PPC Management?

[Pab]

Afternoon all...

Does anyone have experience of using a company to manage your PPC advertising? I've had reasonable success with Google, Overture and MSN but I'm sure my CPA could come down and quality score increase. I'm also finding less and less time to manage everything.

We only spend a little on PPC (perhaps 300-400 a month) so I'd be looking for a company that won't turn its nose up at this comparatively low monthly spend.

Any recommendations would be great

 

[dotwhack]

Not a recommendation but I offer PPC management to companies (regardless of how small spend is) - let me know what you're trying to improve upon and I'll see how I can help.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

We only spend a little on PPC (perhaps 300-400 a month) so I'd be looking for a company that won't turn its nose up at this comparatively low monthly spend.

What would you be looking to pay them for management? 10% = £30?

How much time would you expect them to spend looking after it if you were just paying £30?

6 or 7 minutes every 3 days?

Or, maybe they'll find someone who is wet behind the ears and give it to him as a training project (and he'll probably just make the campaign worse).

The reality is, you're not going to get much back for that sort of payment.

And, this is one of the problems with PPC: if you don't have a budget that's big enough to absorb the time it takes to manage the campaign (whether it's your time or someone else's), it's hard to get a good return on the time+ money you're spending on it.

Hope this helps,

Steve

 

[Mark Bateman]

Hi there

I met someone on here thats brilliant at all this sort of work and I have stats to show it

Give him a try - he is on here as bathead, he dosent advertise this but he is very good, my site went from 10 - 500 hits in one day

Mark

 

[Steve2507]

Hi there

I met someone on here thats brilliant at all this sort of work and I have stats to show it

Give him a try - he is on here as bathead, he dosent advertise this but he is very good, my site went from 10 - 500 hits in one day

Mark

No offence but hits are meaningless in the business world as they don't add to the bottom line. What you should be interested in are conversions.

To the op, I am assuming you are interested in increasing your conversions? If yes then are you sure it's your ppc? Many people will blame ppc for giving low conversions when reality the advert only pulls people to the site, the site itself sells the product.

Take a look at your site before you go after a ppc management company. I have spoken with quite a few (none from here) and none of them ever mentioned conversions on our site.

 

[Steve2507]

Forgot to mention that at the level you are at I agree with Steve Gibson, the service you will get will be poor.

Make sure your site is converting first.

 

[Mark Bateman]

Hi Steve

This is exactly why I choose not to come on here much anymore

YOu are very suspicious and this was only a type as I me was supposed to say Mick but as I say I dont come on here much anymore

I also dont really understand all the work people like this do but it did increase visits and the number of customers - simple as that

Mark

 

[Steve2507]

As an aside: I do think there's a problem on this forum with people having multiple accounts.

Okay, I am probably being very naive here but why would anyone want more than one account on a forum in the first place? I have enough problems remembering passwords etc at the moment but if I started having more than 1 account on a forum I'd spend more time trying to figure out my password and username than I would on the fourm itself. I can understand if they have been booted off but apart from that why?

 

[Bathead]

All I can say is I have one account.

I have done some work for and will do some for Mark Bateman who has kindly recommended me. I am in no way related.

Mick

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Okay, I am probably being very naive here but why would anyone want more than one account on a forum in the first place?

Aside from faking their own testimonials, it's hard to say.

Maybe they've got 2 businesses and they want to give the impression both are full-time businesses?

I don't know. I've only ever had one account on here.

Steve

PS Just to clarify, I'm satisfied that Mick and Mark are two different people.

 

[katewaugh]

Hi Pab

Not sure what all stuff is about in this thread, but to answer your original question, I have recently used Thomson Local (yes the directory people) who are authorised re-sellers for Google Adwords. You pay a little bit for the re-selling bit, but the main benefit is that an account manager will look after your ads for you if you haven't got time. I've stopped using them for the moment because I felt I learned enough to take over looking after them myself, and also I didn't like not having immediate control of my bids, keywords etc (you can get control via their Webfinder website, but it's about a 4 hour delay). Might be worth talking to them though if you feel you haven't got time to look after the ads yourself anymore.

cheers
Kate

 

[Pab]

Many thanks Kate (and all for the very interesting direction this topic took!),

Have read some of the replies, I think PPC management was perhaps the wrong term. I'm not simply looking for someone to click buttons on our behalf... what I need is a PPC expert. Someone with the ability to improve on a campaign to get the most out of it, tweak the creative to get a better click through and work with me to create killer landing pages, and so on.

Our PPC advertising is fairly successful - we have a good website and provide a great service, which does some of the selling for us - but I'm certain my ads could be performing better. We've done the best we can with the time and experience we have, so I guess I'm looking for a PPC expert to help us get the most out our advertising.

 

[Steve2507]

In your op you say you spend around 400 a month, after reading this thread is that still your opinion?

We have spoken to number of ppc management companies and individuals and we got the sort of "you are too small for us" attitude. 85% of our orders come from natural SEO, so when I told companies our to they were interested but when we told them we only spent a few hundred on ppc theri attitude changed.

To be honest I don't blame them. They mostly work on a comission basis and lets say its 10% then on £400 spend they only get £40. Ask yourself the question would you do the work that's involved for 40 quid?

From what I remember even the smaller 1 man bands wouldn't look at us for less than £1000 spend per month.

If you are serious about wanting someone to look at it you may need to increase your spend.

Alternatively there are a number of books on the market (I'm going through Adwords for Dummies at present) which offer helpful advice. There are also loads of forums dedicated to adwords (search "adwords forum" in G).

I'm sorry if this isn't the info you want but when outsourcing you have to be realistic about how much you need to spend on it.

 

[Pab]

Thanks Steve,

No need to apologise as it's a valid point. We're low value in terms of our spend so the commission a company is likely to make would be minimal at current levels. We've been unable to seriously ramp up our advertising simply because we haven't had the capacity in house (we're currently home-based) but that's set to change as we're getting an office and staff to help out.

Paul

 

[Steve2507]

Thanks Steve,

No need to apologise as it's a valid point. We're low value in terms of our spend so the commission a company is likely to make would be minimal at current levels. We've been unable to seriously ramp up our advertising simply because we haven't had the capacity in house (we're currently home-based) but that's set to change as we're getting an office and staff to help out.

Paul

We're in a similar situation (although we have a warehouse, but we lack good staff). Our PPC is only a few hundred a month, increasing our PPC spend wouldn't be a problem, but we couldn't manage it in the warehouse. Hopefully by the end of the year we will be looking at increasing it to £k plus.

 

[Lou12]

To answer your question Pap, I have used ClickConsult, please don't waste any money on this company, I'm sorry I cannot recommend any others as I have researched PPC in detail and now can look after my own PPC. Stick with PPC and I'm sure you can do the same, I can send you a lot of PPC information if you wish, totally without charge..!




Good luck Pap, please PM if you require PPC documents

 

[Words of Magic]

There's no doubt that Google Adwords can bring your business alot of traffic but its a fact that most users that have tried to run their own campaigns have failed to create an impressive return.

A qualified Google Adwords Consultant can maximise the best return on your marketing
investment and bring new customers to your business.

As a fully qualified Adwords consultant, I can ensure that your Adwords campaign is configured correctly to achieve the lowest possible price-per-click whilst maximising your click-through-rate.

Wishing you all the success in the world,

 

To me this brings in the question of how PPC consultants are remunerated which IMHO is part of the problem

The fact is that % of advertising spend - is largely a discredited model in advertising generally, and on the way out for ad agencies, for the very good reason that it incentivises the agency to spend useless money, or more than they need to achieve an objective.

Even with a £400 /month account... which presumably is generating £1000 profit to be worht the spend...then if someone can simultaneously get to 2/3 the spend to achieve at least 50% more profit, then there is a pot of £150 saved + £500 extra profit, ie a potential profit split of £650

If he doubles the profit for the same spend. then there is £1000

Which allows the potential of a £325 payment to the ppc manager if he is doing a reasonable job and the thing can become sensible. For one thing a £400 account can focus just on best return keywords, whic inevitably becomes simpler.

It also rewards and incentivising the finding of "backdoor" keywords - which IMHO is a very important subject - and "site targetting" which can be a great deal cheaper than going head on with the competition - things that the adwords managers rarely seem to do - not surprising if they recieve 10% anyway.

Theres no incentive in the 10% law for super efficiency - provided the campaigns make a profit, and I think that is a mistake for the customer.

On the few occasions I have offered this as a service to others, that is the basis I prefer to quote - a profit split. It can become hard erto police.

Clearly it works
And for the customer it is funded with "free money" out of extra savings or profits

Clearly it also removes barriers based on %

There is in the end a limit though on what is possible on size of account

I guess a PS to that, is that very conversation, happened for me last week on a £7K account, yet the customer preferred to keep to the 10%- despite the fact he had been royally fleeced by his present consultants in terms of woeful lack of performance. I found that surprising!