Digital Marketing

PPC Management: Definition, Pricing and Benefits

By Just Digital Team
PPC Management Agency

Pay-per-click (PPC) management is one of the most popular forms of digital advertising. It can have a huge impact on your business, increasing leads, conversions, and driving sales.

In this article, we will share information about what PPC management is, how much it can cost your company to implement PPC campaigns, and the benefits of working with an agency. Finally, we will share some tips to implement PPC campaigns successfully.

What is PPC Management?

PPC Management or pay-per-click management is the act of overseeing and managing a company’s PPC campaigns and budget. Most people think of Google Ads first. However, PPC is a common type of advertising used by different search engines, affiliate networks and even social media platforms.

Here is a clear example of what PPC ads look like in the largest search engine, Google. PPC are usually marked with an ‘Ad’ indicator.

ppc ads examples

 

What Are the Core PPC Management Activities?

Whether you hire an internal team, an agency, or a freelancer, there are some activities that are integral to PPC Management:

  1. Keyword Research: Investigating and identifying the keywords and terms your target audience is searching for. This is both an art and a science and it goes beyond identifying the most popular keywords. Additionally, you want to make sure they are relevant to your industry, company, geographic location, and services or products.
  2. Channel Selection: Google Ads is perhaps the most popular channel for PPC ads. However, your PPC management team or service provider can recommend other channels, such as Bing, affiliate networks and other social media platforms.
  3. Competitive Analysis: Most PPC experts research what competitors are doing to compete directly with them for the best keywords. On the other hand, a competitive analyisis can also identify gaps in your competitors’ strategies.
  4. Campaign Build Out: If you are starting from scratch, you should dedicate a generous amount of time in creating the campaign structure to attract leads to all your products and services through PPC Ads.
  5. Campaign Optimization & Monitoring: Once your ads are running, you will monitor your campaigns to keep track of ROI. You can run optimization strategies that help you decrease ad spend on keywords that aren’t performing, and increase your spend on those that drive better results.
  6. A/B Testing: To make sure PPC campaigns get optimal results, most experts run A/B testing or split testing experiments on ads, ad copy, and landing pages. Although the goal is to have fully optimized campaigns, this work is never 100% finished. Search engines change their algorithms constantly, meaning you have to continue to update your campaigns once they are live.

 

How Much Do PPC Management Services Cost?

The cost of running PPC ads and hiring a team or service provider can vary widely, and for the most part you get the results you pay for. Apart from hiring someone to set up campaigns and run them for you (in-house team, PPC management agency, or freelancer) you will also have to set aside money to spend on the actual ads.

From our experience, you should aim to spend a minimum of $3,000 USD on ads per month. Of course, you can spend less money, but it is difficult to run A/B testing and get good results on smaller budgets.

If you are starting out, you can run a very simple campaign structure with a lower ad spend, and as you grow you can hire a team or service providers. However, keep into account that if you don’t have the right skills or expertise you might not see great results with a low budget.

Once you are ready to hire the right team you have 3 options: an in-house team, a specialized agency, or a freelancer.

In-house PPC Managment

If your company is large enough to hire specialized marketing teams you should definitely look into hiring a digital marketing team. At a minimum, you will need a media buyer or a digital marketing specialist that can manage different projects. Although yearly salaries range from city to city, you can expect to pay an average of $56,000 USD. However, that is the bare minimum.

If you also hire a copywriter, a designer and a developer to work on all the assets you will need, the cost of a team will be more expensive. Roughly $260,000 per year for a small marketing team. Additionally, you will have to make sure they have enough work to fill up their time, and make sure they have constant training.

Having an in-house team for digital advertising is great to have, if you have the budget and the workload. An in-house team will know your brand best and will mostly be available whenever you need them.

Specialized PPC Management Agency

This is the preferred choice for the majority of small and medium-sized companies.

Specialized agencies have all the technical knowdledge and skills you need to run successful digital marketing ads. They are always up-to-date on industry trends and channel updates. The biggest benefit is that whenever you hire an agency you don’t just get an account manager, you get a whole team to work on your account.

Prices can vary greatly from agency to agency. We’ve seen agencies that charge anywhere from $500 a month to over $10,000 a month for campaign management. Just remember you tend to get what you pay for. When you are on the lower end of the budget, you will get limited services that aren’t as thorough as other service providers. This means that the agency might not spend enough time each week optimizing your campaigns or doing keyword research. On the other side of the spectrum, agencies that charge more will invest more resources into your account, and they will probably manage complex campaign structures and most of the assets you need.

Shameless plug, our agency specializes in PPC Management and we think we do a great job (our client’s think so too!). If you ever need help or want a free consultation, reach out to our team.

PPC Management Consultant

The third option is to work with a freelancer or consultant. This is a great option if you just need consulting services or if you enjoy working with someone specific.

Hiring freelancers requires more of your time and effort in coordinating activities, and they can also have capacity constraints. Plus, if your freelancer hits a wall they likely don’t have a full team of experts to help you get unstuck.

Because digital advertising is a highly technical field, most good freelancers will charge between $60 up to over $250 per hour. One of the downsides is you won’t have access to a full team. This is why we recommend hiring freelance PPC specialists to help you with specific parts of the project like conducting a keyword research or setting up your campaign structure.

The Benefits of Hiring a Specialized PPC Agency

1. Work With a Dedicated PPC Management Team

Working with a PPC management agency means working with more than one person. You’ll have a full team of dedicated experts who are great at what they do. Each person will bring something different to the table.

Professionals like us deal with PPC campaign management on a daily basis. Our knowledge, experience, and skills have grown throughout the years and are guaranteed to give you a competitive edge.

By hiring an agency you will get a dedicated team to constantly monitor, adjust, and improve your campaigns to ensure a the best possible return.

 

 

2. More Time to Run Your Business

Running and managing pay-per-click campaigns can take chunks out of your time. Time you could use to focus on more important aspects of your business. Leave PPC to the experts, it will free up your time to work on other projects, and they are more likely to do it faster since it is their area of expertise.

3. PPC Management Expertise and Knowledge

PPC experts have years of experience and expertise in different fields.

This means the chances of them having worked with businesses similar to yours are high. Because of this, they already know what tactics will work for you.

By hiring a PPC agency,  you can skip the learning curve and get faster results. PPC management isn’t easy, there are many tools and softwares you’ll have to get familiar with in order to use them properly or efficiently.

Online advertising is a competitive and ever evolving niche that requires patience and focus to keep up. It takes time to study and analyze the constant changes.

PPC management agencies always progress with the latest trends, updates, and newest tools in order to strategize a competent campaign and keep your account on top.

 

4. Access to Advanced Resources

Specialized marketing agencies have access to the best tools and resources the internet has to offer.

We know the softwares, automation tools, graders, research tools, analytics data readers, optimizers, and ad copy tools that will work best for your business model.

Our data and analytics tools will give you an informative summary of what’s been happening to your campaigns. We can give you daily, weekly, or monthly reports so you can track everything from your costs. KPIs, and ROI.

Most PPC management agencies will be able to share the following information with you and your team:

  • Clicks, views, visits, cost of clicks
  • Show where your money is performing its best and worst
  • Show which keywords are gaining traffic and which ones are working for your audience to indicate behaviors in the market
  • Determine KPI trends
  • Present which route users took to make a purchase

It’s extremely beneficial information that can make a huge impact on your business’ PPC campaign.

5. Flexible and Nimble

As we’ve mentioned above, the  world of online advertising changes everyday. It’s a fast-paced environment that requires advertisers to be quick witted and to think on their feet.

Agencies like us are always up to speed with all of the changes. We make sure to read up on industry journals, attend conferences, study and predict trends, etc. It will help us do better at our jobs and benefit our clients greatly.

 

6. Lower Costs

Hiring an in-house PPC manager will be more expensive more because it requires additional headcount, a long-term commitment, and training to get your employee up to speed.

A PPC management agency will help you save money. We can handle your campaign from beginning to end and make sure you get the lowest cost per click and higher click through rates.

 

7. Commitment to the Project

It’s common for companies to hire a PPC manager and then give them additional responsibilities, like social media management or creating content, to cut down costs.

These tasks end up taking away time and focus from managing the PPC campaigns. A campaign can only be successful if it is given full attention. PPC agencies have multiple professionals who can focus on making sure your campaign is performing well and resulting in more leads, sales, and revenue.

Final Tips to Get Started

Have we convinced you of the wonders of working with a PPC management agency? Or are you still on the fence?

Whatever your decision is, we highly recommend you try PPC advertising for your company. The benefits you gain are significantly higher than the costs.

Whether you decide to do it yourself, hire a freelancer, an agency or an in-house team, make sure you set clear goals of what is expected! Create a well-organized campaign structure that uses the right landing pages for each ad group. Finally, don’t forget to craft a long-term campaign strategy.

Online advertising is no easy feat. It can be incredibly challenging for small or medium-sized companies who can’t hire a full team with specialized skills. Agencies that offer PPC management services will be able to help your company engage with more targeted prospects and boost your sales. If you have any questions about PPC management services, don’t hesitate to contact us! 


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