Who’s ensuring that your advertising dollars are being utilized in the most efficient manner? Many advertisers attempting to manage digital ad spend on their own may not even realize all of the elements carefully monitored and managed by a professional pay-per-click (PPC) agency. Here are just six of the (many) things that an agency will manage for you:
- Budget Management
- Key Performance Metrics
- Conversion Tracking
- Strategy Development
- Proactive Account Updates
- Ongoing Account Maintenance
1. Budget Management
Are you routinely analyzing the health of your independent PPC campaign budgets and able to identify any issues that need to be addressed? You may be missing out on significant opportunities if campaign budgets are limiting the amount of your potential daily spend. If that’s the case, there are several approaches to optimizing in this area, including better management of your average cost-per-click, considering the use of shared campaign budgets, and shifting budget dollars across campaigns to maximize your overall return on ad spend.
2. Key Performance Metrics
A growing number of individual performance metrics may indicate the need for additional adjustments and optimization. Changes in clickthrough rate, impression share, search results page placement, conversion rates, return on ad spend or cost per action, and competitive landscape can all be indicators of issues that require attention to keep your account running at optimal levels.
3. Conversion Tracking
Establishing accurate conversion tracking along with ongoing maintenance to avoid disruption provides a critical tool for any advertiser’s ability to optimize effectively. This is especially true as we are heading toward a “Cookieless” future tracking environment where next-generation solutions will be required. Do you have the resources and knowledge within your organization to successfully navigate through this type of change on your own?
4. Strategy Development
Developing and maintaining the appropriate advertising strategy in an industry constantly navigating through change is a fundamental component requiring considerable time and attention. Utilizing experience-based insights in developing effective PPC campaign strategies across multiple advertising platforms is another key element in the value proposition of a professional agency.
5. Proactive Account Updates
Digital advertising is a very dynamic environment where sometimes the only constant seems to be change. Staying on top of the latest platform updates, new product developments, and emerging trends can be more than a full-time job by itself. Google and Microsoft constantly shift what’s considered best practices – is it new extensions? New ad types? Updated conversion tracking? Changing match types? How do you keep up-to-date on all the changes AND have time to implement them?
6. Ongoing Account Maintenance
PPC campaigns aren’t something you set and forget. There are lots of little things that need to be maintained, from ad disapprovals (you’d be surprised at how often ads get disapproved by Google, particularly for no reason), to search query reports to make sure you aren’t showing on search results that don’t make sense for your company. Billing issues arise, and seasonal ads need to be written.
If you run promotions, you’ll want promotional ads and promotion extensions. Any time you add new products or discontinue something, someone needs to take care of that. If you have prices in your ad copy and change them, someone needs to take care of that too. Replatforming your website? Most likely, all your URLs will need to be updated.
Why Hire a PPC Agency?
You’re the expert in your business, just like professional PPC agencies are in digital advertising. An agency account team can provide significant resources and value, freeing up your time to increase focus on the business itself. Whether it’s budget management, performance metric monitoring, and optimization, conversion tracking, strategy development, or staying on top of emerging trends – a reputable PPC management agency can provide the support necessary to ensure you’re covered.
See our previous post, 11 Red Flags That You May Need A New PPC Agency.
