What You Should Know Before Hiring PPC Management Specialists
Should you hire a PPC specialist or try to do it yourself?
Many businesses are aware of the benefits of pay-per click advertising, but may not know where to begin. Pay-per-click ads have evolved beyond simple search ads and now include social media.
The pros and cons of hiring PPC management specialists are many, but the main one is in balancing costs and results. It is possible to run digital advertising on your own but it’s not easy. The best campaigns are those that have more monitoring, more adjustments and more time for planning a professional strategy based on important KPIs. For larger sites and retailers, guessing or trial-and error can result in a total waste of budget.
Hire PPC Expert is a good investment that offers good returns. In most cases, the benefits far outweigh any costs. After all, it is one of the most successful and popular forms of marketing. Statista’s research shows that search ads have a media ROI of 23% while display ads have a medium ROI of 16%.
Advertisements that appear in the search engine results are paid for by marketers. This means businesses must pay to play in order to get results. Google claims for every dollar spent businesses can earn $2 in revenue.
Hiring PPC management specialists offers businesses higher returns on their ad spend and campaigns that are optimized.
Find the best option.
Types and types of pay-per click
You need to understand type before you can hire PPC specialists.
PPC advertising is used across a variety of platforms. This type of advertising covers a wide range of content on the internet.
Search Engine Advertising usually involves bidding for search terms. However, your ads may appear on other platforms, such as social media, web pages, partners-websites and videos.
Here are the most common types of digital marketing paid:
- Search engine advertising (PPC advertisements that appear on the search results page)
- Display advertising (PPC ads appearing as banners or links on websites)
- Social Media Advertising (typically in user feeds).
- Shopping/product ads are similar to PPC (search engine PPC) and can appear on search engines, online marketplaces or product listings.
PPC is not the only type of paid advertising. Businesses that are deciding whether or not to hire PPC experts will first have to decide what type of PPC is most important to them and which channels work best for their business model. It’s important for businesses to know who their target audience is.
If you want to hire PPC specialists for your business or brand, it is possible that they will be agencies or individuals who offer services in one or more of these channels.
What to look for when hiring PPC specialists
How do you hire PPC management specialists for businesses who want to outsource paid marketing?
Research different agencies to see what services they provide. Depending on your business model some PPC experts might be more suited for eCommerce sites, service based companies, publications/content focused sites, software-as-a-service brands (SaaS), multi-channel marketing, and more.
Ask them what they plan to do in situations such as these. Or, more specifically, how they will handle your business model. And ask about the PPC styles they recommend.
Keep in mind that an agency may not be the best choice for small businesses or sites. PPC agencies charge fees and brands with small ad budgets may not be able justify this cost. Although smaller budgets are still possible (most PPC does not require a minimum budget), it is more beneficial to hire PPC experts to get the best bang for the buck.
Questions you should ask before hiring a specialist or agency
Asking the right questions is important when you are looking for an agency or a dedicated expert. Consider these questions and your own concerns. Here are some questions to ask experts:
- Will they share reviews and case studies from previous clients? Are they willing to share case studies and reviews from other clients?
- Are they making outrageous promises? Smart Bidding and ad budgets are two examples of things that allow for a great deal of control, but time frames or profit promises with a guarantee have many variables. Be wary of promises that are too specific.
- Are they certified on other platforms or a Google/Microsoft Ads partner?
- Are there any clients that they have worked with who are similar to you?
- What data will you be able to access? What reports are they promising? What reports do they promise?
- How often will you be contacted by them?
- When/how can you contact them? To save money and be more efficient, it is sometimes necessary to make changes to a campaign at short notice. How will they keep up?
- How will they bill or invoice your business?
- Does the company have experience in promoting your brand on multiple networks? (Google, Bing Facebook, Instagram etc.) You don’t want a team who can only handle one thing if you decide to expand your brand later.
- Can they integrate your PPC search strategy with your SEO?
- What would they do if their campaign fails?
- What questions do they ask you about your PPC? They bother to ask?
- How long will it take for me to see the results?
When looking for PPC experts to manage your paid media approach, these are some good questions to start with. These questions are crucial to weeding out amateurs and “experts” from a sea full of other options.
It is for this reason that many companies choose to work with agencies rather than consultants or individuals. Having a dedicated team of PPC experts is much better than a single “expert” who may not be able keep up with the needs of your entire business.
You will gain knowledge and experience
Hiring PPC management specialists is a great idea because they have knowledge and experience your team may not possess.
It’s hard enough to learn all the terms: CPC (click-through rate), ROAS (return on advertising spend), CPA (cost per acquisition), quality-score (QS), CPM (cost per thousand). The truth is, marketers must understand these concepts to even get their ads started.
By hiring an agency or expert, they can set up a campaign without the need to struggle through. They’ll also have a base of knowledge which will help them achieve better results quicker. PPC involves being able to start campaigns and quickly adjust them to avoid wasting ad budget. It is also important to be able to choose landing pages, understand search behavior and read audience metrics.
The technology can be used by agencies to analyze campaign data, keyword performance and other information. They can read trends and compare monthly results to POP/YOY for ad campaign efficiency. They can track customer behavior on the site or across social media to identify opportunities for better landing pages and tone down bad ones.
The ads can be written to pass through the approval process and stay within the advertising rules/TOS of platforms such as Google, Bing and Facebook. It will save businesses from having to troubleshoot their campaigns, or have their ad campaign shut down for violating the rules.
Finaly, advertisers can perform vital keyword research.
Keyword research is a crucial part of PPC success. It involves finding the right balance between highly competitive keywords and accurate keywords that drive traffic and gain customers. PPC experts can identify “negative keywords”, which they can filter out of campaigns in order to increase efficiency. They will also be able break-out the best performing keywords and add them into unique campaigns, maximizing conversion value.