In the bat­tle for mar­ket­ing dol­lars, SEO and PPC (pay-per-click) are in con­stant com­pe­ti­tion with one anoth­er. As Google changes its algo­rithms, com­pa­nies find them­selves com­pet­ing against mov­ing goal posts.

SEO can be a slow process, and busi­ness­es in com­pet­i­tive indus­tries may nev­er be able to hold onto the num­ber one rank­ings they desire. That’s why more mon­ey is fun­neled into PPC advertising.

PPC adver­tis­ing has the poten­tial to deliv­er tar­get­ed traf­fic, but it takes tech­ni­cal know-how to do it prop­er­ly. Even mar­ket­ing vet­er­ans can make mis­takes when they enter into a new mar­ket, or start sell­ing a new prod­uct with PPC. It takes an expert PPC ana­lyst to review every poten­tial facet of your account, look­ing for ways to improve on the copy and the land­ing page.

If you’re think­ing of set­ting up your own Google AdWords account, don’t. There’s a rea­son PPC pro­fes­sion­als charge a fee for management.

If you’re new to PPC, you may be unaware that it will cost you less to hire an expert than it will to launch a cam­paign on your own.

Here are 10 rea­sons why you should hire a PPC man­age­ment expert.

1. Keyword Research Isn’t Easy

Key­word research is cru­cial to your suc­cess, and it’s some­thing PPC experts spend a lot of time on ini­tial­ly and through­out the PPC process. If you pick the wrong key­words you can quick­ly exhaust your bud­get and your cam­paign will have very poor returns.

There are free key­word tools, such as Google’s Key­word Tool, that any­one can use, but the bet­ter tools are usu­al­ly the paid ones.

Paid tools would give you a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, but at a price. Some of these tools can cost upward of $100 month­ly in addi­tion to your oth­er expenses.

PPC experts don’t stop at one of these tools, either. They use mul­ti­ple data points to form a more com­plete pic­ture of the sales landscape.

2. Wrong Ad Copy Could Result in Low Conversion

One of the great­est strengths a PPC expert has is the abil­i­ty to per­form com­pet­i­tive research. PPC experts under­stand how to find good copy, they study your com­pe­ti­tion, and they form ads based on what they know works. That kind of copy isn’t some­thing the ama­teur can do overnight, espe­cial­ly when every word means something.

The right copy can ele­vate your campaign’s click-through rate and net you more con­ver­sions. Do you real­ly want to take a chance on writ­ing the wrong copy?

Bad copy that does not con­vey the right mes­sage, and is only try­ing to get you more traf­fic, may result in low con­ver­sion, mean­ing you just wast­ed lots of money.

3. Tracking Requires Technical Expertise

The foun­da­tion of any good PPC pro­gram is its abil­i­ty to track not only sales, but where those sales are com­ing from. Good analy­sis can show you which place­ments and key­words are like­ly to bring you the most conversions.

In addi­tion, tag­ging your cam­paigns allows you to see which ones are most effec­tive. Track­ing code instal­la­tion requires at least some basic HTML knowl­edge, so if you have no such knowl­edge then you bet­ter leave this to the experts or you may have to pay your web­mas­ter to install it for you. If you would like to track your leads/sales from phone calls, that would require addi­tion­al set up and expertise.

4. Do You Understand All the PPC Terminology?

You may know what PPC stands for, but do you know what all these mean: CPM, CPC, CPA? Give up?

What about the dif­fer­ence between Impres­sions, Views, and Hits? Do you know what retar­get­ing is?

Under­stand­ing these terms is extreme­ly impor­tant in the day-to-day man­age­ment of your cam­paigns. Until you’re famil­iar with all these (and sev­er­al more terms not even men­tioned here), then you aren’t ready to man­age your own paid search campaigns.

5. Campaign Settings Can Be Confusing

There are sev­er­al poten­tial set­tings you must adjust in order to get opti­mum expo­sure for your cam­paigns. For exam­ple, geo­graph­ic set­tings can help you tar­get a spe­cif­ic part of the country.

Should you tar­get local­ly, statewide, nation­al­ly, or world­wide? Should you set up dif­fer­ent ad groups for each? Should you opt-in to partner/affiliate net­works and if so should you bid the same as the search net­work? If you choose the part­ner net­works, should you fil­ter out some spe­cif­ic sites?

With­out a clear under­stand­ing of these set­tings, and how they may ben­e­fit you, you might be pay­ing too much for the same traf­fic that a sim­i­lar mar­keter pays pen­nies on the dol­lar for. With­out expert advice or some expe­ri­ence, you would nev­er know.

6. Do You Know What a Good Landing Page Looks Like?

Rel­e­vance isn’t just an SEO term, it’s impor­tant in PPC mar­ket­ing, too. The less rel­e­vant your land­ing page, the more mon­ey you’re spend­ing on con­ver­sions. PPC experts under­stand not only the prin­ci­ples of land­ing page design, but also how to test those principles.

A/B test­ing is a tac­tic PPC experts use to com­pare dif­fer­ent land­ing pages and improve con­ver­sions. That test­ing can mean the dif­fer­ence between a 1 per­cent and 5 per­cent con­ver­sion rate. A good ana­lyst will also have famil­iar­i­ty and access to third-par­ty A/B test­ing software.

7. Prior Experience With Similar Clients

Often times a PPC expert may have worked with oth­er clients in your indus­try and have com­pet­i­tive knowl­edge he can apply to your account, which would save you thou­sands of dol­lars. In paid search it’s ben­e­fi­cial to hire a per­son or a com­pa­ny that has worked with one or more of your com­peti­tors before.

Most paid search com­pa­nies prob­a­bly won’t take on direct com­peti­tors as clients at the same time – if they do, then that’s prob­a­bly not a good idea – but if they have worked with your com­peti­tors or sim­i­lar com­pa­nies pre­vi­ous­ly, then that would be a plus.

8. Is There Click Fraud Going On?

If you’re a begin­ner, then you prob­a­bly wouldn’t know how to mon­i­tor for click fraud. You should expect that there is always going to be click fraud. There may even be some auto-gen­er­at­ed clicks to your ads that have noth­ing to do with click fraud, but may be a bot try­ing to spi­der your site for what­ev­er reason.

You need to be able to watch your stats and log files for sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty and when you feel there is click fraud going on, you can report to the search engine and request a refund. Although search engines try to block click fraud, from time to time they will do audits and may give you refunds months lat­er, but this is not to your benefit.

You need to take con­trol of this aspect. If you aren’t an ana­lyt­i­cal per­son or don’t have some tech­ni­cal exper­tise in this area, then it’s best to leave it to the experts.

9. Keeping Up With the Latest Changes

All good online mar­keters stay up to date with the lat­est trends by read­ing online news, jour­nals, and/or forums. They may also attend indus­try trade shows sev­er­al times annu­al­ly or attend net­work­ing events, and will also have a few friends and peers they could reach out to for expert advice or com­par­ing notes on the lat­est trends.

If you don’t think you can do all these things, then it is best to hire an expert.

10. Do You Really Have the Time?

If you’re a busi­ness own­er, you’re prob­a­bly busy with hun­dreds of oth­er tasks dai­ly. Do you real­ly have the time to man­age your own PPC account and give it the atten­tion that it deserves?

Many mar­keters approach PPC with the atti­tude that it’s less com­pli­cat­ed, or some­how eas­i­er than SEO. The real­i­ty is that PPC costs you mon­ey every time you use it.

With PPC rates sky­rock­et­ing, most com­pa­nies don’t even see returns right away and have to count on repeat cus­tomers or refer­rals. So every lit­tle fac­tor that can improve your ROI would be ben­e­fi­cial to your bot­tom line.

Conclusion

Unless you have some pri­or PPC expe­ri­ence your­self, then you shouldn’t attempt to do this your­self. Hire a PPC expert or an agency to han­dle things for you.

SOURCE