gaps and structure. A short written list of findings beats a rebuild nobody explained.
Fix tracking first
Confirm calls, forms and booked meetings are recorded correctly and that a test call shows up end to end.
Launch a small, focused set of campaigns
Start with the buyer groups you most want and keep break-fix and brand separate, each with its own page.
Meet every two weeks
Go through search terms, call recordings and the meetings that were booked. Decide together what to add, pause or reword.
Judge by sales outcomes
At the end of the trial, with Google Ads management judged on meetings and agreements rather than traffic, look at qualified conversations and what became of them, then decide whether to continue, adjust the scope or stop. Our SEO plans are a separate topic if organic search matters to you too.
Keep exploring
Google Ads for Related Businesses
Want the whole picture for managed it services? There is a full managed it services marketing site at manageditservices.getphound.com.
Want the organic side or the lead side too? See getting more leads, buying leads, lead generation programs, SEO, internet marketing, and best keywords for managed it services.
Get in Touch
Want a Second Opinion on Your MSP Ad Account?
Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com. Bring your current account, or just your questions, and we will talk through what a good setup would look like.