So you want to run Google Ads, but you know you don’t have time. You want a team and not a single freelancer. As you evaluate agencies and their capabilities, you see different badges: Google Partner and Google Premier Partner. Here is what those mean and why you should care when selecting a partner for yourself. Spoiler alert: Premier Partners are who you want to work with.
Both of these labels indicate the organization in question has some level of expertise. At least half of the individuals running ads have earned Google Ads certifications, and at least one person is certified in every product type their clients are spending on – i.e., Search, Display, Shopping, etc.
Google also measures an “optimization score” for every account. This relates to engagement with the recommendations Google gives to help campaigns improve. It doesn’t mean that the agency is blindly accepting recommendations; dismissing recommendations also improves the optimization score. All Google Partners need to maintain a 70% or better across the accounts.
Lastly, regular Google Partners have to have spent a minimum of $10,000 in 90 days to be considered.
Google Premier Partners must meet all those requirements and more. In fact, Google only gives Premier Partner status to the top 3% of agencies in a country.
In their own words, here is how Google determines the top 3%:
Premier Partners are at the top of the game – delivering results that keep clients around, attracting new business, and utilizing the full breadth of Google Ads’ capabilities. And while Google won’t explicitly define how much ad spend an agency needs to manage for bullet 5, you can be confident it’s at least in the hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.
In summary, choose your agency partners wisely. Those Google badges have real meanings. There are plenty of small shops doing good work that just don’t have the volume of clients to make Premier Partner status. But Premier is Premier for a reason. Want to know what it’s like working with a Google Premier Partner? Let’s talk! Contact us today to learn more!
