Should I Run Google Adwords PPC Ads Myself?
Jane emailed us to ask if she should set up and run an Adwords PPC account for her business herself or hire a professional to take care of it.Here’s our answer:
Even though the guys at Google are making a good job providing info on how to set up and run an Adwords account, the truth is that most business owners screw it up. The most common practice I’ve witnessed working with a wide variety of clients in different industries is that they set up their account and let it run on autopilot, waiting for leads and sales to come in. This is the biggest recipe for failure.
First, setting up an account isn’t as easy as it looks. You have to analyze your market and competition, which requires specific skills, experience and tools. This is the most important step and if you screw this up, your advertising will fail and your budget will go down the drain.
Then, running PPC ad campaigns is pretty complex, with traffic trends, competition and bidding constantly changing throughout the day. This means that if you set it and forget, you will waste your budget while competitors will be taking your customers away.
The best way is to hire a professional with extensive experience and adequate tools – for example, I use various reporting tools which among other things allow me to spy – legally – on what competitors are doing.
Of course, hiring a professional PPC Advertising manager isn’t cheap but in the end your return on investment will be worth it. To give you an idea, I was just looking at one my customers’ competitors last week – in a highly pricey and competitive industry – and noticed they were wasting probably around 70% of their $20,000 monthly budget on the wrong keywords – and this is something that occurs in most markets whether budgets are big or small. Don’t you think having a professional handle your online advertising is worth it?