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Hiring a PPC Consultant?

by bhconsultant
7 replies
Hi,

I would love to have some advice about, what sort of budget does a B2B company need a have for PPC before they can consider hiring a PPC Consultant?

would $1000 of advertising spend a month be considered too small for a PPC Consultant to be interested? If so, what are the options for a company of this size?

We are also confused between quite a few marketing channels to pursue, PPC being one of them. Do you think with that kind of a budget we would be better off pursuing other channels for lead generation, for e.g. Linkedin marketing?

Thanks.
#consultant #hiring #ppc
  • Profile picture of the author speedylikesKJ
    If 1k includes the fee which you are supposed to pay the PPC consultant company that would be not enough budget , IMO you should build a better budget first .. About size of company i know many people who grew with their clients for example when they started they had small clients with 2,3 employees and later they grew to 300-400 employees in their offices . So it depends on how good is your relationship , If youa re low on budget blogging can work really well for you .. You will have to look around and see what other options you have ..
    Originally Posted by bhconsultant View Post

    Hi,

    I would love to have some advice about, what sort of budget does a B2B company need a have for PPC before they can consider hiring a PPC Consultant?

    would $1000 of advertising spend a month be considered too small for a PPC Consultant to be interested? If so, what are the options for a company of this size?

    We are also confused between quite a few marketing channels to pursue, PPC being one of them. Do you think with that kind of a budget we would be better off pursuing other channels for lead generation, for e.g. Linkedin marketing?

    Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author badboy_Nick
    Hey

    If there's one thing I have learned while running a startup business is to NEVER outsource your PPC marketing early on if you are on a tight budget i.e. $1k. I really learned this the hard way.

    Hiring a PPC Consultant would be a good idea, but I think you may want to actually run a PPC campaign first before you hire one. You also have the option of an agency, but I don't think that would be a good strategy that early on. The problem with PPC is that while an agency will setup, tweak and monitor your campaign ... they usually demand to get paid a flat fee or a % of your ad spend, which means they are more than happy to spend your money for you. A consultant on the other hand might come in, look at an established PPC campaign and give you pointers, tips and strategies to make your campaign more efficient and more profitable.

    So my advice is: invest into learning and setting up the campaign yourself first, spend your budget and see what comes out the other end. Only once you've hit a brick wall should you then get external "one-off" help such as a consultant. That shouldn't cost much either, maybe a few hundred USD so would still be well within your budget and affordable.

    Then you can scale up accordingly and repeat said process, but really invest the budget into yourself and the business instead of outsourcing it to an agency. The overall ROI will be much better. Also, I would stick to Adwords/BING PPC first instead of Linkedin Marketing, the results you get are much better.

    Hope that helps

    Nick
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi bhconsultant,

      While $1000 a month ad spend is definitely on the small side, there are many PPC agencies that will take on a client with a budget that small, especially if you are willing to do performance based budgeting.

      With Performance based budgeting you start off with whatever budget you are comfortable with and the PPC agency will optimize your budgets for maximizing your campaign performance. This gives the agency an opportunity to grow their fees as they grow your business. This arrangement tends to work well because the agencies goals are aligned with the business owner's goals. As the business prospers, so does the agency.

      I have even seen large agencies that will accept clients with an ad spend as low as $500 per month. I know someone that works as a PPC manager at one of those agencies and all their PPC managers are assigned 100 accounts each. That means on average they have only 4 minutes and 48 seconds per day for each client account. Perhaps not the best option, but in many cases 5 minutes a day from an expert is probably better than what some people can do on their own.

      As long as you are looking to grow your business, using performance based budgeting, you should have no trouble finding an agency, or individual consultant, to manage your campaigns.
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      * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
      *       Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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      • Profile picture of the author bhconsultant
        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        Hi bhconsultant,

        While $1000 a month ad spend is definitely on the small side, there are many PPC agencies that will take on a client with a budget that small, especially if you are willing to do performance based budgeting.

        With Performance based budgeting you start off with whatever budget you are comfortable with and the PPC agency will optimize your budgets for maximizing your campaign performance. This gives the agency an opportunity to grow their fees as they grow your business. This arrangement tends to work well because the agencies goals are aligned with the business owner's goals. As the business prospers, so does the agency.

        I have even seen large agencies that will accept clients with an ad spend as low as $500 per month. I know someone that works as a PPC manager at one of those agencies and all their PPC managers are assigned 100 accounts each. That means on average they have only 4 minutes and 48 seconds per day for each client account. Perhaps not the best option, but in many cases 5 minutes a day from an expert is probably better than what some people can do on their own.

        As long as you are looking to grow your business, using performance based budgeting, you should have no trouble finding an agency, or individual consultant, to manage your campaigns.
        Hi,

        Thanks for that. That sounds very useful indeed and would probably be the way to go for me. I was wondering, if you are able to recommend any good companies offering this option?

        Originally Posted by badboy_Nick View Post

        Hey

        If there's one thing I have learned while running a startup business is to NEVER outsource your PPC marketing early on if you are on a tight budget i.e. $1k. I really learned this the hard way.

        Hiring a PPC Consultant would be a good idea, but I think you may want to actually run a PPC campaign first before you hire one. You also have the option of an agency, but I don't think that would be a good strategy that early on. The problem with PPC is that while an agency will setup, tweak and monitor your campaign ... they usually demand to get paid a flat fee or a % of your ad spend, which means they are more than happy to spend your money for you. A consultant on the other hand might come in, look at an established PPC campaign and give you pointers, tips and strategies to make your campaign more efficient and more profitable.

        So my advice is: invest into learning and setting up the campaign yourself first, spend your budget and see what comes out the other end. Only once you've hit a brick wall should you then get external "one-off" help such as a consultant. That shouldn't cost much either, maybe a few hundred USD so would still be well within your budget and affordable.

        Then you can scale up accordingly and repeat said process, but really invest the budget into yourself and the business instead of outsourcing it to an agency. The overall ROI will be much better. Also, I would stick to Adwords/BING PPC first instead of Linkedin Marketing, the results you get are much better.

        Hope that helps

        Nick
        Thanks Nick,

        I have thought about the consultant option previously. However, one of the things that would involve would be investing a significant amount of time upfront in setting up a campaign and while that;s easy, the hard part seems to be the Keyword Research. Therefore, we were thinking it would be best if we could find a company that would charge an upfront fee for setting up the campaign, including keyword research, ad copy etc. and then we can run the campaign ourselves and get the consultant to review it every now and then say once a month. What are your thoughts on this option? Also, what would be the best place to find such a consultant?

        Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author mushmush
    First try with a little budget.
    Hiring someone is not useful when you don't understand anything yet.
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    • Profile picture of the author bhconsultant
      Originally Posted by mushmush View Post

      First try with a little budget.
      Hiring someone is not useful when you don't understand anything yet.
      Hi,

      I am fairly decent with the adwords system and have run campaigns myself in the past. However, I am looking to outsource this as I am unable to find the time to do it myself and also do not consider myself a pro and would rather have a professional manage this.
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  • Profile picture of the author ChrisBa
    Imo it wouldn't be enough and you would burn through it very fast by the cost of the traffic and fees involved. Imo you might be better off paying for someone to teach you ppc and run the campaigns yourself.
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