We Offer An Efficient, Productive and Communicative Partnership

Watching our clients grow is what drives us.

We’ll bring up-to-the-minute mastery of Google Ads strategy and platform backed by more than 18 years of hands-on experience in many markets lets us hit the ground running.  But technical mastery is not enough – we also have extensive business and project experience working with clients to $3BB ARR and from a very wide variety of industries including:

  • Industry 4.x / SaaS / Cybersecurity
  • Biotechnology / Agriscience
  • Legal (Large Practice, Specialty, Intellectual Property, Finance)
  • Industrial / Logistics / 3PL / 4PL
  • Architecture / Design-Build
  • Healthcare / Mental Health
  • Direct to Consumer Ecommerce / Retail
  • Retail / Ecommerce
  • Franchisor Multilocation
  • Manufacturing

Pricing:

We believe in pricing transparency and trust our prospective clients to understand every project is different.

Minimum Ad Spend

An average of $20k+/month is typically needed for a functional Google Ads account that justifies our involvement.

Some percentage of this spend may be invested in retargeting on Meta / Facebook campaigns.

Multi-site or multi-location prospects may have different ad spend/pricing models appropriate to the workload.

Full Access Retainer Pricing:

Starts at $4,000/month for most businesses.

The scope is spelled out in a custom services grid in advance. Nothing is cookie-cutter.

Pre-Contract:  Is Google Ads Right For You?

During our discovery phase, we must determine if the platform, your budget plans, and your expectations are aligned with Google Ads’ capabilities and requirements.  Google ads is not for everyone.

Elements to Consider for Google Ads:

  • Goals and expectations
  • Budget available
  • Demand for product/service
  • Resources required (creative, collaboration)
  • Restricted markets for Google Ads
  • Account issues (past suspensions, etc.)

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Ad Spend Budgeting for Success

This will be optimized over time as we find the opportunities to maximize ROI through targeting, bid models, and ongoing scrutiny of assumptions.

Elements related to economics and budget:

  • Document current KPIs (LTV, CPA, CAC, etc.) by platform: How much are things costing now?
  • Set target cost per conversion (CPA) targets against margins.
  • Set Cost per reach (CPM) goals.
  • Bidding strategy and “upshift” settings.
  • Budget reporting by campaign.
  • Tracking/budget pacing.

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Strategic Thinking for Long Term ROI Success

A holistic, futureproof view, aligned with your company goals, helps to avoid waste and increase ROI performance.

A Few Elements of Strategic Thinking

  • Corporate goal alignment.
  • Holistic marketing overview (all marketing activities and Google Ads’ place in that).
  • Project management program (tool, structure, task assignment).
  • Collaboration/meeting cadence.
  • Resource management (creative, IT, web design, finance).
  • Network plan (search, shopping, display, YouTube, etc.).

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Building the Account

The legwork of building an account for futureproof performance and minimum waste so it’s ready to use for your business goals, long-term.

Elements of Account Build-Out:

  • Account structure build/fix.
  • Shared library build.
  • Campaign structure.
  • Ad group structure.
  • URL structure: UTMs, URL templates.
  • Audience setups.
  • Keywords/negative keyword list structure and plans.
  • Ad assets build-out.
  • Ad extensions build.
  • Bidding models initial setup.
  • Much more…

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Audience Development and Targeting

One of the strengths of Google Ads is the precision of the audience targeting, whether pre-planned or optimized via machine learning.  This reduces waste and quickly gets your business in front of buyers at each phase of the buyer journey.

Elements of Audience Development:

  • Behaviors of current converting audiences.
  • Retargeting of visits, behaviors, cart abandonment, etc.
  • Understanding the ideal customer profile (ICP).
  • Machine learning for ICP.
  • Consider Google Ads policy limitations.
  • Define placements/exclusions.
  • Define regional/location-specific targets.
  • Seasonality curves.

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Back End Work

Connecting Google Ads to essential business systems is a part of every account we work on.  We work with subject matter experts, IT department, Web Developers and others to accomplish these goal and test the systems.

Elements that may be part of this:

  • Google Merchant Center.
  • Google Search Console.
  • Offline Conversions
  • Audience loads (Customer Match).
  • Google call tracking.
  • 3rd-party call tracking.
  • CRM connectivity
  • Zapier data glue/IFTTT.
  • Alerts and notifications.
  • Scripts and API work.
  • Backups.

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Launch and Optimization

Carefully taking your program live, adjusting for unexpected issues and ongoing optimizing of performance (alongside machine learning) are big moments in the project.

Elements that may be part of this:

  • Campaign Launch / End Dates
  • Attachment of Audience
  • Asset Insertion
  • Audience Rotation
  • Search Terms Reporting
  • Negative Keyword List Nurturing
  • Monitoring Ad Approvals, Appealing any Issues to Google
  • Testing Everything
  • Monitoring Placements
  • Set up “upshift” bid modeling sequences

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

Measurement, Analytics and Decision Making

The more we can measure and understand the better decisions we can make.

Elements in this topic:

  • Metrics definition.
  • Conversions and micro-conversion definition and setup.
  • Attribution models.
  • Google Ads-related analytics setups and testing.
  • Generative AI tools to assist with analysis.

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

The Experience of Working With BuzzMaven as a Google Ads Agency

  • Our expertise spans B2B and B2C scenarios, rooted in years of technical, business, and marketing knowledge.

    Boasting hands-on experience that surpasses 90% of digital agencies, we’ve been immersed in Google Ads since 2006 as a core consulting activity.

  • Transparency and Honesty Underpin Our Sense of Purpose

    Complete transparency is our commitment. You retain full ownership of your account and its contents.  We don’t bind you to proprietary setups.

    Our clients choose to renew our retainers again and again based on the quality of our work and the impact to their company’s performance.

  • As a Partner, You'll Always Be a Priority

    During business hours, we’re mostly accessible in real-time for our retained clients.  Leveraging cutting-edge communication technology, we pride ourselves on being highly accessible. Whether it’s through our advanced systems or direct conversations, you’re guaranteed a responsive experience. You’ll never be left waiting or feel unheard.

  • We Use AI Ethically and as a Productivity Multiplier

    Our use of AI serves as a force multiplier, amplifying the efforts and the value of the work we deliver, rather than replacing the human touch that is crucial to our services.

  • Extensive Hands-On Experience Makes us Productive from Day One

    You’re Not Paying for the Google Ads Agency Learning Curve.  We can focus on solving your specific strategic goals, not learning the system.  Many general digital agencies are making Google Ads mistakes we overcame 15 years ago.

  • We Question Assumptions and Google's ``Recommendations.``

    While we respect Google’s insights (automated and human,) we don’t adhere to their recommendations without critical evaluation. Often, we suggest diversifying ad spend (in other platforms) if the resulting program may provide better performance outcomes.

  • We Maintain Full Google Ads Credentials and Stay Educated

    We’re one of few agencies to hold Google Ads Specialist award for “best of the best” while also maintaining Google Ads Partner or Premier Partner credentials.

Questions and Answers

tl;dr: Nope.  It’s Q&A and establishment if there’s a potential fit – both directions.

A bit more about this meeting:

  1. Please be ready for plain talk about your budget, resources, competition and recent experiences.
  2. This is usually a take-away-rich Q&A session – please bring your tough questions.
  3. We’ll give direct answers about our methods, costs, and timelines.
  4. We are likely to be able to build a frank snapshot of your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

Probably – we’re team players.  Many of our clients have “traditional” agencies and web design firms with whom we collaborate.  We can confidentially discuss your current arrangement and we’ll give you our perspective.

Let’s make sure we discuss this in our discovery meeting.  Not every business / product is well suited for Google Ads generally, but many times this is a solvable problem.  We won’t pressure anyone into using Google Ads if it doesn’t make sense.

Everything is measured in Google Ads – and we boil it down to actionable knowledge.  We also go beyond the basics into the business KPIs involved because that’s what matters.  You’ve never been more informed about what’s happening in your ad account than when you work with us.

It’s worth mentioning that 80% of the accounts we review have problems with reporting and measurement.  This goes beyond the reports, however, and into the bidding models Google uses in it’s machine learning.  So it’s important we get this right.

While Google Ads can seem costly in competitive niches, it’s essential to weigh the immediate costs against the potential long-term benefits. With the right strategy, even high upfront costs can yield significant returns in brand visibility and customer insights. Let’s work together to optimize your budget and determine if Google Ads aligns with your business goals.

We cannot emphasize enough how important proper campaign setup is to success.  We find so many accounts, campaigns and more set up incorrectly, undermining the ROI potential.

We will fix that immediately.  Thoughtful and well executed targeting is critical – as is ongoing optimization.  Getting to your ideal customer profile (ICP) takes an initial effort and then refinements as we review outcomes.   We utilize a number of types of audiences – all of which are important:

  • ICP prospecting
  • retargeting (site visits, page visits, other behaviors)
  • customer match / company match / ABM
  • similar / look-alike / AI expansion
  • exclusion
  • in-market / high-affinity 3rd party
  • 3rd party intent data

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

We will assist with budget planning / discussion in the feasibility review phase.  We can review competitiveness and estimate valuation of various parts of the campaign.   Usually it’s a mixed bag – and parts of the account must be revised and others removed.  Of course ROI is everything – but there are dozens of factors at play.

In terms of broader budget advice – many CMO surveys suggest that marketing budgets for enterprises should be between 8% and 25% of ARR depending on the phase of growth, the competitive landscape, the industry and the strategic plans you have for market share, etc..  There are dozens of variables here – including the competitive marketplace, overall demand and restrictions of ad platforms (where the product/service involves YMYL (your money or your life) type industries.)

Google Ads budgets in particular are subject to auction, audience size and language used by searchers.   Before giving a specific number, it’s crucial for us to gain a deeper understanding of your business objectives, desired outcomes, and any unique challenges you face. This way, we can provide a budget that’s both realistic and tailored to your specific needs, ensuring the best possible return on your investment.

Do you have minimum ad spends?

Yes. We have minimum ad spends because spend-starved campaigns rarely do well. We do have some flexibility here, but when the budgets are too low for us to thrive, we will have to withdraw from consideration.  If your business is unable to lock in a monthly spend budget for Ads (including Google Ads) it may be hard for us to work together effectively.

By the way, we do not bill our fees based on ad spend or otherwise tie ourselves to how much you spend, and we encourage you to work with an agency with this approach.

This topic may be confusing and we will be happy to discuss it in context of your own business:  Let’s discuss it.

It depends on where you are now.  In any case, this is not going to be fully hands-off for your team, but we will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting.  We have lots of productivity tools and systems to accelerate things.  We are VERY sensitive to time wasting and you can be sure we won’t waste yours.  We prefer snappy, efficient meetings and calls, and come to each meeting well organized.

What about content creation?

Writing content, taking photos and shooting videos is another thing.  We can use AI writing assistance to create scripts and content drafts, but your own subject-matter experts will need to spend time with it to ensure it’s accurate and reflects your brand voice.  No agency can replace that step.  What we can say is that we learn very quickly and will feel like a team member much faster than most expect.

This really depends on how much awareness your market and brand has.  If we are purely working on demand capture at the bottom of the sales funnel, search ads can be amazing by themselves.  However, it usually is best to look at the marketing program more broadly – with retargeting and other placements.  Each campaign is unique!

To request an initial walkthrough of your account, please visit this page.

Our ads audits are in-depth process touching many aspects of your ad account.  Such a Google Ads audit is a paid service we offer here.

Google Ads Management is usually not contracted alone – and is very often combined with 2-3 other ad networks for retargeting.

We are revising our pricing pages right now – but please let us know generally what you’re needing and we’ll send you a ballpark even before we talk.

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

No, we use pay for access retainers also known as a Fixed-Price Access Retainer (FPAR) with a six month minimum commitment.  These emphasize flexibility, honesty and transparency elements of our relationships.

Pay for access retainers simplify relationships by paying a set fee for ongoing access to expertise and guidance without the overhead or worry about using too much time solving a problem.. The scope of the work and fees are defined in advance and can be revised during renewals.

Unfamiliar with any of these? No problem!  Let’s discuss it.

This varies between clients, but in general, yes.  Sometimes we will focus the branded terms on important moments in customer consideration – such as “brandname reviews” or “brandname competitors” when it’s essential to maintain visibility.

Google’s new Search Generative Experience – Generative AI search results make it even more essential to run ads for your own brand(s.)

There are many special cases here we can discuss.

  • Known for its “right place, right time” strategy in showcasing search ads within the search results, this system also holds potential in demand generation roles.
  • Google search ads can amplify a brand’s click-through rate in organic results, indirectly bolstering ranking and, especially, visibility in Generative AI search outcomes.
  • YouTube Ads are a significantly underleveraged marketing network. It’s highly advisable for brands to tap into its potential.
  • Retargeting ads on both Google and YouTube, within and outside the Google platforms, is imperative to fully unlock their potential and enhance ROI.
  • Despite the decline in organic traffic due to Google’s Generative AI results, search and shopping ads continue to hold strong visibility
  • It’s estimated that advertisers with monthly budgets exceeding $20k are squandering over half of their funds, largely due to inadequate targeting, incorrect bid strategies, or an excessive dependence on automation.
  • Google’s sales personnel encourage advertisers to adopt a “set it and forget it” approach with their ad budgets, asserting that machine learning will eventually bolster ROI.
  • Navigating audience targeting on Google Ads poses a significant challenge owing to stringent policies.
  • Often, deploying Google at the funnel’s bottom using only search and shopping ads proves effective, while social media ads on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit are instrumental in fostering initial awareness.
  • Over-refined targeting can sometimes negate the benefits of AI, a consideration that warrants deliberate evaluation.
  • On occasion, Google may suspend Google Ads accounts without prior notification, particularly when businesses overlook warnings or venture into marketing within restricted markets.

An Example Google Ads Program Timeline

  • Discovery meeting - establish your needs, plans and answer questions

    We will conduct a plain-English business discussion what success looks like for you, and how Google Ads might help make it happen.  We will make an initial assessment about whether we are good fit.   The discussion is likely to be in context of other digital marketing services and/or SEO services.

  • Google Ads (Adwords) Campaign Audit

    If we establish there’s a good fit between us and budget and fees are understood, we will proceed to do an audit of your setup.  This is mostly for our own planning, but we will share the findings.  This often helps to find scope of work needed, and often even informs work needed on other ad platforms!

  • Google Ads Project Plan and Schedule

    Our initial written plan will be established for the campaign work, your advertising schedule and any prerequisites or infrastructure tasks needed.

  • Asset Inventory, Harvest and Assigments

    This is early because we know it may take time to gather this or acquire it.  We will provide the specification for visual Google ads and work with your team to find out what’s available and what is needed.  This includes video, image and logo assets, among other things.  We will introduce you to the latest AI-generative tools if we think it will help.

  • Google Ads Infrastructure Setups

    Conversion tracking, attribution models, bid model settings, audience expansions and many more prerequisites are completed.  Google merchant center, product groupings, PMX assets and more area also developed.

  • Integration With Google Analytics, CRM and Call Tracking

    When you’re spending money on Google Ads (Adwords) traffic, you have to be sure that it’s spent well and converting. Google Analytics is the most frequently used tool for this and we can wire it up so that data flows back to Google Ads (Adwords).  Third party CRMs and Call Tracking systems are also available for connection.  We work with SMEs / IT / Developers / etc. on these issues when appropriate.

  • Google Ads Bid Management / Setups

    Finding the formula that is best for your bid model is critical.  It may be Max Conversions with target ROAS, target CPA or a blend.  We even set up options so that the account can “upshift” into the best bid model as soon as the data supports it providing an engineered evolution of your campaigns!   Get this wrong, and you’ll waste budget!   Conversion, engagement and other data streams were set up so that we make sure Google’s bid algorithms are targeting the right people.

  • Google Ads Audience and Targeting Design

    We will carefully segment your audience and buyer journey across the available features of Google Ads.  We’ll discuss this and other ways to identify target customers (such as lookalike audiences and retargeting.)

  • Google Ads (Adwords) Campaign Design

    Google Ads (Adwords) Campaigns must be designed around search and intent – structuring the keywords, ads and filtering for the different stages of the customer journey. Low, medium and high intent keywords are identified by hand and organized into Adgroups that can have their own specific properties.

  • Google Ads Search Ads Phrase Design / Negative Phrase Engineering

    Phrase and match type design, including negative phrases for search campaigns will be developed using 3rd party tools, Generative AI and information from your existing setups.

  • Optimization / Algorithmic Feeding

    Iterative optimization of a campaign happens at every stage from keyword choices, match type choices, ad texts, extensions, and landing pages.  Some of this is AI assisted, other parts are full-on manual effort.