PPC Campaign Management
- 3rd Oct 2007
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- PPC Campaigns
With the growth of PPC advertising in the UK at over 40% I wonder how many companies are paying out far too much from improperly set up campaigns ? Most online marketing companies boast that they can easily manage companies budget, but with the likes of some companies spending in excess of 1 million per year on advertising, how do they no they are getting a good deal?
Some companies seem to approach ppc with no real plan and just attempt the campaigns through trial and error methods (Spending clients money at the same time) Marketing is a funny old game and you often come across people who think they know it all, that you have no idea about PPC and they know better! I guess the proof is in the pudding….
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Speaking for the US market I could not agree more. I worked in the PPC agency world for a while and would go to sleep sick to my stomach knowing that many of our clients accounts were malnourished and not getting the attention they deserved. When i was looking for new jobs i realized that big houses and companies were in the weeds with this stuff as well and no one was doig a good job. It was all about getting them in, taking money for as long as possible, then letting go. I have left that world now and am freelancing with some former account managers from search agencies. Typically we do a great build out for a client using a flat fee then management cost come hourly - optimizing, tweaking etc… Paying a retainer or percentage of spend is dying model as many young sharp buck account managers like my self would rather work with a smaller client load, do a better job, and get paid more. Good post.
Seeing as how I work with PPC accounts on a daily basis and I find new things to optimize and improve almost every day, my guess would be tons of people are out there flying without a proper game plan, analytics and then the appropriate response to what they see. The biggest issue I came across when I worked the agency side was people thinking of it in the same terms as placing magazine ads, set it and forget it, measure what you can later. You’ve got matching options, geo-targeting, ad copy adjustments, negative terms, landing page tweaks, traffic and lead quality, it’s really endless the aspects that deserve constant attention. I wouldn’t even dream of saying I am a complete expert in every corner of the PPC services. I am able to meet my lead and budget goals pretty consistently to my credit, but it requires a lot of experiment, testing, adjustment and just generally hard and ongoing work. My guess is a lot of people see it as a plug in keyword and ad and go solution, and the results that come out are the results you get. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Tracking is probably the most important point of the whole thing. Most people just try to achieve top positions for many different keywords and then expect the money to roll in.
I have seen campaigns setup before with massive amounts of broad matched keywords, no negative keywords and no day parting setup. With correct use of analytics in the first instance you can figure out which words convert, at what times of the day and filter out the useless traffic.
As Terry said the “set it and forget it” seems to be the norm, at the end of the day a lot of agencies fee’s are based on amount of spend, it would be nice to see an agency charge on a profit basis rather than just throw money with no regard to where its going…
Approaching PPC with no real plan isn’t so bad as long as you do continue to monitor the clicks, impressions & ROI and use your analysis to keep developing the campaigns. I’d say trail and error (or split testing to put it in a nicer light) is a great way to develop a campaign.
Starting small with a reduced set of keywords and a few distinct adverts can be a great way to grow a campaign. Having a thousand key-phrases to start with can give you too much data to analyse effectively and you’ll miss opportunities when finding new words and negatives to add.
I think that the percentage of spend as a fee model has to change to make some agencies improve on their working methods. As it is, they can set up the campaigns and let them roll on quite happily. A fee model based upon a percentage of ROI or gross profit would go someway to improving matters, but for so many large clients this is just seen broadly as “advertising” and until their own analytics start showing how they are wasting both money and opportunity the situation won’t change. If a large company has a relationship with an agency with press/tv advertising they’ll tend to stick with them for online. When they start to see small more agile companies doing better online, either the agencies will get better or the larger clients will also use more specialist PPC consultants.
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I would have to agree that companies are just taking advantage of the uneducated business owner, which in turn will hurt the industry as a whole.
I agree to your point, at the same time PPC campaigns helps keep your advertisements effective and hard hitting, without having to compromise on the cost per campaign….anyhow nice conversation…
@ Annie
I have to agree with you. Last time I thought I couldnot make a good conversion rate with using Google Adwords. But by the time I learned that it is good to use it for branding and some conversions.