Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

A PPC campaign is a living, never-ending, constantly monitored, tested, and adjusted effort. At least it should be.

Ads and landing pages should be created, tested, adjusted, etc. Keywords should be monitored for CPA, conversion rate, etc. Some keywords should be dropped. Some bids adjusted up or down. Tactical decisions should be made to reduce click cost on competitive terms.

It is also difficult for most businesses to handle this effort when the keyword count is high. Managing a campaign with thousands or tens of thousands of keywords can require considerable resources which many firms do not have.

The goal is to reduce CPA and increase conversion rate and revenues.

Kathy,

Companies like iProspect should provide you with analytics and monitoring to maximize your investment. Technically, you can do this yourself with Google Adwords. However, it would take you A LOT of time to do this! Companies like iProspect provide you automated processes to catch all the data in real time, make decisions for you, and allow you to optimize results.

If you have tons of time and not much money and love technical challenges, knock yourself out, read everything you can about Google Adwords, and do it all yourself. If you don't have the time to become an expert and to monitor everything yourself, hire someone.

I have a colleague that goes one step further than iProspect. They also put up ads for you with 800 numbers to call in on and will record the calls for further analysis. Additionally, they will report in real time click results - where the ad respondent went after the initial click, etc. They also have credit you each month just for the amount you use - not your PPC budget (your goal). So if you don't spend it all in a month - it carries over. And you can analyze the data to take actions to use your budget. If you would like more on this, please contact me off-forum. You can click on my name and it takes you to my profile. You can find how to contact me and I will put you in touch with my colleague.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Just to pile on a bit and back up what's been said already, TrinitySEM is right on with their answer. If you are targeting 5 keywords, then you can easily do it yourself. If you have a considerable keyword list you're working with and you aren't an EXPERT in Google Adwords (and few people actually are, but many think they are because the tool is simple to get started with), hire someone to manage it for you. The amount they save you in CPA versus you managing it alone should more than pay for their fees plus it will free up your time to concentrate on areas where you are an expert.

Kathy,

I agree that it sounds like a good idea to bring in some assistance to manage your Adwords campaigns. I have never used iProspect so I can't comment on them, but if it were me, I'd do a few things:

- Brush up on AdWords by reading up on it. Adwords for Dummies or a similar publication should give you the basics that you need to have a good discussion with the agency.

- Make sure you choose an agency that will allow you to learn from them.

- Make sure you have set your expectations well. You should have an agreed on definition of qualified leads. Otherwise, the agency could be thinking "click throughs" while you're thinking "opportunities." These are two very different objectives.

- Know what your benchmark cost per opportunity is so that you know how these campaigns compare to other places you could be spending your marketing dollar.

- I'd also look for a short term contract so you can make sure they deliver the kinds of reports and results they are supposed to deliver.

- Get references and make sure you ask them about specific returns from using the agency.

All the best!

Melissa

Hi,

 

I would not usually coment on other companies activities. However, we believe it is essential to get professional advice and professionals to run your seo ppc campaigns. We, personally have taken over numerous accounts and found that the amount of money wasted on PPC is enormous, unless you know exactly what your doing. most agencies charge around 10% commision to manage your SEO PPC accounts... believe me, you can easily waste more than this if you try and do it yourself.