Hard to steal someones PPC campaign? Is my boss getting ripped off?

[RedShifted]

This is a bit complicated but I'll try to be brief. I got a job doing all types of stuff for this company. Green energy installation, seo, social media marketing, backlinking, flyers, etc. I'm basically just optimizing what he's already spending to increase his overall ROI.

PPC is something I've never really known a lot about. It seems you just make a generic ad, target a keyword, than pay per click.

His business is a local basement waterproofing business. He has some shady kid from LA (his biz is in NJ) doing his PPC campaigns. He pays him $1000 a month and gets idk maybe 20-30 leads a month on good months. Each job we sell can sell for as much as $10,000.

My question:
When I heard this PPC kid talking on the phone I noticed my boss doesn't know ANYTHING about marketing in general. Had no idea what is budget was, or even how much money he was paying for the actual PPC itself. He just knew he was paying this kid $1000 and he was getting him leads basically.

I researched and found out from ispionage that this kid is paying around $68 a month for his PPC campaigns. Is this true?

Is this kid just pocketing $930 a month and only putting that tiny $68 amount of money towards PPC? Cause thats what ispionage seems to be telling me.

How hard would it be for me to take over the campaign? Something just doesn't seem right about this. I'd rather have my boss paying around $200-$300 for his monthly campaigns and I can pocket $600 or w/e. Mainly because I'm doing so much other work for him already.

I've never done PPC before though and want to know if this is normal cause it seems shady. I mean how much work is this kid likely doing? For $68 a month? Seems like he may be getting over on my boss who owns this waterproofing company. Although he is obviously getting him leads. Looking at his ads though it seems I can just do a twist on all the previous ads hes' done, take the campaign myself, invest $200-$300, and possibly get him a lot more leads.

Can anyone please enlighten me about this situation? I feel like my boss is getting ripped off. Or maybe ispionage does not provide accurate data and it could be that. I'm not really sure.

[paulgl]

The kid knows what he is doing. His client is getting a boatload
of return on that investment.

If you mean PPC via adwords, knowledge is king. You cannot
just target a keyword, make and ad, and be successful.

I'd say "the kid" is going places and $1,000 is cheap.

You cannot just jump in and manage a campaign.

You don't tell us how you know what the kid is doing.

You cannot take over a campaign, but would have to
take over the whole account. The kid is not going to
tell you his secrets. And if the kid actually owns the
account, you are SOL.

Many people fall into this trap of things just looking easy,
and not worth paying. Your boss better look before he
leaps away.

Your boss is not getting ripped off.

Paul

[petzergling]

PPC is another beast and if you are already doing all of this other stuff chances are you wont be able to properly optimize a PPC campaign as well as the other guy assuming hes good.

If your boss is paying 1k/mo and getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of leads, how could you possibly say that he is getting ripped off?

If the person he is hiring is actually a PPC specialist, its likely he has alot of resources spread out on google adwords, display network, yahoo adcenter, facebook ppc, etc. I'm not familiar with ispionage but I dont think theres a very good way to track what hes doing. Chances are hes spending probably about what you want to spend, 300$~ and pocketing the other 700.

If you are able to track his expenditure, you should be able to track the individual keywords he is targetting and see the ad text and landing pages hes using and be able to judge whether or not you can do it better right?

[packerfan]

If your boss is generating $30,000/month and paying $1,000 to do it, he should be getting that kid to do more. Who cares how he's accomplishing it.

Business owners that think of marketing as an expense, well profitable marketing anyway, are fools. If you know with some certainty you can put $1 in and get $2 out, you should figure out how to INVEST more into doing that...

[ukcarl]

If this kid can get 20-30 leads that backout at your end for just $68 keep him he is well worth the money.

I can tell you that search bids in this niche are high so I doubt this is what is happening but even still a 4 figure budget creating 5 figure leads is great.

I say if its not broken don't fix it

[Makis77]

This is not getting ripped off but paying less than average for making those leads.
This kids could have wasted tons of hours, days and nights in order to get successful.
This you cant buy...

[Black Hat Cat]

I assume we're talking about a local only campaign. The reality is for local only searches, there just aren't that many searches for any given service, product, etc each month, despite what many local "experts" will try to tell you. It could be the $68 he is spending on ppc is all he can spend. If the traffic isn't there, it isn't there.

[Nino]

I don't really think he is paying only 68. Ispionage has it's errors.

But I advise you to stay still because you can't close the deal due to 2 reasons!

1. You don't have the experience - just by "stealing" a campaign you won't learn anything!

2. You want the same price as him! so why would your boss lose that gold mine "kid" for someone that is inexperienced in the ppc field if he still pays the same money?

[RedShifted]

Absolutely guys I will not say a thing then it seems like he knows what he's doing. And I really appreciate all you guys taking your time to respond.

I just had to run this by more experienced folks to get a more seasoned perspective. I had obviously saw the $68 display on ispionage and it threw me off as I just assume PPC would be more expensive for something like basement waterproofing.

I guess spending little would actually be a better sign than spending more and getting the same result.

I am a bit perplexed though about how PPC is executed. I always assumed you just bid the most you could on a keyword when you knew people were searching for it and it would get your business. Plus the ads always look terribly generic like "Basement Waterproofing in NJ CLICK NOW" etc etc. Don't really see the "art" side of it all but I guess its in the research.

Speaking of which, I think its time to research PPC myself so I don't gotta make anymore threads like this in the future. =]

Thanks all!

[MrWonton]

$70 would not deliver 30 solid leads in your niche. Nowhere near in fact.

$33 per lead is not bad value at all; no idea what your margins are, but 10K per job with 30 leads per month is an incredible ROI for 1K per month.

There's official Adwords qualifications for a reason; it's not as simple as many think to create and optimise a truly efficient campaign in a competitive niche!