PPC - is our budget sufficient to justify outside help?

[Travelling Sam]

We probably spend £8-10K a year on Google Adwords. This might ring a bell with a few of you, but 5 years ago before launching this business I was fairly well clued up, as well, it was part of my job.

However, the market has changed massively in this time, and I just, well, cant keep up. The markets changing, but i'm far too busy running a company! I want to use an individual, an expert, outsource etc. But will our £8-10k budget justify bringing an expert? Obviously over the years i've been contacted, met and spoken to lots of people that have tried to convince me it would be in our best interests to hand over our PPC account, but my approach has always been 'I know what i'm doing, I can handle it '. Well, maybe I can't anymore!

But I see us as a smallish account, so could actually within our budget, actually pay a PPC expert / company to manage our account and deliver improvements?

I've looked at individuals (people I know, people i've been recommended, people on peopleperhour.com etc), hiring an intern and sending them on courses. We cant bring someone in full time unfortunately. And our budget is our budget.

What are the experts thoughts then? Should I knuckle down and keep abreast and continue doing myself, or can I find someone to assist with our expenditure?

 

[Websitehandyman]

Well the middle road is to find someone capable to do the procedures and produce the reports you want every period. You then concentrate of decisions and focus on where you can improve.

I think 8k spending on CPC a year might turn into 2k spent of CPC and 6k spent on labour even if that does improve the wins it won't be enough will it.

You also have to consider the door you are opening is one way. No one if going to reveal what they do to you fully so your heading somewhat into the dark.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

a geek apprentice may solve your problem at a cheap rate, long term growth as they learn and handy for other it services

 

[Danny Shaw]

You should really check out Admego. I use them for PPC and they put ads on Google, Yahoo and Facebook plus they have their own network (good backlinks). With that kind of buget they will do all of the leg work for you and keep click costs very low. Get in touch with them or do a test run with a few hundred quid.

 

[Danny Shaw]

Also check out www.trada.com they work on a PPA meaning if you can give them a few years data they will only charge you when you make a sale not per visitor. Might be worth chatting to them?

 

[webgeek]

Hire a small'ish online marketing firm to manage the PPC. You can get someone for 2k to 3k per year if you shop around. Sure, many will want bigger budgets and to charge you much more, but not all.

 

[Travelling Sam]

Thank you everyone. I appear to be in that 'middle ground' between getting specialists to run it and managing it outselves. My time would be far better used elsewhere.

I will look at a couple of small PPC specialists and approach them for some figures, but my worry as someone mentioned, is the fees wiping out our budget.

If anyone has any recommendations, please do advise. I'll work my way through all of your suggestion s above today as well!

 

[Baz Watkins]

Some of us little guys would jump at the chance to handle an account that size.

 

[Travelling Sam]

That's interesting. Baz, there are a few people (inc. those who have PM'd me) who I will drop a line to.

The way that I see it is that obviously whoever has to do the work has to earn themselves a wage too. And we'll only hire / pay if they are doing a good job! But within our budget of circa £8,000 a year, that would need to include all management and Adword costs. That figure would not increase, but the number of enquiries we have would have to, otherwise I might as well continue the management of the Adwords campaign.

So I just wasn't sure our expenditure is sufficient to allow someone enough scope to make money to justify them running the account.

 

[WebDesignBob]

Some of us little guys would jump at the chance to handle an account that size.

Yup.

I know very little about PPC, but would work very hard for someone with £6k to give me for SEO. You might find the greatest level of success working with a small guy who knows the PPC market inside out.

When it comes to SEO, I have no qualms imparting all of my knowlege with my clients. 90% of the time, they simply dont want to do the SEO themselves. There is someone out there for sure, who can take your budget and do better than you are doing. The trick is finding them, as your fixed budget has to take into account labour, as already mentioned.

If the ROI is very positive, why not just throw more money at it? PPC is in a sense, very much like turning on a tap if you can meet the demands of new business.

 

[Andrew Baker]

We probably spend £8-10K a year on Google Adwords. This might ring a bell with a few of you, but 5 years ago before launching this business I was fairly well clued up, as well, it was part of my job.

However, the market has changed massively in this time, and I just, well, cant keep up. The markets changing, but i'm far too busy running a company! I want to use an individual, an expert, outsource etc. But will our £8-10k budget justify bringing an expert? Obviously over the years i've been contacted, met and spoken to lots of people that have tried to convince me it would be in our best interests to hand over our PPC account, but my approach has always been 'I know what i'm doing, I can handle it '. Well, maybe I can't anymore!

But I see us as a smallish account, so could actually within our budget, actually pay a PPC expert / company to manage our account and deliver improvements?

I've looked at individuals (people I know, people i've been recommended, people on peopleperhour.com etc), hiring an intern and sending them on courses. We cant bring someone in full time unfortunately. And our budget is our budget.

What are the experts thoughts then? Should I knuckle down and keep abreast and continue doing myself, or can I find someone to assist with our expenditure?

So I guess the question is, if you spend £10K on AdWords (let's not include a monetary value for your time to keep it simple) - how much revenue does that bring you?

So this is your ROAS (return on ad spend) purely a return on the money your paid for the ads, nothing else.

Now you should work out what your ROI is, what is the return on your investment, after your taken off your costs including the ad spend.

Then if you can I would work out your profit

OK now you know where you are currently at, so firstly are you profitable with PPC, are you breaking even, or you losing money?

Unfortunately it isn't as simple as this as you have to consider attribution to other marketing channels and touch points for your sales. Just don't use Google Analytics eCommerce to decide what channels work...

So when considering paying for your PPC management, if you stick to your 10K budget...

You should expect to see an increase on ROAS - no brainer

But add in the costs of the management fees and consider your new ROI - better / worse? ... and what about profitability - worse / same / better?

When deciding who to go with, set some targets that can be tracked on an on-going basis... so ROAS, ROI, Cost per Acquisitions (CPA)s...

and if it works then scale a controlled spend...

 

[Dave Thomas]

to be honest you may be best served having an account audit run first to make those decisions....Many companies will come in and charge you £xxxx to manage your account without looking at the fundamental background and your business goals....it may be that what you have already created just needs to be tweaked and new testing put into place or it may be that you only require someone to consult at a regular level with a portion of hands on to which you can also assist on thus reducing costs.....It may also be that having someone on board in some capacity will open your eyes to new approaches, time saving methods, landing page optimisation and creation so that your site becomes a real converter.....i would look at a consultancy type level at this point.....and dont forget to get your account reviewed.....so that you have some ideas of what is both good and bad with what you already have in place...

 

[Deleted member 143613]

You can find lots of quality Adwords campaign managers on the freelance sites. The one I would recommend above all is odesk.com

An annual budget of £8,000 is just shy of £22 a day if you are running seven days a week, so a relatively modest budget.

I am certain you could find somebody to manage that effectively for you at a rate you could afford.

 

[Big Pete]

stupid waste of money .. spend money on the site and cut that way down , your website is weak on every seo point.

eg'
Meta Keywords :
test home page

Meta Description :
this is just a test

thats your main tags and keyword research is just as naff.. address that and watch the costs come down as natural links are FREE...

shoot your web designer / developer tomorrow morning

 

[Ali-v-8]

Big Pete - I am an SEO specialist - but i would never say adwords are a stupid waste of money.
You have made a bold statement without even considering his industry is holidays and travel. The OP is correct in assuming that the budget is relatively small, but it is not that insignificant that he wouldn't get any return from it.

I believe the website needs work on it to make it more user friendly, with more call to action, but all in all it is fine.

Meta title's and descriptions are unique - just not well optimised - so no need to shoot webmaster or designer - as you are well aware unless optimisation is included in a brief most web designers only concentrate on functionality.

Not sure if he is available but speak to Steve Gibson on here, he has a good mind for adword campaigns.

 

[Big Pete]

Big Pete - I am an SEO specialist - but i would never say adwords are a stupid waste of money.
You have made a bold statement without even considering his industry is holidays and travel. The OP is correct in assuming that the budget is relatively small, but it is not that insignificant that he wouldn't get any return from it.

I believe the website needs work on it to make it more user friendly, with more call to action, but all in all it is fine.

Meta title's and descriptions are unique - just not well optimised - so no need to shoot webmaster or designer - as you are well aware unless optimisation is included in a brief most web designers only concentrate on functionality.

Not sure if he is available but speak to Steve Gibson on here, he has a good mind for adword campaigns.

adwords i agree have a place but should be for the real tough keywords , the better the site the less you need adwords, in this case the site is poor , so hence why he needs to spend so much..

the site is NOT aimming at the big money European holiday locations its the make sure you have aids-TB-herpes etc jabs before you go places like Vietnam etc etc .. NOT tough markets in the scale of the holiday sectors.

and maybe shooting the website guy is harsh , i would just have him dragged by rope around the legs behind a land rover for 12 hours on a gravel road instead maybe ..

 

[Travelling Sam]

Thanks everyone, i'm going to start addressing next week. I will say that I have had some interesting messages - most completely and utterly irrelevant - almost amusingly so - I do wonder if some people read what I said before contacting me! (I have no issue with people e-mailing / PM'ing their services, I've used some excellent people from this site before). There are obviously also some people who are not on these site, but do scan it for potential new business!

Pete - yep - we're aware of our website shortfalls regarding our natural website. We will need a big revamping at some point soon, perhaps a completely new website, if we can afford it. It is 5 years old, and cost us peanuts so i'll accept criticism - i'm the first to appreciate our natural seo is poor. But when the design, website, and full CMS comes under 5k, there were always going to be one or two things that fall down, unfortunately for us it's something that's quite important!

But as for dropping Adwords - the two things are not mutually exclusive, Adwords is very successful for us, it's our main source of enquiries. We have to be targetted and intelligent as it's a hugely competitive market, even though we are niche. Our most successful keywords are very much ones that highlight the product that we offer that other Tour Operators with larger pockets don't offer. We are niche, it would be suicidal for us to target keywords such as 'Honeymoons' or 'Thailand Holidays'. I think you would be surprised at some of money spent by some (predominantly online) companies.

I agree with all saying we need an 'audit'. Thanks to all, Andrew Baker - i'm actually in the process of calculating some of the figures you mention - appreciate the thoughts behind your e-mail.

There are other questions i'm not well qualified to answer - i.e. a friend with a company in another holiday sector (who spends 10 times as much) turns his campaigns off at lunchtime and the weekends. That seems counter-intuitive to me. But there you go.

Thanks to all again, have a great Jubilee weekend everyone, i'm signing off for a couple of days!

 

[Big Pete]

Pete - yep - we're aware of our website shortfalls regarding our natural website. We will need a big revamping at some point soon, perhaps a completely new website, if we can afford it. It is 5 years old, and cost us peanuts so i'll accept criticism - i'm the first to appreciate our natural seo is poor. But when the design, website, and full CMS comes under 5k, there were always going to be one or two things that fall down, unfortunately for us it's something that's quite important!

But as for dropping Adwords - the two things are not mutually exclusive, Adwords is very successful for us, it's our main source of enquiries. We have to be targetted and intelligent as it's a hugely competitive market, even though we are niche. Our most successful keywords are very much ones that highlight the product that we offer that other Tour Operators with larger pockets don't offer. We are niche, it would be suicidal for us to target keywords such as 'Honeymoons' or 'Thailand Holidays'. I think you would be surprised at some of money spent by some (predominantly online) companies.

Strange enough you could address the seo on your site in hardly no time at all even in as little as a few hours or so , and that should of been done 4 years ago, indeed as the site was built is always the best way.. But thats irrelevant now as you have spent 32k on ppc working on the 4 years at 8k theory ??
Now i am old fashioned and maybe way out of touch but i am of the opinion that 32k spent on websites would mean you now have minimum of 64 websites each and every one domain named and seo targetted for every location you desire .. and then no more costs ever again as long as you live and have Holiday Companies paying you big bucks to advertise with you or cutting you deals etc..

I am not against ppc indeed its impossible to get the same coverage as buying each click , on terms like "Holidays" or "Insurance" and such but long tail stuff on specific targets , i just don`t get it.. :| and think its a waste of money personally except in the most competitive businesses , but like i said maybe i am out of touch in this crazy new modern world we are stuck in ...

The best all round solution is to run both a proper seo website and ppc for the over saturated terms like Holiday etc ..

Another point of issue which maybe you havent considered as most do not , did you know lots of people never will click ads !! Its well known the ads companies goods cost more and fill you with such tracking cookie crap, that people like me have learnt steer clear .. so like that facebook twaddle only if its the only last remaining link on a google search will it get clicked , well unless its the competition maybe

Just giving you my advice as is my duty to do .. take it or ignore it , its FREE advice and just my views ..

 

[IzzoNet]

Hello,

in the current budget, you should take someone who knows really good the PPC market. i'm sure it will help you to achive the best results.

 

[Travelling Sam]

Now i am old fashioned and maybe way out of touch but i am of the opinion that 32k spent on websites would mean you now have minimum of 64 websites each and every one domain named and seo targetted for every location you desire .. and then no more costs ever again as long as you live and have Holiday Companies paying you big bucks to advertise with you or cutting you deals etc..

:|

We are a travel company. Well, we're a Tour Operator. Why would we want 64 websites / domains? WHy would we want holiday companies paying us anything as they are our competitors? We don't need to do deals we have a team that contract directly overseas? I'm just wondering if you've got the wrong end of the stick of what we do?

 

[Big Pete]

:|

We are a travel company. Well, we're a Tour Operator. Why would we want 64 websites / domains? WHy would we want holiday companies paying us anything as they are our competitors? We don't need to do deals we have a team that contract directly overseas? I'm just wondering if you've got the wrong end of the stick of what we do?

Nope i havent got the sticky end of the stick , maybe you don`t get what i mean ?

Tour operator or selling dog foods and toys it makes not one jot of difference the concept is the same.

Advertisers would not be competitors but stuff like .. Insurance . Money exchange . etc etc ..

The point of the post is to point out that the money you are spending on ppc , could have produced a minimum of 64 complete websites .. each one targetted at every location , and hence give you top slots FREE for ever and ever and ever .. working on £500 per website costs which is over the top considering you could get bulk deals .

Let me explain why thats the better way "long Term" ..

A Tour Company does say . Boating holidays , Caravan tours , Cycling tours , and goes to destinations like Zimbabwe , Maldives , Skegness , etc .

1 Website to cover all of them would indeed be a mis match and throw google to pot . He would be thinking WTF !! is it cycling or boating or what ?? if you get the example ?? probably not , but i will carry on anyways as its rainning and have nothing better to do

Now you have 1 Master website handles all bookings contacts etc etc . number 2 website targets "Boating in Zimbabwe.com" and is seo written for that term , hits every box every picture includes "Boats boating Zimbabwe blah blah" in short that website is made for that term . and links back to number 1 for bookings etc,,

Now comes website number 2 .. Caravanning in Maldives.com same applies again . "looking for the cheapest best caravanning holidays tours to the Maldives blah blah " and on and on it goes net result .

64 websites later you control the market in every small niche , and sit back and choose your new Bentley or thats the theory ...

 

[Baz Watkins]

I think Big Pete might mean this, but if he doesn't hears my view:

In general terms you can niche market, running a few feeder websites each targeting specific keywords, which will then feed bookings back to your central service.

I.e. the ppc campaign targets holidays in Nairobi, the click would end up at your Nairobi website which has lots of Nairobi targeted content, which itself would link to your central booking website.

By spreading out your reach from one webste with lots of differing content to individual sites with targeted content you can increase your organic footprint, bringing in more custom, which can then if you so choose be matched to your ppc campaigns.

In essence you run a long term marketing plan based on targeted websites and complimentary ppc campaigns.

If you build say 5 websites which target prominant mid level destinations which are popular but cost effective, leaving the more prominant destinations (USA, Spain etc) to those wth bigger marketing budgets. Over time you will increase market share.

Over time you expand this process out to more destination websites and so on. Your overall spend might not reduce, but the share may shift to SEO over PPC.

Alternatively, once you have built you multiple feeder sites, you maintain your PPC spend to reinforce your organic position.

Others may write or explain this better, but I thought I'd have a go...

 

[Ali-v-8]

Like travelling sam :|:|:|:|:|:|
Off topic and off subject (thanks baz for explanation)
Just to point out some things about Adwords and why people use them.
1) budget
2) instant result
In the grand scheme of things - Travelling Sam knows £10,000 gets him "x" amount of business.
What he is looking for is someone to get £10,000 and improve what the return is with out losing exposure or budget on Fee's.
So far guys, it sounds to me you are ignoring his question. Would someone work with £10k and improve his results.
What should have been asked is - May we look at the campaign you are currently running?
By looking at that one could determine if it can be improved and possibly work on the basis that if they fine tune the campaign and improve conversions a fee will be agreed.
SEO and other strategies would be an added cost. Question is Does Travelling Sam have a budget to spend on SEO on top of his PPC Budget.

 

[essex_wiganer]

Totally agree with Ali on this one. I have worked on accounts ranging from £250 a month to £25k a month and although I am a massive fan of SEO and it is the perfect long term strategy, it is just that a long term strategy. In a volitile market positions can flux a little.

The best way to look at it is, is the person you are paying charging you a management for % of the amount spent or a set amount, either way you probably can justify the spend and an expert will have a look.

(I am a Google Adwords Qulified Professional but also work on SEO so don't think I am bad mouthing SEO at all, the most succesful campaigns run both.)

 

[Dave Thomas]

But as for dropping Adwords - the two things are not mutually exclusive, Adwords is very successful for us, it's our main source of enquiries. We have to be targetted and intelligent as it's a hugely competitive market, even though we are niche. Our most successful keywords are very much ones that highlight the product that we offer that other Tour Operators with larger pockets don't offer. We are niche, it would be suicidal for us to target keywords such as 'Honeymoons' or 'Thailand Holidays'. I think you would be surprised at some of money spent by some (predominantly online) companies.

I agree with all saying we need an 'audit'. Thanks to all, Andrew Baker - i'm actually in the process of calculating some of the figures you mention - appreciate the thoughts behind your e-mail.

There are other questions i'm not well qualified to answer - i.e. a friend with a company in another holiday sector (who spends 10 times as much) turns his campaigns off at lunchtime and the weekends. That seems counter-intuitive to me. But there you go.

Thanks to all again, have a great Jubilee weekend everyone, i'm signing off for a couple of days!

I cant stress enough as in my last post Get an Audit carried out from 2 or more parties as to your current campaign.....we can all go on about SEO or PPC, tags, spends, blah blah but it is very clear that this works for you and you are in need of a little guidance..whether this be in the form of hands on or consultant recomendations....as many of our clients are in the travel sector ranging from niche tour operators to multi factied players we can understand just how competitive the market is...but as you have already seen the positives here with AdWords its now about the next step and making your money work even harder....

 

[Ali-v-8]

I would like to point out that you spend is only the potential beginning. The right person will help you achieve results and you will then be able to increase your marketing budget accordingly.

 

[webgeek]

Have to agree with Big Pete on this one entirely.

PPC has a place sure. You can 'buy' sales. Sometimes you can buy sales profitably.

But, for every example of a site profiting from PPC, there are 100 which are profiting MORE from organic search.

Once you set up a boatload of microniche/feeder/breeder/spokes/satellites or whatever you want to call them, and they start accumulating authority for having pages of highly targeted content which isn't filled with distracting adverts or links away from the sales funnel, you will have a sustainable empire which only costs the money to renew the domains each month.

Just compare the costs... 1 domain + 6-10 articles + time to setup the theme and plugins with customization = 200 quid max

That microsite will give you link authority, and likely will send you referral traffic as well, since EMD's tend to rank quickly and easily once they're highly targeted.

Bottom line: Don't put everything into PPC when you can split it 50/50 with organic, thus building a medium to long term sustainable position, which will eventually allow you to get weaned from PPC.

 

[minttwist_ross]

Like you say, you don't want your budget being wiped out by agency costs.

However, have you considered whether PPC is really the best solution for you? It may be the case that other avenues, like social media or SEO, may provide better returns - giving you additional revenue to use PPC as an extra push at peak times.

Would it be OK to PM you with some details of reports which give you that kind of clarity?

 

[WorksIQ]

Hi Sam, a couple of questions/thoughts for you.

How much time do you actually spend on a daily basis managing your PPC? Assuming you employ a PPC Agency then what are you going to spend your free time on and what return will that give? Given your knowledge and experience with Adwords will you really be totally hands off or will you end up spending just as much time advising and querying the agencies results? On the flip side how badly do you think your PPC would suffer if you just reduced the time you spend by half?

If you are a small business then I guess your time is precious. Are there any other elements of your job you could outsource at a cheaper rate? For example maybe a part time office admin at £10/hour could free up more of your time? Similarly social media could be very time consuming with less tangible results than PPC so maybe you should look to offload that instead of PPC.

Finally regarding ROI, do you track Adwords clicks all the way through to completed booked holidays or just to the initial enquiry?

 

[Silky]

We're also in travel and I've got to say I wish we'd directed some of our PPC budget into SEO at a much earlier stage. The results from organic search have been much better and of course the spend on SEO is cumulative, rather than "here-today-gone-tomorrow". We've reached good positions in many of our key terms, bringing traffic we couldn't afford if targeted purely with PPC.

We've still a way to go and don't discount PPC for any quick hits or short term strategies but would much prefer to spend our budget where it proves to be an investment.

This probably isn't the time of year to do it, but once the summer rush is over, I'd join the gang advising you to sort out the SEO.

 

[Ali-v-8]

I am not denying SEO is an important money saving investment and it should be a primary focus of your online marketing - BUT - addressing the initial question on PPC was the focus.
SEO should always be an important factor in any online business and although initial returns can be slim to none the "longterm" positives (if done right) are fantastic.
A perfect example is "surfing holidays morocco" for a company called Surfbere.
SEO work was carried out and after 8 week page one was achieved for 18 out 20 phrases. (surf holiday took 4 weeks and yes Sir Earl I remember the mistake lol)
They no longer do adwords and paid nothing more for SEO since 2009.
If done correctly SEO is a great investment.
However you must be prepared to wait for results and in these day this can take a lot longer.

 

[Alan]

It is difficult to make broad statements, but generally we feel that anyone considering using AdWords shouldn't really play unless they are prepared to commit £1,000 / month.

This is because anything less and it is very difficult to optimise the campaign, obtain decent quality score and optimise conversion, without a decent amount of data. And spend = data = improvement on ROI.

Also, at a spend of £1,000 / month the spend is large enough that a professional will be able to add value beyond a well informed amateur.

Generally there are many people purporting to be AdWords experts, you can find them offshore for £5 / hour and onshore (UK) for around the cost of a book-keeper / senior administrator.

Of course, buyer beware, follow up on references, check that the person who will actually be managing is Google Certified, don't get dragged into long term contracts, etc etc

 

[MichaelBloom]

So many people talk about traffic but very few seem to talk about CONVERSION. The idea if conversion to get considerably more paying customers for the same investment. Conversion Rate Optimisation is a science in itself and I suggest you look into it as you could quadruple your sales very quickly by doing the right things.

May I ask what kind of business you are in?

 

[Alan]

And our budget is our budget.

As the poster above mentions conversion optimisation, it is actually one step further than that (and has been mentioned in prior posts by various) it is ROI or ROAS, or what ever you want to call it.

Unless you have optimised your ROI to the max and have the lions share of the market, then you are missing the point of AdWords by saying your "budget is your budget".

If today you spent £8k / year and that converts to selling £40k of holidays, directly attributable to AdWords (and assuming that gives you an operating profit), wouldn't you like to sell £80k of holidays for £16k? What about £800k of holidays for £160k . What about £8million of sales for just £1.6million of advertising spend.

Perhaps I am labouring the point.

 

[terryuk]

If today you spent £8k / year and that converts to selling £40k of holidays, directly attributable to AdWords (and assuming that gives you an operating profit), wouldn't you like to sell £80k of holidays for £16k? What about £800k of holidays for £160k . What about £8million of sales for just £1.6million of advertising spend.

That sounds nice but I didn't know Pay Per Click was a simple 10* your current ad spend/revenue.

 

[Alan]

Never did I say it was simple.

I am just making the point that setting a rigid budget misses the point to this form of marketing, where with the right sort of products that can convert online, with with correctly set-up analytics, you can become very responsive to successful campaigns increasing spend to increase profits.

I'm sure you get that and are just playing devils advocate.