PPC management company to improve performance?

[dwentworth]

Hi, I was hoping I might be able to get a bit of expert advice.

I'm currently using Google adwords, but it's costing me a lot and I'm seeing questionable returns. I've been approached by a couple of companies, (most recently a company called SEO7k) offering to manage my PPC for me, and promising reduced costs and higher conversion rates. I'm a bit dubious as I'm not sure how they would be able to do that. Can anyone explain how this works and whether it's worth trying, or should I just keep doing my own adwords?

Thanks,

Dave

[NathanielB]

I don't know of that company you mentioned so I can't comment on them, but generally, I wouldn't advice paying a company no one knowns of, has no reviews and has no customers you can contact to ask for their input on the work they have done for them.

Adwords can be a tricky game to play if you don't know what your doing because if you want to get the most return out of the money you put into PPC you need to know:
1. How to make the most optimal ads you can.
2. What keywords you should and shouldn't be targeting.

Plus you could have the best ads in the world being displayed for all the right keywords, but if your site or products are not up to scratch or are over priced etc, your not going to make any sales, so you need to look at your site and product pricing etc first.

Then you need to check your ads are optimised correctly, which you can do with some research/training, or you can hire a known company to do it for you. Of which I would advice making sure you pick a company that's adwords certified, which you can check from here https://adwords.google.com/partnersearch/

[dwentworth]

Thanks for the advice NathanielB. I am really new to adwords, so I doubt I know exactly what I'm doing.

I checked the Google partner search site you mentioned and SEO7k were listed, but I think I'll follow your advice, do some research and try to do a better job myself before I resort to hiring anyone to do it for me. Wish me luck!

[NathanielB]

Yeah they seem to be a new company because the domain was only registered Sep this year, so I wouldn't go just by the fact they have taken and past the google partnership exams.

If you are ever looking to hire someone you need to do your homework on them before hand to see if they are able to do the work correctly to suite your needs, and simply looking to see if they are part of the google partnership program isn't all you should look at, like I said, you would want to hire a company which you can easily find real recommendations for. A good place to look to hire someone might be on the members list of this forum, just order it by rep like this link http://forums.seochat.com/memberlist...ion&pp=30&ltr=

But yes, good idea to give it some more time to try and get it working better by yourself, just do some testing on your ads to see which works best for you and make sure your ads are pointing to pages which are going to get the desired conversion

If you do need help, I'm sure you would be able to find some information around the forums http://forums.seochat.com/pay-per-cl...ch-engines-36/, start by take a look at the PPC 101 Training thread, and the other sticky threads in those two forum sections

[dwentworth]

Well I'm pretty determined to try and do it right myself, so I'll see what happens with that before I try anyone. If I don't succeed I'll definitely be having a good look at that list though. Thanks again for the good advice!

[1leads]

Let's see

Our pitch for 'ppc management' is simple

You ask a client shopping for a SEM guru what's their ROI

They say what's that

Then you say, ok, you buy 100 clicks on ppc using your crap content, what's the response ratio?

They say what's that

Bottom line, if you actually BUY PPC, then you need to be able to know these facts, OR YOU NEED A SEM GURU

Every 100 clicks convert to what % of 'leads' (usually)

Example, you're a lawyer in whatever market and you do accidents, well the cpc on injury lawyer terms is around 100 bucks a click now

So 10 clicks a day is 1000 bucks

You ask that lawyer how many called he can't tell you

You say call this injury lawyer, we get him 75% response ratios

Every 100 clicks becomes 75 calls

If you put a tracking number on the website you have now, dude, you won't get 5% response let alone 75%

So 'ppc management' is usually properly sold with rock solid history of HUGE RESPONSE RATIOS

We ourselves bundle our ppc management with out inhouse assets, we own the industry terms, we own the HD video video content, we own the tracking numbers and we own the ppc accounts

A client pays google, then us an over ride, then a monthly exclusive to work exclusively with us

That's our 'model' and I'm not here to sell ppc mangement, since we usually only handle the most expensive terms, injury lawyer terms, plastic surgeon terms, etc

If it's a 50+ buck click, we own one of the major keywords in that industry and we have great content already developed and it's a pretty simple cookie cutter formula

We slide a client into a geo sub domain on a keyword with our proven content

We tell them, look, this same guy in this market gets X%, so after 100 clicks you should see around X%

When we hit that number in response

THE CLIENT IS IN LOVE

Now if you think you can develope actual content that converts into a huge response ratio, then you're in ok shape

If you don't know the numbers and if you don't have slick HD videos about what you are pushing

You're a decade behind the times and you better get a ppc guru that does what you do

Like I said, I'm not here to take on new clients since we target a few minor niches in ppc management

But we do it and the key to selling it is understanding what you can hit for a client in RESPONSE RATIO

And when most content doesn't get 5% response ratios and you can deliver over 50% and sometimes 75%

Yeah you get clients EASY

Too many people throw large ppc budgets at google and have no way to measure the response

That's 99% of the google advertisers

CLUELESS companies with crap content that doesn't convert and no real SEM GURU around to fix it

You know what a SEM GURU starts out in the real world, if they are the bottom 10% of their trade they can get 250K a year now

And only the top 5% know jack really about SEM and PPC management

My 2.5 cents