Pay Per Click Marketing Assistance or DIY?

If you’ve ever wondered if you should have someone assist you optimize your pay per click (PPC) campaigns it might be wise to truly consider what is at stake before you ‘place your bids’.

Why has Google started offering advice to businesses?  Over the past year they’ve ramped up their ‘help and support’ because it’s profitable for THEM.  The more money spent on Adwords the more they make.  It’s that simple.  Does anyone honestly believe that the person helping a business from Google truly has their best and long term interest in their business?  I would not consider It wise to allow Google who earns more money based on Adwords to be the only knowledgeable  advice you receive on how much you spend and on what.  It’s quite a conflict of interest.

Google does NOT optimize and manage your PPC account.  You still have to take the time and pick up the phone.  You will still have to be knowledgeable about what are appropriate bid rates per keyword, what ads are appropriate, and what landing pages those ads should go to. You will talk with someone who knows nothing of your business goals and ambitions over time.  Nor do they have the knowledge of your other Internet marketing efforts so your landing pages and conversion metrics across PPC and SEO can work together.

Nothing in life that is of any value is able to stay on auto-pilot for very long.  Things change and they change often.  What other things in your business are truly on auto-pilot that provide great benefit to you?  Even offering extended warranties for the RVs you sell aren’t truly on auto-pilot.  They only get sold if someone sells them.  That requires people management/skill which requires time/effort which cost money and is not auto-pilot.

Consider that Google is not the only PPC game in town and if you are spending more than $1500 month on PPC with Google I might suggest looking at other PPC opportunities like BING.  Will you get as many shoppers from BING vs Google? No, but you will get qualified shoppers.  There are still millions of RV shoppers/buyers that use BING.  If you do decide to use Google, BING, and other lead sources then you’ve got to have the knowledge to manage them all.  Are you committed to staying educated to be effective?

Can someone do their own PPC optimization?  Sure can.  However, EVERY PPC account we have ‘taken over’ from a client on ‘auto-pilot’ is paying way more in cost per click than they need to.  They get more generic traffic vs more targeted shoppers.  Their bounce rate is higher.  Their conversion and ROI is lower.  It’s usually not very pretty.

Our PPC optimization services are priced very resonably.  We spend about 1.5 hours per week on average optimizing PPC accounts that spend more than $1000 on Adwords.  So, if on ‘auto-pilot’ the avg cost per click is $1.50 or more and with our services we can lower that under $1 per click and at worse the total clicks stay the same we’ve still reduced the total monthly spend for the client.  The over-arching benefit is they get better shoppers, reduce spend on wasted clicks, and get more people converting through more phone and email leads to the dealership.

It’s all about getting more opportunities to sell vs just getting clicks.