Do you currently use PPC as part of your marketing strategies?

[ExceedOnline]

As a PPC agency we are keen on hearing your current approach and why... No hard sales.

Do you:
1) Not use PPC at all.
2) Use an Agency.
3) Handle PPC inhouse.

 

[Joyous]

I'm assuming you mean pay per click? Had to Google this which is not a good look if this post is aimed at your target audience.

To answer your question - I don't use PPC at all.

 

[ExceedOnline]

I'm assuming you mean pay per click? Had to Google this which is not a good look if this post is aimed at your target audience.

To answer your question - I don't use PPC at all.

Thanks for your response. PPC is the correct term - I feel those that use this may know but I take note that Pay Per Click may be understandable to a broader audience. And ok that is interesting - What is the service you provide?

 

[Joyous]

What is the service you provide?

Accountancy practice ... but perhaps you're not interested in attracting accountants

 

[ExceedOnline]

Accountancy practice ... but perhaps you're not interested in attracting accountants

Not at all Always happy to connect with potential future partners

 

[fisicx]

Do you:
1) Not use PPC at all.
2) Use an Agency.
3) Handle PPC inhouse.

Mostly 1 but when needed 3.

Never ever 2. Only ever hear bad things about agencies. Not even seen one that sorts out the landing pages which as you know is the most important component of any PPC campaign.

"Profit Driven PPC Management Agency" suggests you are only in for the money

 

[AlanJ1]

2) Use an Agency.

But please don't try and sell me your services, we are more than happy with our agency.

Only ever hear bad things about agencies.

No issues our end with our current agency, huge budgets and ROAS targets being exceeded month on month for us.

 

[ExceedOnline]

Mostly 1 but when needed 3.

Never ever 2. Only ever hear bad things about agencies. Not even seen one that sorts out the landing pages which as you know is the most important component of any PPC campaign.

"Profit Driven PPC Management Agency" suggests you are only in for the money

Hey! Thanks for the feedback - I will pass this on! In our defence the term 'Profit Driven' is supposed to highlight our ambition to increase our client's profit... not ours ha. For example, we have taken one of our clients from 0 to 2nd in the market within their industry. Regarding landing pages we understand this for sure... Whilst we dont phisically handle landing page we are heavily involved with giving guidance to the chosen developer. Not sure how this turned into a sales pitch but felt the need to answer your concerns ha

 

[ExceedOnline]

But please don't try and sell me your services, we are more than happy with our agency.



No issues our end with our current agency, huge budgets and ROAS targets being exceeded month on month for us.

Thanks for your input Alan - Glad to hear you are having a good experience.

 

[fisicx]

The problem is that people don’t want ppc. What they want is more business. PPC is just one marketing tool that can drive traffic to a site. I’d want someone to do some analysis first and tell me if ppc would work for my business. If so then I’d listen to ideas and suggestions. If an agency could show the ROI would be beneficial then I might consider changing my mind. But I’d want the whole package: research, campaign, landing pages, analysis.

 

[AlanJ1]

Thanks for your input Alan - Glad to hear you are having a good experience.

Hi Darrell,

I get pitched around 5 times a day from agencies all claiming the same thing, we would use personal reccomendation if we were to switch.

 

[Fagin2021]

For example, we have taken one of our clients from 0 to 2nd in the market within their industry.

What does that mean ? What criteria are you using for comparison ?

 

[ExceedOnline]

The problem is that people don’t want ppc. What they want is more business. PPC is just one marketing tool that can drive traffic to a site. I’d want someone to do some analysis first and tell me if ppc would work for my business. If so then I’d listen to ideas and suggestions. If an agency could show the ROI would be beneficial then I might consider changing my mind. But I’d want the whole package: research, campaign, landing pages, analysis.

I appreciate this for sure. ROI is a tough one. Ultimately we can only provide you with leads, traffic and inbound queries etc... It would be down to you to convert and failing to do so would affect how you may determine success. Research we do, Campaign of course and analysis too... But landing pages we only give support on.

 

[ExceedOnline]

What does that mean ? What criteria are you using for comparison ?

The client in question now stands as a top player amongst established competitors with 30% of the total market share - We determine this using competitor analysis tools.

 

[ExceedOnline]

Hi Darrell,

I get pitched around 5 times a day from agencies all claiming the same thing, we would use personal reccomendation if we were to switch.

Understandable Alan - Well you have my details now - Im here if you need

 

[fisicx]

But landing pages we only give support on.

Which returns to my original post. Landings pages are the key component of any PPC campaign. I’d expect a lot more than just support. Especially if my monthly budget starts at £5000.

 

[ExceedOnline]

Which returns to my original post. Landings pages are the key component of any PPC campaign. I’d expect a lot more than just support. Especially if my monthly budget starts at £5000.

Sure. I fully appreciate your preference - We are typically very hands-on however we dont physically make the changes... We simply work closely with your chosen developer. Afterall, many companies already have website partnerships in place. Us taking this task onboard is not unheard of but even in this instance we would outsource this to a partner we work closely with.

On another note - £5K per month is a healthy amount. Do you find much success?

 

[fisicx]

Sure. I fully appreciate your preference - We are typically very hands-on however we dont physically make the changes... We simply work closely with your chosen developer. Afterall, many companies already have website partnerships in place. Us taking this task onboard is not unheard of but even in this instance we would outsource this to a partner we work closely with.

Support takes many forms. Do you for example advise on content and structure? Whether to include primary navigation or not? The use of imagery and so on. All elements that affect the quality score.

On another note - £5K per month is a healthy amount. Do you find much success?

That's the minimum budget on your website. And the reason I didn't complete the assessment. I only need one lead per day so would expect to be paying a lot less than that each month.

 

[ExceedOnline]

Support takes many forms. Do you for example advise on content and structure? Whether to include primary navigation or not? The use of imagery and so on. All elements that affect the quality score.

That's the minimum budget on your website. And the reason I didn't complete the assessment. I only need one lead per day so would expect to be paying a lot less than that each month.

Support wise - Yes. Totally. That much I agree with because all of this will impact lead conversion. Its one of our main conversations with clients.

 

[Ozzy]

1) Not use PPC at all.

Generally it is this as our target market are usually the marketing teams within banks, insurance companies, etc. So we have an in-house strategy to reach these people as it takes a few years to get onto their approved procurement panel, and then once there into their budgets, and then once there get them spending it with you.
The last bank we boarded went live today; took four and half years to convert from first contact.

PPC just doesn't work for us.

2) Use an Agency.

However, in past activities where our marketing strategy did show that PPC was a viable route I worked with an agency (who we found through UKBF as a recommendation from another member here).

3) Handle PPC inhouse.

About 25 years ago, in the days of Overture before it was acquired by MSN, and Yahoo was still the main search engine, I used to run PPC (and SEO) campaigns for people. Too much hard work now so we have outsourced it.

 

[DoolallyTap]

I pay a nominal £12 per day for PPC and use an excellent guy to run all my Google stuff. I am page 1 and often number 1 on page 1, Google. Graphs and charts and a report every month, More than happy to recommend my chap.

 

[Shopclicks]

I pay a nominal £12 per day for PPC and use an excellent guy to run all my Google stuff. I am page 1 and often number 1 on page 1, Google. Graphs and charts and a report every month, More than happy to recommend my chap.

No problems with Consent Mode V2?

 

[DoolallyTap]

No problems with Consent Mode V2?

No idea what Consent mode V2 is????

 

[Shopclicks]

No idea what Consent mode V2 is????

You should probably check with your Google guy.

 

[Total Barcodes]

I pay a nominal £12 per day for PPC and use an excellent guy to run all my Google stuff. I am page 1 and often number 1 on page 1, Google. Graphs and charts and a report every month, More than happy to recommend my chap.

Who do you use? I am starting to research running a PPC campaign alonside some other strategies over the next 12 months. Been burnt with Google Adwords and SEO in the last few years by not researching and doing enough due diligence, so starting the groundwork to look into this

 

[DoolallyTap]

No doubt others will say it is easy to run your own Google Adwords and SEO but it is a specialist job and not worth trying to do it yourself. I discovered that the majority of SEO people seemed to want to charge a fortune for not doing much, but eventually i found this guy who has been really good for over 3 years. www.one7media.co.uk

 

[Total Barcodes]

No doubt others will say it is easy to run your own Google Adwords and SEO but it is a specialist job and not worth trying to do it yourself. I discovered that the majority of SEO people seemed to want to charge a fortune for not doing much, but eventually i found this guy who has been really good for over 3 years. www.one7media.co.uk

If you don't mind me asking, what is your monthly spend on PPC?

 

[Paul Carmen]

@Total Barcodes Ecommerce and B2B/B2C lead generation PPC are very different things. As is scaling a small, handful of keywords campaign to be a large lead gen process.

Make sure you do due diligence on whoever you work with, and as many on this thread have said, make sure that market/keyword research, proper lead/sales tracking and landing page/conversion optimisation is part of the process for any B2B/B2C lead generation PPC search marketing.

 

[DoolallyTap]

If you don't mind me asking, what is your monthly spend on PPC?

I recently sold my online store and was paying £15 per day for the ads. My SEO man is £250 per month.
I have a new online store going live on 1st March and intend to spend £20 per day month 1 £25 per day month 2 and increasing to £50 per day within 6 months. My products are achieving well above average success. I receive all the graphs and charts each month with a report highlighting the activity.

 

[Total Barcodes]

I recently sold my online store and was paying £15 per day for the ads. My SEO man is £250 per month.
I have a new online store going live on 1st March and intend to spend £20 per day month 1 £25 per day month 2 and increasing to £50 per day within 6 months. My products are achieving well above average success. I receive all the graphs and charts each month with a report highlighting the activity.

Sounds like a very good plan to scale up month on month. My concern with our industry, is that it is a relatively competitive market - with a few players spending thousands every week/month on ad words and will always be at the top of the seach results. Perhaps exploring different avenues may be more beneficial to us - for example, I keep getting calls off a company called Approved Business - it is a website that has company profiles on, and he keeps calling to say that 48 people have clicked our profile since January (well, none of them have called us mate!), so perhaps avoiding PPC may work better for us

 

[DoolallyTap]

At the moment there probably are not any different avenues, AI may be a way of seeing things differently.

 

[AlanJ1]

I recently sold my online store and was paying £15 per day for the ads. My SEO man is £250 per month.
I have a new online store going live on 1st March and intend to spend £20 per day month 1 £25 per day month 2 and increasing to £50 per day within 6 months. My products are achieving well above average success. I receive all the graphs and charts each month with a report highlighting the activity.

This is a how long is a piece of string question to be answering.
Ad costs will vary depending on how much you are bidding on, how competitive the term is, your budget etc.
SEO will depend on how much you want to do, how many keywords to rank for etc.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Sounds like a very good plan to scale up month on month. My concern with our industry, is that it is a relatively competitive market - with a few players spending thousands every week/month on ad words and will always be at the top of the seach results. Perhaps exploring different avenues may be more beneficial to us - for example, I keep getting calls off a company called Approved Business - it is a website that has company profiles on, and he keeps calling to say that 48 people have clicked our profile since January (well, none of them have called us mate!), so perhaps avoiding PPC may work better for us

This is a common misconception with Google Ads search PPC, you cannot always be top of the search results. Every single search is a live auction, based on the search term the customer has typed, and the keywords you're targeting.

Many companies waste money on poorly converting or irrelevant terms, because they don't track this properly or block the irrelevant search terms.

There could be long tail or lucrative terms for your business, based on what services/products are profitable for you. You won't know this unless you do keyword and competitor research. If you then tie this back to actual sales data, you have the perfect model to measure ROI and drive profitable ads performance.

In terms of companies like Approved Business, it's a directory, trying to sell you paid packages. They do rank for some businesses, but have very small search volumes compared to those on Google. You are far better to ensure your business name ranks in Google itself, rather than spending money to rank someone else's site.

 

[fisicx]

You can also reach saturation point. This is where everyone looking for your products or services has seen one or more of your adverts. Spending more money isn’t going to magically get more sales as there isn’t anyone else to sell to.

As an example, if you are a dog walker there is a finite number of local dogs need walking. If your ads stop getting leads it could be there are no more potential clients.

 

[Paul Carmen]

You can also reach saturation point. This is where everyone looking for your products or services has seen one or more of your adverts. Spending more money isn’t going to magically get more sales as there isn’t anyone else to sell to.

As an example, if you are a dog walker there is a finite number of local dogs need walking. If your ads stop getting leads it could be there are no more potential clients.

That can be true with targeting tiny areas or very small search volume keywords, but for most keywords at a town, regional or national level it shouldn't ever be a problem.

If that situation does arise, if you've set up your tracking and negative keywords properly, then if searches dry up you stop getting clicks, and should have meaningful data to analyse and understand this.

If you think about your dog walker example, unless you're targeting a tiny area, there aren't really a finite number of dogs. In a reasonable size town people move in and out of the area, new people get a dog, circumstances change and they have to go into the office more, they fall out with their current dog walker or their current dog walker moves away etc.

Keyword search volumes tend to have seasonality, but remain pretty consistent year on year, unless it's for a new product, or a trend that goes out of fashion.