Why Managing Google Ads Is So Hard for People Who Care

The more you care about doing a great job in PPC, the more likely you are to struggle with it as a career.

The best PPC people tend to be conscientious, detail-oriented, analytical thinkers. They are diligent and accountable. They take their work very personally.

But there’s the catch: PPC is mentally and emotionally brutal on people like this.

That’s because the traits that make you good at PPC also come with the need for control. And most of the factors that make a successful PPC campaign are out of your control.

You can choose the best keywords, set up the perfect structure and write ads that sweetly seduce sales prospects into taking action — but:

• if Google changes the algorithm;
• if the market stops buying;
• if your client can’t sell …

… you’re sunk.

The tension between needing to control and not being able to control shows up as tinkering. Doing something just to be doing something.

Here are a few things I’ve seen fellow PPC people do:

• M. estimates he spent 30 to 40 hours building a landing page for a local electrician. He said half a day went into choosing the perfect colour scheme.
• S. rewrote all his ads and landing page copy after just 19 clicks with no leads.
• K. has nine small clients. He hired a senior employee to manage their accounts because he spends more than half his day on reporting.
• J. paid $1,500 to a designer to build a custom landing page for a brand-new client instead of using a template. He’ll only recover that if the client stays more than a year.

Every one of them knew, intellectually, that what they were doing didn’t make sense.

They knew it wasn’t rational to panic after 19 clicks. Or to spend more than they’d likely ever recover. Or to obsess over pixel-perfect colours for a site that will never get more than 10 visits a day.

But they did it anyway — because it gave them a sense of doing something. A sense of control.

The culture of "Always Be Testing" only reinforces this habit. It suggests that we should always be busy, always tweaking. If we’re not doing something, we’re not doing our jobs.

I’ve struggled with this for a long time. I would launch a new campaign and check the search terms three times a day, every day. I’d panic about being a failure until the first lead arrived. Then I’d be ecstatic for ten minutes — and panic that the campaign would never produce another lead.

My brain knows it’s illogical. But it’s real.

I want to keep doing what I’m doing for the next 20 years. I find the mix of technical and creative work deeply satisfying. I love the transformation a good Google Ads campaign can bring to a business. I like my clients.

But I don’t want my happiness to look like the conversions graph in a new account.

If you relate to any of this, maybe what I’m working on will help you. I’m trying three approaches to keep my inner control freak as chill as possible.

Reduce my feeling of responsibility

I’ve noticed that a lot of my worry — and the time-wasting tinkering that follows — comes from feeling overly responsible for the success of a campaign.

That’s irrational, of course. I can’t control Google’s algorithm. I can’t control the state of the market. I can’t control how well my client sells. But the voices in my head still tell me: "If this campaign fails, it’s your fault"

In reality, most of the upside of a successful campaign belongs to the client. That’s how it should be. My fee is always a small portion of the profits they make. But in exchange for that upside, they carry the risk. I must remember this.

One thing that’s helped is offering a pilot campaign to every new client. It’s a low-cost, low-risk way to test whether Google Ads is a good fit for their business. The pilot changed how I think about the relationship — from me running ads for them, to us testing if Google is right for their business. That shift alone has helped lighten the emotional load.

But, in future I'm going to be more explicit about recent results before starting a pilot campaign. I want to be clear about what’s worked, how long it’s taken, and how variable early results can be. That way, when the client says yes, my conscience is clear.

Tinker once — then stop

One of my worst habits used to be endless landing page tweaks. Not real, data-driven A/B tests. Just tinkering: A different button colour. A word swapped in a headline. A bullet point added. A tiny layout change.

I told myself it was about optimisation. But really it was about feeling in control.

So, I made a deal with myself: I would spend six weeks improving my landing page system. I'd make it the best I could and then I’d stop. I wouldn’t waste another hour nudging buttons or fretting over font sizes.

For those six weeks, I obsessed:

• Story arcs and how they lead visitors to take action
• Readability: width, contrast, font size, line height, spacing, typographic hierarchy
• Speed: First Contentful Paint, caching, DOM size, image formats, placeholders, lazy loading
• Conversion tracking: forms, calls, WhatsApp, email, offline conversions, filtering out spam

The result is a system that builds high-converting landing pages in minutes or hours instead of days. But, the real benefit is that I feel confident that I’ve given it my best.

Stick to protocol

A few years ago, I had a solid protocol for launching and managing campaigns. But as Google changed, I didn’t update it. I drifted. I started logging into accounts more often than the data justified. The old discipline slipped.

Now, I’m rebuilding that protocol — so I know exactly when to do what. Things like:

• When to check search terms and add negatives
• When to move from launch phase to ongoing management
• When to test new targeting
• What to test first
• When to discuss results and lead quality with clients
• When to recommend a new landing page for a product or service
• And so on...

It’s still a work in progress. But even so, it’s already helping me focus. I’m at peace knowing I'm controlling the parts I can control.

If any of this sounds familiar — if you’ve ever found yourself checking accounts over and over, second-guessing your decisions, or tweaking something just to be doing something — maybe these ideas will help. Or maybe they’ll spark your own ways to manage it.

For me, the goal is simple: I want to keep doing this work for another 20 years. I love the craft. I love helping good businesses grow. But I don’t want my happiness to look like a conversions graph in a 1-week old account: up one day, down the next.

I want to do good work, do it consistently, and sleep well at night.

If you’re the same, you’re not alone.

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