Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a powerful tool that offers you a way to generate new clients and customers quickly with a positive ROI. The question is, should you tackle PPC management yourself?
Unfortunately, PPC isn’t the sort of thing you can set up once and then forget about. If you want to see a consistent ROI, then you need to provide your PPC campaigns with constant monitoring and maintenance.
This is where PPC management comes in.
PPC Management – What is it?
PPC management includes a variety of marketing strategies and research processes which are all focused on getting your ads in front of your ideal client.
But before we get into that, here’s a quick refresher on what PPC actually is.
How PPC Works
The beauty of PPC marketing is that you won’t be wasting money marketing to people who don’t care about your product or service. This is because you only pay when someone actually clicks your ad.
And since your ads are only showing up to people who search for the keywords you targeted, you are much more likely to get qualified leads doing PPC than from other forms of internet ads.
How does it work?
The biggest venue for PPC is Google Ads. Here’s a TL;DR of what the process of setting up an ad campaign with Google Ads looks like:
- You choose the keywords that you want your ads to show up for.
- You set a maximum bid (this is how much you’re able to pay per click).
- Google ranks your bid against other companies bidding on the same keywords.
- If your bid is one of the highest, then congrats! You get your ad featured at the top of the search results!
- Lastly, you get to sit back and wait for people to click your ad.
Other PPC venues include Bing Advertising, Facebook, and Instagram.
Now that you understand what PPC looks like in practice, I’ll explain what goes into managing a PPC ad campaign.
PPC Management Best Practices
After reading the 5 steps above, you’re probably thinking, “That doesn’t sound so hard. After all, he did say ‘sit back’ at one point, so it must be easy!”
Unfortunately, it’s time for me to introduce you to two things:
- Hyperbole
- PPC management best practices
Each of the steps listed above requires a solid amount of research and performance tracking, and it’s these things that makeup PPC management.
PPC management ensures that you have the information you need to choose the best keywords, bid correctly, and write your ads. And once your ad is posted, PPC management comes into play again, this time tracking ad results and adjusting your ads where necessary.
Here are some of the best practices that govern PPC management and improve ad success rate:
- Keyword research. This includes checking keywords matches, quality scores, competition, ideal keyword grouping, and even researching keyword negatives — words that you don’t want your ad to be displayed for.
- Mobile optimization. As of this year, more people use Google via mobile than on a desktop. This means optimizing your ad campaigns for mobile is crucial. If you don’t, you could be losing over 50% of your target audience.
- A/B ad testing. This involves running multiple ad campaigns to test different aspects of your ads (e.g. keywords, ad language). A critical part of the PPC management process, A/B testing helps you ensure that you are running the very best ads.
- Landing pages. When a lead clicks on your ad, where do they go? Getting them to click your link is only half the battle. Once they land on your site, you need to make sure that your landing pages are written and designed in a way that compels them to do business with you.
As you can see, PPC management is highly technical and requires a certain level of expertise to run effectively.
Because of this, many companies prefer to hire a PPC management firm to run their PPC program for them, rather than invest the time and resources required to run their PPC strategy on their own.
So what do PPC firms do? And are they worth the investment?
I’m glad you asked! Let’s answer those questions in the next section.
PPC Management Firms
PPC management firms are experts that you can hire to build, manage, and optimize your PPC campaigns.
What Does The Working Relationship Look Like?
When you start working with a PPC management company, you are assigned to a dedicated PPC Specialist who will be the expert managing your accounts. PPC Specialists are highly trained and usually have years of experience with PPC.
While you focus on customers and growing your business, your PPC Specialist will be working behind the scenes — doing PPC keyword management and research, creating ads, running A/B tests, etc.
Your Specialist will update you with monthly reports on how your PPC campaigns are doing and they will also be available if you have questions during the month.
Who Is A PPC Management Firm Right For?
PPC management agencies are perfect for businesses who understand the value of PPC marketing, but lack the time and/or resources to manage their own ad campaigns.
When it comes to costs, there are several different ways that PPC firms price their services.
Let’s talk about those in the next section.
How Much Does PPC Cost?
First, I’ll explain the costs associated with Google Ads, and then we’ll explore the cost of hiring a PPC management firm.
Google Ads Cost
There are a variety of factors that influence the cost of running a PPC campaign on Google Ads. These include (but are not limited to):
- Keyword competition; how many other companies are bidding on your keywords?
- Industry; while you might be paying 0.02 cents per click, other industries, like legal and financial, can easily pay over $40 per click.
- Location; Google Ads geotargeting affects costs, with some locations having a higher PPC rate than others.
Overall, the average cost per click for Google Ads is $1-2, with the average small business spending between $9,000-10,000 per month on their Google Ads campaigns.
If you’re new to PPC, then you may be wondering “Why spend so much?”
The short answer is: because it works.
In 2018, businesses made an average of $2 for every $1 they spent in Google AdWords. That’s a pretty impressive ROI!
Of course, this isn’t to insinuate that every business makes a positive ROI with PPC. Like I explained earlier, there are a lot of factors that influence the success of a PPC campaign.
Those who made a positive ROI in 2018 were the businesses that took the necessary steps to optimize their ad campaigns with the best practices — either learning how to do so themselves or by hiring a PPC management firm.
Which brings us to:
PPC Management Firm Cost
There are a variety of pricing models used by PPC management agencies. These include:
- Percentage of ad spend pricing. Under this model, you pay the agency a set percentage of the amount you are spending on ads. This is ideal for companies with larger ad spend. Not a good choice for small businesses with small budgets because most percentage-based firms have a minimum spend rate.
- Performance-based pricing. PPC agencies using this model adjust rates each month, basing their fees on the number of leads they generated that month. This is common for e-commerce PPC firms but isn’t a good choice for businesses that are looking for predictability and consistent rates.
- Flat fee pricing. Agencies using this model charge a flat rate, determined by the scope of work and ad spend. This is ideal for large and small businesses that like predictability. But, is not a good choice for companies with a large ad spend, as flat fees are more advantageous for smaller PPC budgets.
Here at Fannit, we don’t think any one of these pricing models is perfect, which is why we took the best parts of each of these plans and created our own pricing model!
Our PPC management firm costs are optimized for both small and large businesses.
For businesses with smaller budgets, we offer flat-fee pricing plans for ad spends up to $12,000. And if your company has a PPC budget of over $12,000, then we shift you to a percentage-based pricing plan.
At Fannit, our hybrid pricing model ensures that your business is able to take advantage of a PPC management cost that is optimized for your unique situation.
PPC Management Experts
We know that you don’t want to spend the hundreds of hours required to cultivate a successful PPC campaign, which is why we offer industry-leading PPC management services.
Here at Fannit, my team knows paid search and is happy to manage your PPC so that you can focus on what’s important — caring for your customers and managing the day-to-day aspects of your business.
To hear more about what we can do for you, contact us today!
