Word stream PPC and adwords tools.

[spudsnruf]

Today we had a long chat with Wordstream in USA about their Adwords tools. We need to reduce the fees we pay to agency for managing our Adwords (and organics/seo...but that's a different point). Wordstream have some pretty great PPC tools which will cost us about £200 a month but that includes unlimited email access to their account managers and a monthly hourly review.

I can see how these tools will reduce the time we spend on Adwords but are there any folks out there with experience of Wordstream or have positive experiences with similar tools? is £200 a lot for monthly Adwords help? I'm assuming to really know that we'd need need to give turnover / profit, but at this stage just looking to understand what others spend / do on Adwords.

Thank you

 

[Curious]

I can't comment on Wordstream but just in reply to your amount of £200, I had an Adwords consultant for a bit and he cost £250 a month. So if you're able to get access to decent tools and an account manager that doesn't sound too bad to me..

 

[spudsnruf]

Thanks v much. Why did you stop using him? Do you do your own now?

 

[Curious]

We just don't need someone all the time our spend doesn't justify it.

He set up the account in the first month (think that was a little but more but not much) and then we had him for a few months to fine tune things. He's on these forums if you want to chat to him - Andy Baker or their website Getsquare.co.uk.

Hope that's some help.

 

[darren atkinson]

My opinion is that a good adwords consultant should save you more money than they cost.

I've not used the Wordstream tools but straight away the word tool says that you are going to have to make a time investment to learn the tool, why don't you just spend this time learning how to run your own adwords account?

Also, I'd be suspicious of their account managers, how qualified they are and how interested they are actually going to be in your business?

A good AdWords consultant will earn more doing private consulting work than they ever would working for an agency like Wordstream. I've dealt with Google's own adwords 'consultants' and you'd be surprised how poor they actually were, they talk a good game to clients who don't really know what they are on about but when it comes down to it they are usually reading / following a script.

It sounds like you have 1 company at the minute managing your PPC & SEO, if you are not happy with the cost why not separate them out into different companies, then you may be able to find a specialised adwords consultant who works better for you?

Signing up to a £200 per month US based 'tool' does not sound like the way forward to me.

Hope that helps,

Darren

 

[spudsnruf]

Thanks for your reply. They are extremely simple tools, although they do seem more expensive than some. Point taken though. Thanks

 

[BenKirkwood]

We did a fairly lengthy analysis of WordStream and concluded we could do all the analysis it presents in Excel - Its a time saving tool that dumbs-down the analysis.

It should initially help optimise the account but long term benefit is just a 1-click tune-up, depending on how much you spend in PPC and how much free time you have, it may be worth it as a short-term test.

Marin software does all of the same analysis but is more hands-on - I think the costs are 3-8% of spend.

Both tools, realistically need a carefully optimised account structure to work properly.

You might also check out adCore - our tests (over 3 months) showed this is not as capable as Marin but I believe they have switched to a freemium model which would be worth a test. www.adcore.com

HTH
Ben.

 

[spudsnruf]

Still mulling this over whilst the USA is on thanksgiving hols. Appreciate the comments.

 

[dolphinformations]

Found this looking for Wordstream reviews, can always count on a UK forum to say it how it is and get reliable feedback, Looks like marin software is worth a look too, thanks.