PPC (Pay-Per-Click) management is a procedure for overseeing and managing the PPC ad spend by the company. PPC management is needed to minimize the gross expenditure in PPC marketing. The management of PPC ads is done by e-merchant or vendor themselves or a dedicated specialists company, known as PPC management agency.
Choosing the best PPC management agency can be laborious because you can find many fraud agencies that will promise to provide you with the best result, but they won’t be doing it. Since you have to make a contract agreement on a specified interval of time with the PPC agencies, it’s worth it if you take time in choosing the agencies. In this article, we discuss the pricing model, authority, and what you should consider before signing the contract agreement.
choosing a PPC management agency
What does PPC management include?
The PPC Management Agency perform the following tasks:
- Keyword Management
- Improving Ad Quality score
- Ad Placement and targeting management
- Bid management
- Geo-targeting
- Cost and Performance Analysis
- Ad Copy Optimization and Testing
- Landing page optimization
- Fraud click and robot protection
- Monthly campaign Performance Report
- Check-In Calls/Meetings
Checking for the right PPC management agency
Before choosing any PPC management agency, it’s mandatory to inspect the authority of the agency to decide whether the agency can enhance your business or not. Followings are some of the methods for verifying the authority of the company:
Verifying the Partnership certification with PPC platforms
Google provides partnership certification when individuals or agencies pass their fundamental exams. Might be, certification doesn’t matter if they a lot more experience, but for authority and trustability, before hiring the agency, you should confirm whether they are able to complete a given task or not. Google ads, as well as bing ads both, have partnership programs. You can check out the valid partnership through [“https://www.google.com/partners/agency?id=xxxxxxxxxx”] for Google partner and Microsoft membership directory. Replace the id where it’s necessary for the URL.
Inspecting which software they use
The world is full of competition, and without surpassing the competitors, you can’t grow your business. Also, the Google algorithm and other PPC platform’s algorithms are changing continuously. So, it became a compulsion for using the software for research purposes.
Make sure that the agency you are going to work with uses the keyword research third party software such as Spyfu and Semrush. Not only this software, but the agency should also use the real-time tracking apps and fraud click, and robot click detection AI software.
Experience of PPC specialists
Experience speaks louder than words; nothing can beat experience in case of marketing. It is obligatory to know how old is the PPC agency. Not only the age of agency, the expertise of PPC specialists and PPC managers, is also necessary.
Testimonials, success stories help you to decide the experience of the agency for satisfactory results. However, if you are not satisfied with those stories, then you can examine PPC specialists about the latest Google algorithm, PPC based questionnaires, marketing strategies, etc. When you have long term plan working with the PPC agency, it’s your right to examine their ability.
Verify the internal working environment
Although verifying the internal working environment PPC agency do not seem that important, but it has some impact on your work as well as PPC agency is all about collaboration and proper flow of information to get the job done in a creative manner.
Along with the creative process, a PPC agency also needs to be strategically capable to perform the task. For the PPC agency to function creatively and strategically, they must have good relations with each other.
PPC agency can only function strategically and creatively for your digital marketing when the agency has a friendly working environment.
Long term approach
PPC works effectively only if it generates potential customers to your business websites. However, if your business website is poorly designed, it will not generate any lead or traffic. You can drive lead when PPC agency uses suitable digital marketing strategy to your ad and optimise your website.
Therefore, you need to select that agency which understands this, and one who is capable enough to optimize your website and are able to formulate a suitable digital strategy.
PPC agency should update you with the performance of your PPC and should be able to suggest how to move further. An indication of successful PPC agency is their capability to understand your business and develop a strategy for further implementation.
Agency’s honesty
The good relation between you and your agency is base on transparency. A successful PPC campaign is not enough for the PPC agency to be the right one; they also have to be very honest to you.
When the PPC agency talks honestly to you about the ongoing strategy and next strategical step, this shows that they are undertaking PPC campaign ethically. If the agency promise to lead or the conversion on your website in a short period of time then better not to choose this kind of agency.
There is no formula to increase lead or conversion on the webpage. However, if the agency promise to present the report frequently, then you may consider selecting the agency.
Data visualisation capability
Analyzing the data is a very crucial part in PPC ads as it will determine the success. It is very essential to know which digital platform and which websites are target customers are using. As your PPC ad needs to be displayed where your potential customers are.
If the agency has a good capability of visualising the data, then it won’t be that difficult to figure out the potential customers. Along with this PPC agency should be able to study the report of PPC sd and analyze the performance of the ad.
Make sure that the agency you choose isn’t just perfect at analyzing the data but also should be able to link one data with other data to formulate a strategy.
Updated with Google algorithm
As Google keeps updating its algorithm to better the ad performance, thereby, the PPC agency you choose need to be aware of the changes. Though Google algorithm keeps on changing, the PPC agency should be able to maintain your business position in the market.
But, an agency should not change the strategy if there is any change in an algorithm, because it can hamper the business goal. Therefore, you need to select that agency who can adapt the changes and can stick to the business goal.
Pricing Models by PPC management Agency
It’s better to know how the agency charges for managing your PPC campaign and which pricing model would be best for your business. PPC management involves the following pricing models.
Flat Fee + % of Spend
It’s the most common PPC management pricing model. In this model, the PPC management Agency charge for a flat monthly fee with the addition of the percentage of ad spend monthly. This model has become the industry standard since it allows the agency to block out sufficient time for managing the campaign with maintenance tasks.
The more business spends on an ad campaign; the more agency will give attention to the business. It’s generally best for large scale companies who want transparency and ultimate ownership of their accounts. In this model, A/B testings, advance conversion tracking, etc. budgets are involved.
Hourly Rate
In an hourly pricing model, generally, individuals and contractors are involved. The company bill hourly for their work. It’s suitable for a smaller campaign where a team of experts is not needed. The hourly rate may vary depending upon the country the individual actions, and it can range from $25-$250 per hour. In this pricing model, communication can be a barrier.
In this model, generally, the tasks involved are optimizing PPC campaigns, Ad text optimization, keyword research, usage of negative keywords, and other tasks that involve within the PPC account. If your company needs long term PPC management, the hourly rate shouldn’t be preferred.
Percentage Based
In this pricing model, the PPC management agency charges a certain percentage of the total ads spends in PPC marketing. When the client spends more budget on advertising, the agency receives more income. Most of the large scale companies don’t prefer a percentage-based pricing model because the company needs to invest money a lot more than the marketing budget needs.
Some agency tries to force the company to increase the monthly budget so that they can have more income. In this pricing model, the agency might not care about the ROI or profitability of the client. Furthermore, the pricing is done just for managing the ads in the PPC accounts.
No fee (Free management)
The PPC management agency doesn’t charge you for managing the campaign. They accumulate their income through percentage commission. In this pricing model, the PPC agency uses third party software, and they make commission income from every dollar those third party companies.
The agency focus on commission instead of company objectives. Usually, they bid on lower search volume keywords for more commission. This type of campaign sometimes works for local businesses. This model doesn’t seem to work great, so; it’s better to get rid of free management services because they don’t care about the objectives, ROI, and Profitability of the company.
Before You hire PPC agency
Getting the best PPC agency is arduous, but it’s worth it for your business when you get a good one. You can easily be trapped by the PPC agency and might be you will have to waste the budget as well as time if you decide to go with the untrue PPC agency. So, before signing the contract agreements, you should be careful of the following points.
Think before you hire
Get away from long-term contracts
Most of the agencies try to lock up you with long term agreements. But it won’t worth your business because the performance of such agencies will start to degrade just after a few months. If you are trapped with such agencies, you have to bear the wastage of budget as well as time, and more often, they will ask for more time for bringing the result. Don’t be the victim of such agency, and before they ask for time, escape away. A good PPC agency will try to make an agreement between 2 months to 6 months.
Get full ownership of your account
Having ownership of your PPC account is beneficial since you can track how’s the PPC marketing is going on. If the PPC management agency denies giving you ownership of the account, then you should understand yourself that they are not providing you with the transparency with their work.
They might cheat you with fake reports. Having transparency in work is the best way to deal with any client-agency relationship. But if the PPC denies, it means “Something is fishy or suspicious.” Beware and stay away from such agencies.
Inspect whether the PPC Campaign is on autopilot
The agency might run your PPC campaign on autopilot. If they do, it means that they are not tracking your campaign. Also, they don’t keep records of how the campaign is performing. Furthermore, the budget becomes uncontrolled, which results in unnecessary audience targets, ads placement, robot clicks, and fraud clicks. This results in a low conversion rate and no sales generation.
Before going with the PPC agency, make sure you have clarified to optimize the campaign daily or bi-weekly basis. If they disagree, it’s better to search for a new one because, without the optimization, no campaign can be successful.
Conclusion
Hunting for the best is always strenuous and costly. However, it’s your duty to go to the right agency that will help you to grow your business immensely. While choosing the PPC management agency, the company should make an inquiry about it. The long term agreement is frustrating. These contracts bound you and stop you from moving forward. The marketing strategy must be as transparent as water. The agency might charge you more with its hidden costs so, make sure you already discuss it before the agreement.