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PPC managment questions

by Splinter
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
We want to asign our PPC account (spending quite a large budget at present) over to a specialist marketing firm in the next week so any answers to the questions below or any other advise that can be given would be much appreciated

  1. Does it matter if the firm also work on PPC for competitors
  2. What is the best pricing option to go on. CPA or a set monthly fee amount or a % of media spend? I want to make sure that the comany is not driven by incorrect behaviours. IE if it is a % payment fee, we do not want them increasing our marketing spending and dropping the quality of lead in order to derive a larger monthly paycheck
  3. Is it standard for them to take our existing account into their own MCC or should they login and rather use our MCC?
Thanks,
#managment #ppc #questions
  • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
    Hi Splinter, just one persons view,

    1. each to their own but i would not take on a client if it meant a conflict of interest.
    2. that must be your call, we work on a set fee based on account size / others a % I see no wrong or right in that one / must be what you feel best with
    3. you would never let people into your private account, you can add an mcc account number to an mmc account so the account id is that is all that is needed by the person to manage your account.

    Happy to offer a quote for consideration / please post a PM if so.
    Pete
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi Splinter,

      I agree with Pete on the conflict of interest issue. The advertising industry has long held that it is a conflict of interest to service accounts for your competitor. The rule is one client per industry and if your agency accepts a larger account within your market they generally will drop yours.

      As to the question of fees, it only makes sense to scale your management activity to match your advertising spend. You can really get into trouble when you provide too little management for a large ad budget. Likewise, if your management fees are too large for your budget it makes it difficult to earn a positive ROI. This becomes even more critical when you employ a full service agency that is responsible delivering your ad creatives, keyword research, testing and landing page optimization. You wouldn't want to neglect all the prerequisites to optimizing total profits.

      Again as Pete indicated, any PPC management firm will have their own MCC account and will never need to have credentials for your account.
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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 Splinter
        Thanks all for your feedback
        Pete – I appreciate the offer for the quote however we have decided to go with a firm based semi local to where we are in the UK. I have also since learnt I just add them as to the MCC so that they can manage it.

        RE conflict – some firms I have spoken to deal with more accounts in the same industry and some do not. The ones that do state one of two things

        1. It is beneficial as they can prevent bidding wars where the only winner is Google

        2. Others say a separate account manage looks after each account so they never know what keywords/bids etc are being used

        Don, just to play devil’s advocate, would you not say that the management fee should be based on TIME required to manage the account. Lets assume that you run 2 businesses, and one is a very competitive and therefore for 100 leads it cost £30k per month where as the cheaper less competitive business costs £10k per 100 leads. The time required to manage these would be the same however the fee to the agency would be £2k difference if on a 10% of media spend model.

        Lastly, I found this site which gives some useful info into the top PPC and SE firms
        Marketing Services Guide 2010 | Search agencies

        Is it advisable to stay clear of the larger firms in the top 10 or do they tend to offer a better service compared to the smaller one man bands due to the quality of account managers they can afford to recruit?
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Originally Posted by Splinter View Post

          RE conflict - some firms I have spoken to deal with more accounts in the same industry and some do not. The ones that do state one of two things

          1. It is beneficial as they can prevent bidding wars where the only winner is Google

          2. Others say a separate account manage looks after each account so they never know what keywords/bids etc are being used
          That all sounds good in theory, but in practice you may discover we do not live in a perfect world with all perfect people. It's inevitable that at some point someone is going to let their emotions get the better of them and serious conflicts will occur. I would stick with the firms that follow the higher ethical standards, after all aren't those other firms demonstrating their willingness to cross ethical boundaries?

          Originally Posted by Splinter View Post

          Don, just to play devil's advocate, would you not say that the management fee should be based on TIME required to manage the account. Lets assume that you run 2 businesses, and one is a very competitive and therefore for 100 leads it cost £30k per month where as the cheaper less competitive business costs £10k per 100 leads. The time required to manage these would be the same however the fee to the agency would be £2k difference if on a 10% of media spend model.
          Actually, budget based fees work a little differently than that, let me try to explain.

          There is always a virtually unlimited amount of work that could be performed to research, create, experiment and analyze keywords, ad text, ad images, landing page variants and market strategies. In the long run, it is almost always beneficial to spend heavily on experimentation and optimization at the beginning of a new campaign, provided you have the capital to invest. However, for many firms this is just too risky because they do not have an abundance of capital.

          With budget based fees you restrict the "TIME" invested in optimization to a reasonable percentage of the budget. While this slows the process of optimization, it is less risky because you are never investing more than you can recover within a brief period.

          Agencies that offer budget based fees will generally track all billable hours and account for every penny they spend on your behalf. Budget based fees are scalable and do not restrict the growth of you marketing efforts.

          Originally Posted by Splinter View Post

          Is it advisable to stay clear of the larger firms in the top 10 or do they tend to offer a better service compared to the smaller one man bands due to the quality of account managers they can afford to recruit?
          I don't think size can be used as a reliable metric, though you are likely to pay more for what you get if the firm has too many levels of management. After all, who do you think is paying for all those executive perks?
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          *           Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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  • Profile picture of the author HorseStall
    #1 Absolutely it matters. I would not work with a firm that is essentially bidding for the same words for 2 clients....
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  • Profile picture of the author Splinter
    Good advice Don.

    I have now appointed the firm we want to use and have 1 vital issue that has arrisen. Our Google account which we spend near on $0.7m per annum has a lot of history in it although I admit it is not structured the best due to the lack of time I have to spend on it. There are a load of campaigns with keyword dumps opposed to organised themes etc.

    I was under the impression the PPC firm was going to setup their OWN structure with fresh adgroups/keywords etc by using the data from my current campaign and then use this as a means to test and compare if they can optimise the account to a better CPA than what I am achieving.

    The transition would be that as they switch on their campaign they pause mine until we are running fully on their new campaign setup.

    Would this be the best approach in order to protect what I have or should I let them restructure my current campaign which means renaming according to their naming conventions etc?
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    • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
      Originally Posted by Splinter View Post

      the best approach in order to protect what I have ?
      export a csv file of the account in adwords editor.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by Splinter View Post

      Good advice Don.

      I have now appointed the firm we want to use and have 1 vital issue that has arrisen. Our Google account which we spend near on $0.7m per annum has a lot of history in it although I admit it is not structured the best due to the lack of time I have to spend on it. There are a load of campaigns with keyword dumps opposed to organised themes etc.

      I was under the impression the PPC firm was going to setup their OWN structure with fresh adgroups/keywords etc by using the data from my current campaign and then use this as a means to test and compare if they can optimise the account to a better CPA than what I am achieving.

      The transition would be that as they switch on their campaign they pause mine until we are running fully on their new campaign setup.

      Would this be the best approach in order to protect what I have or should I let them restructure my current campaign which means renaming according to their naming conventions etc?
      Hi Splinter,

      It's likely that the new firm will want to start several new campaigns organized around a structure that facilitates best practices for different market segments. There are numerous ways to transition from your existing account structure to the new better optimized structure. I would bring up your concerns about avoiding disruptions in your business and ask to see how they plan to make the transition.

      I wouldn't worry too much about losing account history data by starting new campaigns. AdWords retains account history at the individual keyword level and this will transfer to the new campaigns. However, you should backup your campaign data just in case the new firm doesn't prove to be as successful as you hoped.
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      * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
      *       Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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