How much do people charge to manage a PPC campaign?

[Homer J Simpson]

For arguments sake, let's say I had a total of £10k to spend on a google PPC campaign, how much of that would actually go on clicks and how much to manage the campaign?

Or would it be better to have someone analyse our business & site and set us up with a campaign that we could switch on & off as and when we needed to drive more business?

No PM's please, I'm not looking to do this for at least 8 months from now anyway.

 

[Andrew Baker]

For arguments sake, let's say I had a total of £10k to spend on a google PPC campaign, how much of that would actually go on clicks and how much to manage the campaign?

As a rule of thumb expect to pay anywhere between 10-20% of your ad spend, so for your example above £1-2K management, £8-9K - ad spend.

There are a number of different payment models used by consultants and agencies including flat fee, performance based, percentage of spend, etc...

Or would it be better to have someone analyse our business & site and set us up with a campaign that we could switch on & off as and when we needed to drive more business?

Yes you can do this however if the account is generating profit (taking into account ad spend and management) whilst complimenting your other marketing channels then why turn it off?

 

[marcoose]

Most companies will charge a set fee for managing your spend. I wouldn't pay more than £500 on the management fee.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Most companies will charge a set fee for managing your spend. I wouldn't pay more than £500 on the management fee.

Monthly or Annually ?

We're talking PPC only here, not web-site maintenance/improvements.

 

[marcoose]

Sorry, I wouldn't pay anything as I do it myself haha. It depends upon te size of the job. A large ecommerce site is going to require a lot more work than a local plumber for example. You should easily be able to find someone to help you for a couple of hundred a month.

 

[Webtistic]

I have never really understood the '% of spend' model. To me, you should be paid for the work you actually do!

Transparency time...

We charge, very simply, by the estimated number of hours it will take to manage your campaign (and to, where relevant, work on landing page optimisation and split-testing, etc) multiplied by our hourly rate (currently £40.00).

A typical Adwords management fee would sit in the region of £240 - £360 per month. Larger campaigns (say an e-commerce campaign with thousands of products) may be at the top end of that scale or slightly more if extreme.

In addition, we may recommend an ongoing landing page optimisation campaign to include ongoing landing page creation, landing page optimisation and split-testing. The price of this would depend on the details, but would, for, say an average lead generation campaign, typically cost in the region of £200-£400 per month (depending on criteria and number of landing pages).

We report by ROI (every goal is tracked and valued including telephone calls), so once we are sure that a campaign is profitable , we then work with the client on scaling the campaign to alternative traffic sources.

I hope that helps!

Dave

 

[Baz Watkins]

Set up or review fee which can be from £100+ matched to an ongoing hourly rate or % of spend which can be anywhere form 10% to 20%.

There are other ways, but most prefer the % of spend, I prefer hourly.

Some will tie you into contracts, some won't. Some will tie you into minimum spends, some won't.

 

[Rebecca May]

The flat fee, combined with a percentage appears to work best. Say £100 month, plus 7.5%. But in the end its a combination of many factors. Hourly rates don't seem to work. No two PPC campaigns are exactly the same to manage.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

I have never really understood the '% of spend' model.

David Ogilvy wrote something about % of spend models for ad agencies that was really good (he was against it). I might go and dig the quote up.

For PPC, it does make some sense as, the larger the spend, the more you can justify spending half a day in order to get a 1% better ROI.

The downside is that there's a conflict of interest. If there's a keyword that's losing money, the PPC manager would lower his fee if he deleted that keyword.

Similarly, if the PPC manager spent 30 minutes going through the search query reports in order to block unwanted searches, that's 30 minutes where he'd earn a negative amount of money.

Steve

 

[terryuk]

I would say set up charges can differ quite a lot depending on the actual size of your campaign, or how big it could be.

Anyone who agrees with what you tell them is a mug imo

I am setting up a personal campaign shortly with about 10-15k keywords so a bit different to one for 5

 

[maxh]

It will vary depending on the size of your campaign and ad spend.

I could "manage" a PPC campaign with very little effort after set-up.

To fully optimise a campaign though can take hoursanhoursanhours and so you'd get charged big pounds. Like others have said 10-20% of ad spend.

So for a local car dealer, say, you'd be looking at £2,000 annually

National company £10k - £50k annually

Coca Cola £MILLLIONS

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Okay, fair enough it was a bit of a how long is a piece of string question. But thanks for all the replies, plenty of food for thought.

How about this approach instead.

To review an existing site of about 10 pages
To suggest and make SEO changes to those pages
To set up a set several sets of keyword campaigns for each of the pages

Would not want to get tied into any long term contract. Would be happy to pay some upfront for the review of the exisitng site, some changes and the set up of the campaign. But then depending on the management fee/% would probably prefer to manage it myself. Which ultimately I should do in order to understand what is driving the clicks/sales.

How much would that cost without managing the ongoing campaigns?
Then I suppose I'd need a regular review to see if it's still on track.

 

[terryuk]

I would say your diving far to into specifics and would suggest asking a few companies for a quote - they don't need permission to PM you

No PM's please, I'm not looking to do this for at least 8 months from now anyway.

 

[eventdomain]

From my own research, I'd say everyone wants a £1000 these days to do some simple admin - then you still got to pay for someone to write the ads and pay for the PPC provider too.

Lets work it out: £1000 @ 50 clients = £50'000 mmmm - nice!

An old client of mine did this, he was paying me £100 for 300ish targeted visitors, then he switched to a 'managed PPC account' which he was being charged xxxx fee plus £200 a month on top = £2400 a year + management fee for a bunch of untargeted traffic who will likely not convert and click away from his site.

His words were "To be honest, as good as you are, these guys are doing a cracking job" - I wished him well, but I doubt the results for the cash he's shelling out.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

An old client of mine did this, he was paying me £100 for 300ish targeted visitors, then he switched to a 'managed PPC account' which he was being charged xxxx fee plus £200 a month on top = £2400 a year + management fee for a bunch of untargeted traffic who will likely not convert and click away from his site.

His words were "To be honest, as good as you are, these guys are doing a cracking job" - I wished him well, but I doubt the results for the cash he's shelling out.

I'm sure you do doubt it.

If I was someone who thought that people searching google for the thing I was selling were "a bunch of untargeted traffic", I wouldn't understand the value of those visitors either.

Steve

 

[Curious]

Would not want to get tied into any long term contract. Would be happy to pay some upfront for the review of the exisitng site, some changes and the set up of the campaign. But then depending on the management fee/% would probably prefer to manage it myself. Which ultimately I should do in order to understand what is driving the clicks/sales.

How much would that cost without managing the ongoing campaigns?
Then I suppose I'd need a regular review to see if it's still on track.

That's what I did recently, I had Andrew Baker from this forum review my adwords account (I thought I'd set it up okay'ish, but it was terrible in comparison), set the campaigns up, then run it for three months for me to get it working/optimised (cost about a grand all together). Now I just keep an eye on it and I'll probably have him back for a bit in another few months to review it again.

 

[RevaxMedia]

Hi Homer, as a general figure most agencies revolve around £100 %/ 10% which ever is higher but each campaign is different so it depends on several factors. That £10k, would it be per month or per year?

 

[Homer J Simpson]

£10k would be yearly.

 

[RevaxMedia]

In regards to fees this would be £900 per month so I would estimate £100-120 management fee however this may increase if 10% of your monthly spend exceeds the base management fee this seems to be the industry standard

 

[warrenrobertsim]

I used to manage clients PPC campaigns and just stuck with the standard 10-20% of ad spend. Seems to be the common practise

 

[RedEvo]

I agree with the person who suggested an hourly rate. It's the only model that actually works as you need to spend whatever time you need to spend to make a campaign work, or don't do PPC.

If you charge a percentage how the hell does that relate to the work you do? The %age model smacks of the set it and forget it crew.

d

 

[Dave Thomas]

any good PPC guys will come straight in and save you a bunch of cash in areas that your current campaign may be losing out on this way mgt fees may be covered. % of spend is very much frowned upon from many in the industry as a rule of thumb, as this format would encourage those agencies with gobby sales staff and incentivised acc managers to up the spend using the gift of the gab and then increase the mgt fees.
It really is based on the complexity of the account and the biggest factor the ROI to the client all of these sums need to be calculated from the original consultation from your chosen manager or agency. You must take into account the mgt fee and add this to the max lead cost that returns positive ROI and then work your nuts off to better this figure each day by the means that you know.....an account that has 25 tier 1 mortgage/credit card/insurance style terms may have a monthly budget of 20k but then one with 1500 keywords in more niche market may have a budget of £2k so the work loads and fees can differ so much....like building work, holidays, organising a wedding..you need to choose the person or agency that you feel is the right fit for your business and best understands your needs...flexibility may be a better fit for you so you can have a go or turn on and off or you may want to let him/her or them get on with it as long as you are happy with results...there is no right or wrong in the way people charge out their time/work its all about how it fits for you.......