Convince me I need a professional PPC service provider
-
Very new to SEO and somewhat new to PPC but I have managed a few campaigns before for an old website. I am very good with numbers, calculating ratios, conversions, etc. I have a strong analytical and business mind and the theory behind PPC makes sense to me.
I know my target audience very well. I am an expert in the that field but I am not an expert in PPC. I am just starting out with a very small website advertising myself as a professional consultant in my field. The thought of spending extra money on a PPC guru when that money could go into my site or pay for visitors is a little scary.
Do you think I can learn and teach myself all the tricks of PPC or is this an area where it really makes sense to hire an expert to do the work for me? My budget would be small at first ($500 or less per month) so every little dollar helps.
Thanks.
-
Yes, I'm the same way. If I am passionate about something then I will usually do it myself. Although, it may not always be the best way to go about it, because sometimes it ends up pushing the higher priority things I should be attentive to behind.
Unfortunately for us passion doesn't always = priority
-
I agree.
I pay to have a lot of jobs done and do a lot of jobs that I could easily pay someone else to do who is already on my staff.
Part of the decision has to do with which jobs I enjoy.
We sell a product that I am fascinated with. All of my employees know how to prepare that product for sale and they do that work part of the time. They do an excellent job. It's honestly boring work. However, I spend more time on that task than they do - because I enjoy doing that job.
-
EGOL's point is valid
Pashmina's point is valid
At the end of the day, one or the other is only valid after knowing your full situation. What do I mean by that?
Nobody can give you the right answer because we don't have all the information needed to make an accurate decision.
We don't know how much time you have to teach yourself, spend on setting up your campaigns and, monitoring your campaigns.
Don't forget that quote "Time Is Money"
It's like asking if you should hire a lawyer, handyman, painter, mechanic, movers and etc...
A lot of things that these professionals can do, you maybe able to do better for yourself but:
You need to determine how much time you have to put aside on it, how quickly you need it done and etc..
In other words based on everything that people have answered, only you can make the final decision.
-
While I agree with EGOL, that no one will be able to do it as well as you given your depth of knowledge on your business and audience, I still think it makes sense to hire an expert.
(I'm over generalizing in a preachy dramatic way to make a point, so take it for what it is.) Smart capable people; we all have the same problem. We think: "Well, no one else can do it better than I can, so I'll just do it myself." But if we don't learn to accept support, and play to our strengths, we can only go so far in our ambitions to build something big.
One of the best decisions I made at 26, was to outsource my house cleaning. Seriously. It's a blessing. And now I just embrace it in every aspect of life, and business. Hiring others to do services, has given me space and capacity to build a better, and bigger business. I can build my own website, do my own taxes, and etc. I can probably build a really good website. But I don't want to be a good web designer. I want to be a PPC expert, and continue to develop that strength more deeply. So I outsource my website and taxes to a professional.
In that same vein, you need a professional PPC manager. Let it be their focus to maximize your campaign's effectiveness, and stay on top of the ever-changing PPC landscape. And you focus on being more you. I bet if we look at the numbers, then just one more extra conversion/sale/client per month would more than pay for the expertise, (not to mention the time you would save).
-
I'm with Egol, you seem to be clued up, and no one is going to care as much as yourself. so start learning.
i would look into your SEO as a more long term solution PPC does not work for every one.
-
I'll second EGOL's recommendation on several fronts.
Even if you decide to turn it over to a PPC pro in the future I'd recommend managing your PPC campaigns at the beginning. If you decide to turn the management of the campaign over to an agency later, you will be much better equipped to make that decision.
Definitely read Brian Gedde's Advanced Google Adwords. Brian Geddes provides tremendous insights and very clear instructions and methodologies. I had been managing my own campaigns for years and changed everything after reading this book.
The only caveat is time. It can be time consuming to manage, especially at first, or if you aren't seeing the results you expect. Honing in on your best results may include trying different ads, A/B testing, geo-targeting and as you already mentioned, a good bit of data analysis. If you have a handful of pages or products that may not take too long. And you're going to burn through some Adwords dollars during this phase.
Good luck - it's a great tool and it's brought plenty of business my way.
-
Thanks Egol. I don't mind paying people if they can provide a valuable service but I am often let down by the so-called "experts" in various fields. I think PPC consultants make sense if you have a large site with hundreds of products but I only have one site and am just selling one thing (myself). Cheers.
-
After reading your question... I came to the conclusion that you are the type of person who should bet on himself. You know your biz, know your audience, embrace numbers, know how to calculate and enjoy it, maybe you enjoy a little competition.
If that is the case and if you can spare a few days up front for learning and a few hours per month at first (which may decrease over time), then I encourage you to consider doing the PPC yourself.
Not trying to bash the PPC pros... but for doing the PPC for your business, I would put my money on you. You have the analytical skills and the biz knowledge plus you are the one with skin in the game.
I suggest that you do what I did....
First, start practicing a bit with PPC..... then read Advanced Google AdWords by Brad Geddes... then attend one of his Adwords Seminars. http://certifiedknowledge.org/adwords-seminars/
If you do that your competitors will be in trouble.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
100+ PPC Landing Pages Linking To Main URL... Hurting My SEO?
I started another thread around this question but don't think I was articulate enough. So, I have over 100 various landing pages that I use for targeted PPC. I don't really have any interest in these pages amassing their own SEO value; I simply use them for my PPC accounts. However, they all link back to my home page. Is this considered a link farm? And, if so, is the best option to simply add a nofollow attribute to all the links pointing to my home page? Would there be any reason to keep the links as follow? I don't think they're giving my site any SEO value but I'm concerned that they could be harming it instead. Any expert advice would be much appreciated.
Paid Search Marketing | | jfishe19880 -
Our PPC UTM URLs Aren't Registering In GA Properly
Hi, We recently ran a few ads on Facebook and Reddit for a campaign of ours. Each of the URLs were properly attributed UTM links. Some of them register properly in campaigns, but the vast majority aren't. I can only find the attribution by checking All Traffic and displaying the landing page and the source/medium. Our Facebook Ad Manager reports MANY more clicks than our Campaign section in GA is for the campaign name. Here's the URL I receive for the landing page: /?url=http://www.ourwebsiteurl.com/our-landing-page?utm_source=facebook.com&dm_redirected=true Is Facebook writing over our UTM with their own so all I receive is that it came from Facebook? The URL we used was complete with utm_source, utm_campaign and utm_medium, yet these aren't fully reported. Any ideas?
Paid Search Marketing | | kirmeliux0 -
KeyWord Spy Expert Needed: Will Pay $100 For A Report
I need someone with a KeyWord Spy subscription and experience (or a similar tool that has Canadian data) to do a one time CPC report that answers these questions: (1) Who are my client's main competitors in paid search? (2) What is the estimated ad spend by the the five top competitors? (3) What keywords and ads are working best for the competitors? (4)) What is the CPC for the top 20 keywords in the niche. (5)) Any topline suggestions for my client re: next steps. That's it! I don't want to be overwhelmed with masses of extraneous detail. This should be an easy assignment for someone with required expertise. Possibility of more work to implement and/or optimize CPC campaign. Reply via PM with experience. Ideally, send a sample past report (okay to black out client names)
Paid Search Marketing | | DanielFreedman0 -
Advantage in PPC for megaspenders like VistaPrint and Office Depot?
I sell niche printing and office supplies. Our site goes after certain specific keywords, and we use PPC where we compete against small companies such as ourselves, and the mega companies like VistaPrint and Office Depot. I know about how quality score affects our PPC costs, I was wondering if these huge companies have any other advantage against us in the PPC world. Does their name recognition give them a quality score of 10 on every keyword they buy? Is there a way to find out what your competition is paying on PPC keywords? Do they have other advantages in PPC that I may not know about? Thank you so much.
Paid Search Marketing | | Ryan_B0 -
Wordwatch Software: PPC Adwords campaign managers heard of, tried, or actively using this?
I've been trialing WordWatch for about a month. I'll admit I've been skeptical from the start. I don't quite understand the results they're delivering or how it works. So I did a search for "Wordwatch review" hoping someone out there could shed some light or help me decide whether this software was worth keeping. But all I can find are two suspicious and badly written posts, immediately raising red flags. (Penuguin should have eliminated crap sites using the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, but I digress.) **Wordwatch premise: **They take over keyword bidding to maximize budgets and clicks. They monitor the Adwords campaign to find an "optimal" bid price. Two questions about this premise: How is it different than using the Google settings for optimize for clicks or conversions? Since Google Adwords is based on a Vickery auction, wouldn't lowering my bid only lower my position? Bearing everyone has the same QS, then lowering my bids to the range between 2 positions does not increase my actual cost. I have Wordwatch enabled for a few of my campaigns. Their interface leaves a lot to be desired. They don't report the activity or the changes they make to the campaigns from the dashboard. I had to go into my Adwords Change History to track what they were doing. And lo and behold they're also adding long tail keywords to my ad groups. Bottom line I didn't notice any huge impact, and I don't see how it's better than Google's own version of campaign settings. I don't know that they're really legit. But their marketing was so convincing, and they raised $1.4M that I need other opinions. Any one with some pro/cons, or yay/nays?
Paid Search Marketing | | flowsimple0 -
Google PPC Quality Score (adventures in)
We have one keyword that brings our site the most visitors. This keyword is the brand name we carry. We have several years of tracking it in Adwords. For some extended time, this keyword [exact match] has averaged 19 cents per click, 2.7 average position, 4.5% click through, and a quality score of 7/10. We wanted more clicks. We could think of what was needed to increase the quality score. Sure, we could change the meta tag title and the adwords title to be the same as the single word keyword, but this would be less informative. We decided to keep these titles as phrases which include the brand name. First change we made: we increased the bid. After all, it was profitable for the two ads above us, right? We increased our bid from .50 to $1.50. Effect? Average position increased to 2.3 from 2.7. Click through increased from 4.5% to 4.9%. Cost per click went from .19 to .51. The incremental cost for each sale was......well really really high.....this didn't work. (oh, we rank #2 organically. Our organic CTR dropped from 3.2% to 2.9% with this change as well) Reversed back to where we were and decided to focus on the quality score. We realized that the keyword was part of an add group with about 20 other keywords. This word was important.....lets put it in it's own ad group. We then made an "exact" copy of the ad and started up a new ad group. Paused the old keyword. We very quickly realized that the quality score on this "same" keyword was now 4/10. That was odd....lets give it a few days......quality score drops to 3/10 and no longer qualifies for first page. What was different we wondered? AH! We capitalized the first letter of the word. Changing this took the quality score up to 6/10 instantly. hmmm, we thought capitalization didn't matter? Seems it did. We now wait to see where the quality score goes. Saga to continue....
Paid Search Marketing | | EugeneF0 -
Facebook PPC. Using Google URL Builder - Now What?
Hey There! So I've been trying some FB PPC ads. I recently learned I needed to use Google's URL builder to add the appropriate tracking fields into the URL (source, campaign, etc). The FB ad link now uses a custom URL with all the correct parameters. Now what do I do in analytics? Do I create a filter? A goal? Getting a little dizzy going in circles with google analytic help, and I'm hoping someone here can direct me. Thanks! -Dan
Paid Search Marketing | | evolvingSEO0 -
Is PPC worthwhile for a product with no search volume?
I'm working on a PPC campaign for a client who provides a luxury service. He has very little search volume in general, and there's one product that has no volume at all. I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to run a campaign for this product using the general keywords. I estimate that 95% of the population has no intention of using our service and can't afford it even if they did. For example, say we're a concierge doctor service. When people search for 'medical doctor' or 'medical treatment' they are looking for doctors, and we probably could help them, but they won't want us when they could go to the doctor's office down the street and pay a fraction of the price. Obviously I'd tailor the keywords so it would be as relevant as possible. Yay: If my ads are clear, then whoever clicks them is interested in my product, so my money is being well spent. I'll just have a very low CTR. Nay: Spend the money on advertisement tailored to the target market, both people with existing interest, and those who would want it if they knew we existed. Yay or nay?
Paid Search Marketing | | 5225Marketing0