Online marketing has become incredibly complex. Whether you’re dealing with search engine marketing, social media marketing, or local search, few businesses have the expertise to do online marketing well. This is why many firms are outsourcing their PPC campaign management. However, you can’t afford to make a mistake by hiring the wrong people for the job. Here are four factors you need to consider.
The Cost-Benefit Ratio of Outsourcing PPC Campaign Management
You should determine the cost-benefit ratio before you hire someone for your PPC campaign. In general, a full-time employee running your digital marketing campaigns is a waste of money. They may not have the expertise you need for a particular project, and they probably won’t be fully utilised. On the other hand, PPC experts will get things done far faster than an employee who isn’t familiar with the topic and has other work to do.
Consider the skill sets someone has when they bid on your project and hire a consultant or team experienced in the area you want to pursue. Whether this is improving your social media footprint or increasing the effectiveness of your search engine ads will depend on the current objective.
Their Effectiveness
Don’t make a decision based on their quoted hourly rate. After all, someone with far better tools and superior expertise will do a better job faster than someone who doesn’t have either of these characteristics. Feel free to ask what tools the PPC firm would use. Determine if the tools they use are proprietary since this may limit your ability to switch PPC vendors later. Ask them if they offer services across multiple platforms.
Be clear about the objectives you’re going to use to determine their effectiveness. Have a general plan on how you’ll achieve certain objectives, though you’ll need clear goals for the initial project. You could bring them back periodically to fine-tune your marketing campaign.
Remember, you don’t have to give the PPC consultant total control. Determine what tasks you want to keep in-house and how you’ll work with the PPC team. Note that you shouldn’t trust a PPC firm that doesn’t allow you to retain control of marketing objectives. You should be the one who determines the objectives of every marketing campaign.
Their Expertise
PPC experts will be familiar with the latest trends in PPC and the most advanced tools. They won’t waste your time and money with tactics that don’t work in the current market. They will better understand practices that maximise the results of your digital marketing campaign.
The best PPC consultants are experts in this area, and they’ll invest time and effort to ensure that they remain as such. Ask about the expertise of the people they’d assign to your project. They should have at least one full-time pay per click expert on the team. Enquire about how much experience the person has with PPC. If they have certifications proving they are industry recognised experts in this area, all the better.
Their Transparency
Good PPC firms are transparent. You should be able to ask for data on the current conversion rate of your site and ads and the revenue these marketing efforts generated. Expect similar data presented at the end of their project. Verify that you see the results they promised. This gives you a benchmark you can use to manage the campaign yourself or gauge the performance of any other digital marketing experts you hire. If the firm is not transparent regarding what they are doing or its impact, this is a major red flag. Be clear about how often you expect reports, the metrics they are using, and whether or not you can get reports on-demand.
Finding the right PPC firm is similar to finding an employee. You need to use the right criteria and do a detailed analysis to determine the best fit for your company’s objectives. This is crucal when outsourcing PPC.
Don’t forget that good content plays a big part in any digital marketing campaign. If you want to take your digital marketing to the next level, start by generating excellent content. It’s pointless funneling clicks to a landing page with poor content – it won’t convert!
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