Paid search marketing is an effective way for brands to generate qualified leads and a higher return on investment. So it’s no surprise that they are always on the lookout for more customers and better sales.
A service that offers quality pay-per-click solutions is bound to attract the interest of this new business and do well.
While it is a fantastic idea to start an agency and offer tailored PPC solutions to clients, you probably have the following questions:
Before we delve into the answers, let’s outline the services you can offer and pricing models that can help you build a strong PPC agency.
PPC or pay-per-click advertising ensures that the advertisers only pay if their ad gets clicks or responses instead of paying merely for displays.
Formerly known as Google AdWords, Google Ads is a renowned platform for PPC advertising. However, your client may also want to show their PPC advertising on other search engines like Bing. These platforms power google ads by prominently displaying them above and below organic search results.
As the chosen agency, it’ll be your job to create these PPC advertising campaigns and run them on these networks and others like Google Shopping and the Display Network.
Besides, your client may also want complementary services like social media advertising strategy to run adverts on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
Chances are that your clients want a comprehensive solution for all their paid ppc advertising needs. They want to rely on you for all-inclusive online ppc advertising campaign management.
Agencies that provide these managed services have a full-time staff dedicated specifically to PPC, contingent on the scope of their offerings.
In addition to planning and optimizing paid advertising campaigns on multiple social networks like Bing, AdWords, etc., the account managers also look out for client relationships. They have frequent interactions with customers, provide regular updates, align efforts with clients’ marketing goals, and report on performance.
Let’s delve into some of the many services that your PPC agency can offer to clients in addition to standard account management:
Add this service to your repertoire if you aim to sell to clients who want you to build their presence on Google AdWords, Facebook Business Manager, and Bing Ads. It demands detailed knowledge of:
From initial planning to execution, account buildouts may take up to several weeks, depending on the clients and own business size.
If you can’t build, assess, and optimize your client’s landing pages, you’re confining your managed PCC services offering. After all, if you don’t have control over the online spaces where the paid traffic goes, it undermines your capability to maximize impactful results.
While some agencies leave landing pages to the client, we suggest adding them to your line up. Small business plan don’t have a dedicated digital marketing department to take care of it, so they’ll appreciate it if you can handle this aspect of their campaign as well.
Handling landing page optimization allows you to add more value to your offerings and set you apart from competitors who aren’t providing the same service. But remember to onboard dedicated development and design resources, and don’t be afraid of reflecting it in your pricing.
Suppose a client has an uncontrolled account structure, got an account responsibility from an associate, or took back their account control from an agency. In that case, an account structure service can serve as a value-added package to the clients.
When pricing these services, consider the business size, historical data, and the client’s marketing objectives to determine the time, resources, and efforts it’ll take to restructure a specific account.
While you may take the reins of your customer’s PPC campaigns, you may not be able to get done with the essential design work. As Facebook ads and display ads require visual creativity, it can be time sinking to put all the elements together.
So if you don’t have an in-house team for designing and have a few trusted freelancers, make sure you work and add their rates into the final billing structure.
Account audit services are solely the analysis of your existing accounts. They are usually reviewed over a telephonic conversation with agency clients and transcribed in report form.
Consider charging a standard rate for account audits. Once you have created a thorough yet quick process, you can also offer audits as a complimentary service. After all, it represents a fair amount of value for your prospective client’s, and they’ll jump on the opportunity to work with you as long as they are getting something out of it.
Additionally, it shows the opportunities for growth and PPC optimization that can be the force to help you need to turn a potential lead into a client.
One of the most in-demand business services that you can offer is strategic consulting as a PPC agency. However, there’s a catch: you need to have intimate knowledge of the services you plan to offer.
Suppose you aim to provide consulting services to your clients. In that case, you should identify potential opportunities and educate your clients on how to implement changes strategically.
You can conduct the consulting sessions via a web conference call. The charges are usually determined hourly, depending on the experience, target market, and service.
Conversion tracking and implementation are some of the other services that you provide to your clients. It is the least time consuming yet incredibly valuable for your customers. That being said, helping customers install codes on their sites also allow you to retain more clients.
You can charge a flat rate for conversion tracking services or even provide them for free. Since execution may occur at the beginning of a client relationship, it can be a brilliant way to build trust, loyalty and deliver value to your clients.
Once you have decided on the pay per click (PPC) services you plan to offer, you will be required to design a pricing model and packaging structure. These are many common elements to consider to set up your pricing structure.
Set up or start-up fees are usually indicated by the initial overhead costs of taking on a new account. It can include substantial groundwork to get familiar with the new account, acquainted with the customer’s marketing plan approach, and make necessary structural changes.
Start-up charges are often levied as a flat rate one-time fee that ranges from 50%-100% of the recurrent monthly amount. As for recurring expenses, there are numerous ways to model your pricing structure.
The rate varies and significantly depends on the level and quality of service you are providing. For instance, do you offer paid social? Weekly reporting? Display Network management?
But for many agencies, the charges are based on a pre-determined percentage of google ads spend.
This pricing model considers the services’ total cost and charges a percentage of your entire ad spend. Provide a unified experience to your clients in every aspect, and you can set a premium price for the value you are delivering.
One of the advantages of charging your clients a percentage of total ad expenditure is the gain you can enjoy when an account decides to increase its budget. That way, you can earn additional revenue. On average, the PPC management fee ranges from 15% to 25% of the total budget.
To ensure constancy in their revenue streams, some PPC agencies opt for the flat fee pricing model. It lets you charge the client an even rate or an agreed-upon fee each month.
This pricing structure allows greater budget flexibility without continuous fluctuations in income. However, some clients may be discouraged by the radical increase in service charges when you decide to do so if that particular account performs well.
This includes charging a flat management fee on a monthly basis plus a lower percentage of your overall ad spend.
This solely depends on the additional services you plan to offer, so pricing varies from service to service.
For example, services such as account buildouts, restructure, and consulting may be best to charge on an hourly rate basis. Whereas for streamlined services like implementation, analytics, account audits, a flat rate is typically suitable. You can also potentially add-on design, image optimization or other SEO services.
Once you are ahead of the pricing structure and models stage, the final step is to get the word out! It is imperative to communicate a consistent message across all platforms, from your official website to your marketing collateral to your own paid campaigns.
Along with all the other arrangements, it is unequivocally imperative to let potential client’s know about your new PPC services offerings.
Dedicate a part of your site to market your PPC offerings to the traffic. Additionally, specify the extent of your services and the different plans and packages available.
One of the challenging things for entities entering the paid searchs sector is establishing their authority. What makes your new agency qualified enough to sell or manage online marketing solutions for your clients? How can you gain your prospective clients’ and visitors’ trust and persuade them to do business with you?
One of the ways to do so is through attaining certifications. It may take some time to get the necessary credentials, make it essential to get endorsed by renowned platforms like Facebook, Google, and Bing. This can help you to establish your business as a bonafide expert.
Once you scale up your offerings, you can leverage the initial accreditations and display them on your website. It allows you to instantly clout with skeptical clients.
Another way to establish your authority as a PPC agency is to ask and publish customer testimonials. Suppose you have worked on some great projects. In that case, you can ask your clients to leave a review about their experience more apt to consider your services. Naturally, potential customers love social proof!
The bottom line is that paid search advertising is an integral part of your clients’ inbound marketing approach. A strategic PPC initiative can help you better plan, execute, and optimize your offerings for potential clients and grow your business over the long-term.
Catching a prospect’s eye is merely the first step. Once your leads know about your PPC offerings, nurture them and turn them into actual paying clients.
%201.svg){kind=logo}
When you want to use paid search marketing platforms, Google Ads often leads the list. Because of its versatility, simplicity, and popularity, it’s obvious why it’s a popular choice. But when you drop all of your PPC advertising money into one marketing strategy, you could lose some leads.
That’s why some businesses explore paid advertising marketing outside of Google, with many turning to Linkedin Ads.
Google Ads and Linkedin Ads are highly efficient ways to market your products and services to businesses and consumers. But each marketing channel has its advantages and disadvantages. Whatever you choose, make sure you discuss the matter with your web development company.
Below is a closer look at each option.
We think it’s reasonable to conclude that Google reaches a vast audience worldwide – its ad reach is a stunning 4 billion people. Google search handles about 70% of desktop searches, and many companies report that they get about 90% of their organic traffic from the search engines. Also, up to 95% of the mobile search market comes from Google.
People use Google’s search a lot, and having the ability to target search terms with specific search ads is a massive benefit of Adwords. People tend to search for very specific things in Google, so if you can customize your Google advertising for your targeted audience, you’ll receive plenty of leads.
So, we can assume that most people’s targeted audience uses Google to some degree. That’s a massive advantage for companies when they want to target an audience.
However, businesses that want to narrow down their search may have issues getting their Google ads settings right with both Google Ads. And if you blunder when segmenting your audiences, your digital ad campaign could suffer.
LinkedIn features a narrower audience – 500 million users – namely businesses and business professionals. But this more limited audience makes it the perfect place for effective B2B marketing. LinkedIn lets marketers serve online ads to decision-makers and vital audience members in several ways.
Summary: For B2B firms that want to reach decision-makers, Linkedin is a terrific advertising platforms. If your B2C company intends to increase its reach, Google Ads could be the best fit.
When you target your audience with Google Ads, you have a few options: location, affinity, technology, buyer behavior, demographics, and interactions with your app or website.
No matter how much you know about your buyer, you may struggle to avoid clicks from worthless leads that cost too much.
In some cases on Google, people may not even know what they’re looking for. You can try to advertise to your desired targeted audience on Google Ads, but it can be challenging to get to the precise people who will most likely buy what you sell.
When people sign up for LinkedIn, they usually provide many details, such as their occupation, title/job title, experience, industry, education, interests, and more. All of this information can be leveraged for great advantage when you start your marketing campaigns.
Also, LinkedIn users can join many groups, start conversations, and obtain followers. The data is priceless when you want to target a specific audience and market to them. LinkedIn also has a Matched Audience that helps advertisers match their email marketing lists and website visitors with users on LinkedIn.
Many marketing experts think that LinkedIn Ads offer more value. LinkedIn has refined targeting, and you can make your product known to them so that you can tell them about something they didn’t know existed.
Summary: For B2B and B2C companies looking for a broad audience, Google Ads has enough targeting features. But for B2B firms that want to target specific groups, LinkedIn Ads has about 100 segmentation methods for micro targeting.
When you want lead generation, Google Ads has a broader reach and is the most effective. First, you can bring in a lot of prospects to your site without breaking the bank. The audience you’re after on Google visits the search giant with the idea to find the best product or service. This makes generating leads easier.
Getting leads from LinkedIn can be more challenging. Users of the platform may sign in to read industry news or talk to group members. No matter how perfect your ad is, viewers may not be in the mood to buy anything.
That said, Linkedin has a way to target ad leads through in-site messaging, which can generate plenty of leads.
When it comes down to dollars and cents, LinkedIn Ads usually are more pricey than Google Ads. As in Google, you can select cost-per-click or cost-per-impression.
LinkedIn also features a cost-per-send for InMail advertising. Typically, you’ll pay about $5 for each click, $6 for 1,000 impressions, and .80 for each send.
With Google Ads, the average CPC is $1. But to leverage that low cost, you need to work on your audience segmentation. If you don’t your ROI may be below what you want.
Summary: Advertising budgets for each platform depends on several factors. On average, Google Ads cost less than LinkedIn Ads. If your B2B company has a tight budget, you may want to focus on a limited variety of LinkedIn ads instead of a broad range of Google Ads.
So should you advertise with Google Ads vs LinkedIn Ads? Yes!
What we mean is, it depends. The correct choice depends on your budget, product or service offered, marketing goals, and target audience. You should not assume that when you need a digital marketing campaign, Google Analytics Adwords is the only choice.
It’s critical to evaluate the market, understand who your buyer is, and make a data-driven decision about the best marketing platform to reach your well-defined goals. One type of company might do better with Google Ads, and another may find LinkedIn Ads preferable.
The great news is you don’t need to choose between the two platforms. Many businesses use both, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and others. If you have the budget, it may pay off to diversify your paid search advertising to get the best ROI.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Digital marketing is a classic marketing strategy that’s commonly used to supplement organic web traffic, but it’s hardly the most straightforward way to increase your site’s audience. In fact, from a technological perspective, it’s a rather fussy practice. That’s why brands that want to include a PPC marketing strategy in their overall strategic decisions need to work with an experienced agency. Agencies facilitate ad distribution, track clicks, and calculate fees – and the best ones can help their clients thrive. Unfortunately, there are a lot of subpar agencies and bad actors out there, and you need to know how to spot them.
So, how do you know if it’s time to fire your PPC agencies? Keep an eye out for these 9 red flags. They could indicate you’re working with the wrong agency and that it’s time to make a move.
Companies leave their PPC agencies behind for all sorts of reasons, but according to a 2015 report by the Society for Digital Agencies (SoDA), the most common reasons include outgrowing the agency’s capabilities, cost overruns, and dissatisfaction with their strategy. These are all valid reasons, and ultimately many of them can be reduced to an agency’s failure to generate any or enough growth. After all, disliking the agency’s strategy isn’t likely to be much of a problem if that strategy is generating major growth. Similarly, a brand is unlikely to view itself as having outgrown the agency is their accounts continue to grow.
Ultimately, what these different reasons for firing PPC agencies demonstrate is that, any way you slice it, no one wants to work with an agency that isn’t making them money. So, while it might take a little while for your PPC ads to gain traction, if you’re not seeing growth based on the launch of or changes to your PPC campaign, it’s time to move on to a different agency.
While most brands work with a PPC advertising agency to run their campaigns, it’s not only possible but advisable for you to set up your own accounts with the major PPC advertising platforms, which include sites like Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Facebook. Still, if you’re not the most technologically savvy, it can be tempting to let your agency do it for you. Don’t give in to the impulse. Instead, ask them to guide you through it so that you can ensure that you’re the one with owner access rights.
Unless you have the owner access rights to your company’s PPC accounts, you can’t be sure you have unmediated access to your campaign metrics or feel good/ confident that you’ll be able to transfer your accounts to another agency or bring them in-house if needed. In other words, your agency could be misrepresenting best results to you or could refuse to relinquish control if you end your contract. You need to retain those rights and then give your PPC agent the appropriate permissions to manage your campaigns. If they balk at this arrangement, show them the door.
Typically, when you look at your company’s profile on a site like Google AdWords, you’ll see that your PPC agency has set up specific goals to help your business grow. These commonly include such metrics as Cost Per Acquisition, Return On Advertising Spend, and Cost Per Lead, though there are plenty of other valuable metrics that are worth tracking. Such measurements assure you that you’re spending your Digital marketing money in the right place, help you budget for ad spending, and offer insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
Unfortunately, you’ll occasionally encounter PPC advertising agencies that fail to set up these metric reports, and they’re not to be trusted. Even if they claim to be using an in-house system, it’s your right to demand they use the standard reporting system for each PPC platform and to fire them if they refuse to. Dashboard-based metrics exist to provide consistent measurements regarding the success of PPC campaigns ad those are the numbers you want to reference.
In a similar vein, some PPC advertising agencies skip the core metrics noted above in favor of less valuable but more appealing “vanity metrics.” Vanity metrics don’t help your business make money and they offer limited insight into your operations. Examples of vanity metrics include any campaign value based on impressions, engagement metrics that don’t drive conversions, and even many of the behavior-based metrics that used to be considered the gold standard in website evaluation, such as bounce rate or time on site.
Ultimately, vanity metrics don’t serve your company because they can be created artificially. An untrustworthy PPC agency might drive up engagement numbers by sharing a great meme on your brand’s landing pages, which will drive likes and other reactions, but won’t actually funnel clients to your site or create sales. Similarly, you can get a huge number of impressions by getting your PPC new ads onto a very popular site, but if no one is clicking on it, all you’ve got is a tally of how many people visited/ web traffic to someone else’s website.
Having the right metrics is important, but if you’re going to meet your goals then your Good PPC agency needs to be adjusting your account settings regularly to refine your campaigns. At a minimum, that means accessing your account to regularly monitoring and fine-tune the settings at least once a week. Such regular check-ins allow your agency to quickly adjust your social media campaigns based on updates to the search engines algorithm, catch any conversion mistakes that could cost your company money, and even react to competitors campaigns.
Be sure that you not only ask your PPC agency how often they access and update your accounts, but that you’re also checking your accounts regularly for updates. The reality is that, although many companies run PPC campaigns, only 10% of AdWords accounts are updated weekly. If your PPC agency can’t meet that standard, ditch them for one that will stay on top of your campaigns.
Just as your PPC agency needs to be fine tuning your accounts regularly, they should also be reporting back on your campaigns at least monthly. While seeing week-to-week progress would be great, as with many kinds of growth, this can be hard to evaluate. Comprehensive, monthly reports, on the other hand, can help you see what your agency has been doing on your behalf, how your accounts are growing, and allow you to be an active participant in your Digital marketing strategy.
Never settle for a company that doesn’t offer substantive reporting. While great reports may offer added insights from your account manager or more labor intensive explanatory work, the majority of PPC reporting is automated – any company that doesn’t provide it is just lazy.
It’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll speak to the same person every time you contact your PPC agency; that doesn’t even happen at your bank or your doctor’s office. That being said, there should be one person who acts as the lead on your account because that allows them to master your brand’s voice, develop a big picture strategy, and generally build up a knowledge base around your brand’s needs and preferences. They might be busy or out of the office occasionally, but anyone whose experienced both approaches – a core account manager and a rotating cast of agents – can tell you that having a point person makes a difference.
If your PPC agency doesn’t have you working with a single, core agent, you may want to ask a few questions to get a better sense of what’s happening. Do they have an unusual in-house strategy, or are they having trouble with employee retention? Do they think it doesn’t make a difference? You can also request that they place you with a single representative, but if that’s not their standard practice already, you’re probably better off going elsewhere. It just doesn’t bode well.
Google AdWords isn’t a new program and there are plenty of other PPC programs out there, but if an agency is committed to this work, then they should have complete Google’s AdWords certification program. You can check on this by asking them to show you their Premier Partner page – it really is that simple. Not having one isn’t necessarily the worst offense a company can commit, but it’s a good indicator that you can do better and should commit your ads spend elsewhere.
Did you pick your PPC agency based on their portfolio of appealing PPC ads/ads or optimized images? That’s a great starting point – it certainly indicates that they can do high-quality work – but it’s not enough if they’re not actually showing you your brand’s own ads before they launch them. Obvious, right? It should be, but many entrepreneurs have been duped by PPC agencies who tell them that their ad is similar to another ad product, which is called ad copy; the client, not wanting to be pushy, walks away with their own notion of their brand’s ad, and meanwhile the agency may not have done any work at all.
Your PPC agency should be giving you the final say on all your paid ads, so if you’ve supposedly got a campaign running and you haven’t seen your ads, ask to see them right away. Odds are good that if your agency isn’t showing you your PPC ads before launching them that they either don’t exist or they’re extremely low quality for online visibility. Great PPC agencies are proud of their work and they want you to see it. Anything less should raise concerns.
Hiring an agency to manage your PPC campaigns will obviously cost more than just the fees for the campaign itself, but the costs involved in running ads with your agency shouldn’t be confusing. That’s because, ultimately, your money should only be going two different places – to the agency and to the ad platform – and everyone at the company should be clear on the split. So, when we say you should be wary about confusing fees, we’re not talking about total cost (that’s a matter for you and your budget), but rather about how the money is split up. For any payment there should be the fee to the agency and the ads spend and it should always be obvious what the division is there.
As popular as PPC marketing is with businesses today, many of the agencies that execute these campaigns don’t do a very good job. They’re wasting your ad spend and your time, and you deserve better. That’s why you should switch to PPC.co’s PPC Management Service.
At PPC.co, we’re committed to ensuring that your ads are reaching the right audience and we know that most agencies just don’t deliver that. Starting from our understanding that website conversions often top out at 2%, we emphasize PPC marketing that pairs first contacts with retargeting efforts to ensure that your brand remains a top-of-mind solution for past visitors. A non-converting visitor is often just someone who hasn’t seen the right content yet, and we want to help you make those connections.
What else makes our PPC Management program stand out? With dual Google Ads and Google Analytics certifications, we have a deep understanding of the systems & AdWords account that get your ads seen and can use tracking data to its fullest potential of web traffic. In fact, that’s why we start every client engagement with a full PPC audit, because even when we’re not leading the campaigns, our skilled professionals can quickly see what’s working and what’s falling short in your current campaigns. From the start, we put our expertise to work for you.
If your PPC agency has exhibited any of the above warning signs, you can’t afford to wait around for progress. It’s time for the protection of business and moves on – to PPC.co. Contact us today to learn more about our PPC Management Services and say goodbye to wasted ad spend and rock bottom conversions. Once you’ve seen the difference a top PPC agency can make in your campaigns, you’ll never believe you let anyone else handle your PPC needs.
.svg)
