This article has been developed for the security of all PPC Advertisers and particularly those advertisers new to online advertising. There are many people working in the PPC Management Industry who claim to be specialists in the field and are in fact nothing but mere impostors.
Much of the time it will seem to the PPC Management novice that all is in order with their account. However, experienced PPC Management Companies, like Webrageous Studios, are able to spot the impostors from a long way off in the distance.
Therefore, below are five ways in which to spot a PPC Management imposter so that you do not waste your money on someone who is really not doing the best for your business.
“Broad Matching Happy”
When a PPC Account Manager is pretending to have a lot of experience and training in the field, but is in fact an imposter, your PPC account will normally be full of broad match keywords. Inexperienced PPC Managers rely heavily on the use of broad match keywords because they know little about how to take advantage of the many other keyword styles that the astute PPC Account Manager makes full use of.
For example, phrase match keywords can be far more effective in many ways. They can result in more conversions and a lower CPC at the same time if utilized with knowledge and precision. An account full of mostly two word broad match keywords however stinks of a PPC Account Manager who doesn’t really know how to keyword research. It is also reminiscent of someone who was too lazy to add phrase match and exact match keywords which, if implemented correctly, can improve the quality score of your keywords.
“Child-like Budgeting”
PPC Management imposters normally have very little knowledge about how to best set a daily budget. In general, a campaign’s daily budget run by an imposter will either be set too high or too low. For example, rather than set the budget for a particular geographical area based on the findings generated through campaign analysis, an inexperienced PPC Manager will set the daily budget at the same value for every single geographical location targeted in the campaign.
When considering this action from a logical point of view, even if you are without PPC experience, it is clear that money is not being used wisely here. Individual aspects of a campaign are going to be more or less successful than others. It is not uncommon for one geographical area to generate more conversions than another. Therefore, when your PPC Manager is setting the budget at the same value across the board, whether it be geographical area or something else, it may well be that you have employed an imposter.
“ROI Ignorant”
PPC imposers pay no attention to ROI. They rarely utilize Google Analytics to monitor your account and they tend to make sweeping actions across the campaign as a whole. For example, they will bid the same for both the highest quality and lowest quality keywords in your account. If your PPC management company bids the same for every keyword in your account then this is a warning sign. There is nothing subtle about the actions of a PPC imposter.
A really inexperienced PPC Manager will not even have installed conversion tracking and will be doing nothing with Google Analytics to set CUSTOMIZED goals for your campaign. They may not have even set up Google Analytics.
What you are presented with when you are dealing with a PPC imposter is someone who sets the campaign in motion and then does nothing to look at the tiny parts that make up that campaign in order to check that all is functioning to perfection. It’s just like dealing with the dodgy mechanic who simply checks that the car is working. However, 30 minutes after having left the garage, the car breaks down again because there was something really wrong inside.
However, because it wasn’t immediately obvious on the surface, it was overlooked. The problem would have been noted if the car had been looked at through the eyes of a specialist. Are you spending 30% of your budget or more on just one keyword that probably isn’t the highest quality keyword in your account? That could be a warning sign!
“Behind the Times”
The PPC imposter is also likely to be very, very ignorant of what is happening in the world of PPC Management TODAY. They will not be up-to-date with new programs, features or tools. Nor will they suggest alternative ways in which to approach the running of your PPC campaign. If your PPC manager can’t explain what conversion tracking is then that a huge warning sign!
Remarketing is one of the greatest new products launched by Google AdWords in years. If your PPC account manager can’t tell you what it is it might be time to look for someone else to help you.
PPC imposters are not researchers. They are people who rely on old methods that they picked up by reading an old “Dummies Guide to PPC” and they are certainly not the kind of PPC Manager who really understands the power of the Content Network, for example.
Truly qualified PPC Account Managers are in the loop and know what is going on at Google and the other top PPC providers the minute that any new information is released.
“All Talk and Nothing to Show”
The age-old trick of printing out lots of reports and showing reams and reams of data and documents is a trick used by PPC imposters in order to pull the wool over the eyes of innocent PPC Advertising novices.
If your PPC Manager is showing you lots of data but not telling you anything about what that data means and how that data is going to be used in order to optimize your campaign further, he or she is a PPC imposter. Another great way to tell if your account manager is actually doing anything is to look at the change history and see how many changes are actually made each month by your account manager. Under the reporting tab go to ‘Change History’.
Rather than using reports as something that puts a full stop to the end of the PPC Manager’s work for the day, the reports that the PPC Manager generates should result in new goals, new ideas and new visions or ideas for progress in the future. Simply saying, “Broad match keywords are converting well, therefore we will continue using lots of those in the campaign,” really is a sign of someone pretending to be an experienced PPC Manager.
Webrageous Studios hopes that the above information was highly useful to you and that if any of the above scenarios sound familiar you take immediate action and find yourself a REAL PPC Manager.
If you would like to know more about the way in which Webrageous Studios manages its various PPC accounts, please do contact the company directly.
