Has anyone outsourced PPC? Is it a bad idea?

[HSam]

Okay, so it seems that PPC really is the only thing that is causing problems for me in IM. Is outsourcing PPC a good idea to do until I get better with it - or is outsourcing a bad idea? Have any of you outsourced your marketing, if so, how was your success (or lack of)?

[TopKat22]

Considering the amount of money you can lose if you do PPC yourself, I think outsourcing PPC is fine.

We did this for the website of an offline company and it worked very well and the cost was very low.

However, it took us a long time to find the company because most either offer low cost but also poor service and low results or good service and good results but cost way too much.

We finally found a company with great service, great results and a low price.

I am not affiliated with that company in any way and I get paid nothing if you use them but if you want their info. PM me because I don't know if it would be ok to list there name in the forum.

[TopKat22]

I just went to their webpage and I noticed that right now they have a 14 day trial for only $5 for the service. I assume you still have to pay google for the ads though.

[HYVAssistant]

If you have at least $3000 a month to spend on your PPC campaigns then I suggest outsourcing it to Trada.com

They do have a Crowdsourced / Crowdsourcing business model through which they apply several PPC experts to work on your account. You get to choose your target PPC budget and these experts get to find ways to get your ads clicked at a much lower price so they can keep the difference. (<<<--- interesting model).

Be sure to have a marketing funnel in place such that when folks come to a Landing Page on your site they will have to enter in their email in exchange for your content which you send to them over several days with an explicit call to action for them to buy your product at the end of the sequence.

For those who do not buy, put them into a drip email campaign so that you are top of mind when they are ready to buy.

If you do not do this then you will be wasting your PPC investment.

[timpears]

Originally Posted by TopKat22

I just went to their webpage and I noticed that right now they have a 14 day trial for only $5 for the service. I assume you still have to pay google for the ads though.

No reason you can't give us the URL of that company and or the name. I would like to see what they have to offer.

Do they create the ads for us, or do we have to do that?

[iAmNameLess]

I have done a lot of ppc management for my clients. Although, I don't recommend it unless you have a decent budget. If you're only doing 100 a month, paying someone like me really takes away from the value. If you are doing $500 a month it would probably even itself out but the difference really comes into play if you are normally spending $1,000 a month or more.

[timpears]

Nameless,

What exactly does a management company do for an advertiser, and how are the fees determined?

I don't have the budget for someone like yourself, but I would like to know for future reference. I am venturing into the PPC arena for the first time and trying The Content Network with the penny clicks that I have read about. I ain't getting any penny clicks, that is for sure. But I did get a few hundred at two or three cents.

I have about given up on SEO as I was unable to get any movement on my pages, and then finally I get a few on the first page down low. One at a number one spot. But the total traffic I have been getting is 16 on my best day, as the traffic for the words I rank for is minimal. That is why I thought I would try the PPC, but I don't know much about it.

[ankushkohli]

It's not an easy game. Client spend 2 ways:
# Google
# & to one who's organizing the campaign.

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by timpears

Nameless,

What exactly does a management company do for an advertiser, and how are the fees determined?

I don't have the budget for someone like yourself, but I would like to know for future reference. I am venturing into the PPC arena for the first time and trying The Content Network with the penny clicks that I have read about. I ain't getting any penny clicks, that is for sure. But I did get a few hundred at two or three cents.

I have about given up on SEO as I was unable to get any movement on my pages, and then finally I get a few on the first page down low. One at a number one spot. But the total traffic I have been getting is 16 on my best day, as the traffic for the words I rank for is minimal. That is why I thought I would try the PPC, but I don't know much about it.

Well, what are you doing with your SEO? You might not want to give away your niche and keywords but if you PM me I may be able to give you some advice to push up a bit more.

The fees... A lot of people will charge a one time set up fee of about $1,000-$3,000 depending on the needs....after that, if the client budget is 1,500 a month I would maybe maintain it for $300/mo. I don't have a ton of clients just for PPC. I have had success offering it with SEO packages though. The fees, companies really make their money on the one time set up. Many of them will do 10% of the budget monthly for their maintenance fees, which really isn't even necessary to tell you the truth. Not much is done beyond the first month, or at least the first couple months. Just a lot of monitoring and maybe some minor adjustments.

What I do...keyword analysis, along with negative keywords, keyword organization, copy writing for all your ads in all your ad groups, proper settings to maximize results demographically, budget monitoring. To really get maximum results that is why most charge the set up fee. Also includes image ad production.

PPC can be a whole new beast to learn. Google adwords is only one... you still have microsoft ad center, you have facebook ppc...youtube.. It can be a lot of work. For someone with just a couple hundred bucks, definitely do it yourself. It really has an advantage outsourcing once you have a decent budget to work with and you're busy with other tasks.