As a small business owner, you’re accustomed to a hands-on lifestyle, teaching yourself how to do things and taking pride in the results. That’s what leads many business owners to attempt their own online advertising, particularly their own pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Unfortunately, PPC is deceptively complicated, making it an expensive, time-consuming, and discouraging venture for most DIYers. For that reason, PPC is best left to the pros.
Stick to What You Do Best
Whether you’re an appliance repairman, electrician, or HVAC contractor, you’re a definitive expert in your field. But would you do your own company’s taxes? Perform your own office cleaning? Be your own attorney? Theoretically, you could do all of these tasks on your own, but it would take a substantial amount of time away from your job as you learned the ropes and stumbled your way through the process. And that doesn’t even guarantee satisfactory results! Doesn’t it make more sense to utilize the skills of a trained professional so you can focus on your own area of expertise?
On the flip side, would you recommend DIY furnace installation or panel upgrades to homeowners with no HVAC or electrical experience? Probably not. Why? Because some jobs are simply too advanced for anyone but an expert.
Online Advertising Is a Profession Like Any Other
If it makes sense to trust your company’s tax needs to an experienced accountant, then why shouldn’t you do the same for your PPC campaign? Internet advertising is no different from any other profession in terms of the training and experience it requires. Not only do online marketing professionals invest in the tools and resources required to do their jobs effectively, but they also devote the majority of their time to perfecting their strategies for optimal PPC campaigns. In the same way that accountants know the best way to work with QuickBooks, tax forms, tax codes, and so on, PPC advertisers know the ins and outs of ad groups, ad rotations, keywords, and bidding. A professional Internet marketing specialist can perform PPC advertising much more quickly and effectively than the average person.
How Much Is Your Time Worth?
When you try to do your own PPC advertising, you don’t just lose time—you also lose money. Many business owners think that they’re saving money by doing it themselves rather than hiring a professional, but in reality, that logic doesn’t quite pan out. Think about it: What would you charge a client as your hourly rate? Whether you realize it or not, that rate applies to any amount of time you spend on your company. Twelve hours spent learning about PPC are twelve hours that you aren’t getting paid for. Instead of reinventing the wheel for something that’s beyond your expertise, you could be making money on the job in your own specialized field.
PPC Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
As we’ve pointed out, the reason why business owners spend so much time and energy learning about PPC is that they mistakenly think they’re saving money. That’s probably because they assume PPC is an expensive undertaking—and, depending on the marketing company they use, they could be right. You see, there’s a large number of advertising teams in the industry that offer deceptive pricing.
For one, they tie their PPC management fees to a client’s spending budget for clicks. As your spending budget goes up, so does your fee. But the truth is that PPC management costs are associated with ad rotation and testing, keyword management, and other tasks that have zero correlation with click budgets, so there’s no reason to also have to spend more for management because you’re willing to pay more for clicks. With this kind of pricing, you may wind up paying substantially more than you need to.
Second, many of these companies send you an invoice with just a total amount—not including any detailed information about the number of clicks you received or even how much money was spent on clicks. Since you have no way to tell how much was spent on clicks (vs. how much you were charged for management costs), there’s no way to determine return on investment or evaluate the success of your PPC campaign.
At Prospect Genius, we find these practices abhorrent. The time and resources required to manage a PPC campaign vary based on how many ad groups are involved, regardless of how much you’re spending on clicks, so the management fee should be related to the number of ad groups, not the spending budget. Furthermore, clients should never have to pay a bill if they don’t know exactly what they’re being charged for. That’s why Prospect Genius offers complete transparency: We charge one straightforward fee for management costs and keep your click spending completely separate. In fact, your click bills come directly from AdWords itself, so you know exactly where your money is going, how many clicks you’ve received, and how successful your PPC campaign is.
PPC Campaigns Are Not Like Oil Changes
You can’t just read a quick tutorial about PPC advertising and get optimal results from your campaign in less than an hour. Truly effective marketing takes significant time away from your own business, which, in turn, takes money out of your pocket. Instead, invest in Prospect Genius and pay highly affordable rates for results that allow you to focus 100% on your business.
