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Hiring staff to manage your PPC campaigns

by Apollo355
7 replies
  • PPC/SEM
    • |
Clearly big advertisers have PPC managers manage and optimize their Adwords and Bing Ads campaigns and are being paid on salary. I however like to know that for affiliates, does the practice of outsourcing your entire campaign managements to remote third parties exist.

Obviously one of the biggest issue here is trust, since your PPC manager will have access to your backend for reporting and earnings.

So I want to throw this out here and see if anyone has heard of this method and whether it is practical, since I see many big affiliates who are huge advertisers run campaigns across multiple niches - and have always been curious as to how they do it.
#campaigns #hiring #manage #ppc #staff
  • Profile picture of the author altonroot
    I see both the methods fair enough. Most agencies charge around 10-20% of spending. So it depends on your budget. If you have higher budget, you can hire in-house where as you said, you can maintain the security. But if your budget don't allow then agencies are not bad at all. Many agencies are good enough and if they don't meet your CPA goal and if you switch agency, I haven't heard that any agency has breach the security. Even I have access of many accounts, some of them are running by others and some of them are stopped.
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  • Profile picture of the author Apollo355
    Is it possible to pay the agency a percentage of your net profits instead of spending, that way they're more incentivised to ensure that your campaigns maximize ROIs?

    Also would it be too much of a security risk to give them access to your affiliate accounts so that they have insights to your revenue for optimizations and also to create adverts?
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by Apollo355 View Post

      Is it possible to pay the agency a percentage of your net profits instead of spending, that way they're more incentivised to ensure that your campaigns maximize ROIs?

      Also would it be too much of a security risk to give them access to your affiliate accounts so that they have insights to your revenue for optimizations and also to create adverts?
      Hi Apollo355,

      Yes, you may be able to find an agency willing to share in the gross profits, however sharing the net profits would be less likely. That would be a closer to an actual owner of the business.They are likely to want fair compensation for assuming that much risk. They likely will, and should, insist on equity and a certain amount of control over expenses and income distribution.

      That type of arrangement is more of an equity partnership.and you are essentially setting up a competitor, so there are conflicts of interest that could complicate things beyond anything you could image. For that reason most well established agencies will avoid it.

      It's wrong to think that an agency does not have incentives that are in line with the business owner. An agency must grow their client's business, profitably, if they want to keep the account and grow their own profits. An agency, just like an employee, must please their client, or risk losing their client. An agency typically wants to grow their client's business so that their fees will also grow.

      Do beware of those agencies that charges a fixed flat fee, for those are the ones that have an incentive to prevent your business from growing, as they would have to do more work, without charging more for that extra work. In those cases your agency's incentives are no longer aligned with your own, and you may need to renegotiate the terms to fix that.
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  • Profile picture of the author LucidWebMarketing
    You mention trust. To do the best job possible with your campaign, an agency or freelancer will need access to all available information. If you don't want to do that because you're afraid of giving such access, then don't hire someone. But any experienced person or reputable company will not be a problem so that's a moot point.

    I don't know the percentage of affiliates who hire to do their PPC but I suspect it's very low, in the low single digits. From what I see in these forums, there are few big ones and most affiliates don't use PPC much preferring SEO instead.

    Of course, hiring someone, whether in-house or outsourcing means you need to pay these people. But if you make enough to cover it and still make money for yourself, I don't see a problem.

    Agencies work in many different ways. Most in my experience will ask for a percentage of spend. Others will charge an hourly rate or fixed rate. You may find some willing to get compensated on sales generated.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    though its possible to find someone to work on essentially commission I'd put the idea away unless you have something very different offering. Profit depends on far more than PPC management. I can get the visitors to you and your site and /or your product just doesn't close. I would take set fee (at a lower level) plus profit sharing but to trust that you would close the traffic sent is putting me at risk.
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  • Profile picture of the author 60XCustomStrings
    I have found alot of waste when outsourcing our PPC campaigns. Most times they will pay for every keyword under the sun and often overpay for crappy keywords. Since bringing everything in house our spend and cpc is way, way down. We have a few less conversions but at the end of they day our ROI is way better.
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  • Profile picture of the author LucidWebMarketing
    60XCustomStrings, you simply hired the wrong people to manage your campaign. A good agency or freelancer will not, or should not, use irrelevant keywords. Maybe they did not understand your business but if so, they should have consulted with you, not just for keywords but understand your customers so they create better ads.

    You have understood the importance of relevant keywords: clicks are nothing if they don't convert. As I try to explain to my clients, it's not quantity that counts, it's quality and you can have the same sales doing proper targeting at a better ROI.
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