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In this short article, I’m going to give you some information you can use to decide if you want to hire someone to manage your pay-per-click campaigns in Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter, or if you want to do it yourself.
The bottom line is that it depends on YOU - I am just making you aware of what to watch out for in PPC managment. Hopefully I can save you some time and money too!
If you want to manage your own PPC campaign, here are a few things you should to take into consideration:
Time –> How much free business time do you have? How much are you willing to give up to manage this? Managing a PPC campaign can be VERY time-consuming!
Experience –> How much do you already know about the PPC industry? Most of the bigger companies have someone with at least four years of PPC experience. If you do not have much experience, there are a few ways to get it.
One way is to spend time reading the marketing and PPC forums (this way is free). Secondly, just go ahead and open your own PPC accounts and dive in head first (this is what I did, and it was VERY expensive). Nevertheless, both are good ways to gain experience and skills, and both can put you on track to masterying PPC marketing.
Competitiveness –> How many other advertisers are there? How much are the bids going for in the top 3 to 8 positions of the ads shown on the first page of results for a specific keyword?
Keywords –> How many keywords will you be bidding on? Do you know how to find all the targeted keywords for your business? Keep in mind that if you are in a competitive industry, you will probably be going up against other advertisers who are using expensive bid-management software.
Ad Copy –> Do you know if you can write good PPC descriptions? I’m not talking about normal ad descriptions, but relevant PPC descriptions. The difference can be the deciding factor between your site making a profit or a loss - a lesson I learned first-hand.
Budget –> If you are new to PPC and plan on spending more then $500 per month, I recommend you start off hiring someone to manage your PPC ads or to act as a consultant. It will be well worth the money if you shop around for the right person or company to help.
Learning new strategies and tactics - PPC marketing is constantly changing and evolving. Staying up-to-date involves reading newsletters and forums regularly, consistently, and carefully.
If you decide to hire someone to manage your PPC campaign, here are a few things you should take into consideration:
1) Experience & Knowledge:
How long have they been in the PPC management business? Do their current clients recommend them unconditionally?
2) Fees:
Shop around - you can always find a good deal on the internet. Just watch out for the ones that are TOO good. Remember the saying that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Talk to at least three different companies and compare them carefully before making your choice.
3) Bid monitoring and ROI:
How many times per week do they check your bid positioning?
4) Service:
You are going to be communicating (via email or phone) a lot with the person running your PPC ads. You should like talking with them and find them easy to talk to.
5) Response time:
How quickly will your calls or emails be returned?
6) Support:
Do they offer phone support or only email support?
7) ROI tracking:
Is it offered? It is not necessary to have ROI tracking, but in today’s market, it drastically increases your chances of having a profitable PPC ad.
All in all, for most people, hiring a professional and knowledgeable person to manage your ppc accounts is the way to go! Unless you have the time, patience and money to burn on getting past the learning curve can be pretty painful. Hire someone to help you get going today, and you won’t ever regret it!
Interesting post. For you which of the two is more effective?