Pay-Per-Click Management (PPC)

Absolutely! The reason $92.4 billion was spent on paid search in 2017 worldwide is that advertisers can measure their gains and have seen the positive returns. Although there’s no guarantee that it will work for you, as PPC isn’t right for every organization. If you are one of the millions of businesses where PPC is effective, though, be aware there’s no magic bullet or secret trick to making it work. PPC campaign management is crucial to success, both short and long-term.

One of the reasons Google Ads (originally known as AdWords) became so popular was that anyone – any agency, business, or person – could sign up for an account. Running PPC campaigns effectively was another matter, so Google started offering certifications to individuals and agencies. Today agencies can get certified as Google Partners, which sounds great, but thousands exist, so the quality varies. The next tier is Premier Google Partners. Agencies have to meet more requirements to earn this recognition. Beyond even this level, Google selects about 200 of the best agencies into its Managed Agency Program. So what does that mean for you? Among other benefits:

You get access to special beta programs before they’re released to the public (and your competition).

Agencies receive additional personalized support for strategy and troubleshooting.

Google provides special, in-depth product training to agency reps to improve their skills and platform knowledge.

Sometimes you know exactly what you want to spend on pay per click advertising and all your other marketing channels. Other times, you may feel a little lost, whether you have or have not run PPC campaigns previously.

If you have run Google Ads or other PPC campaigns in the past and have good data, determine the number of leads and / or sales you want and back out the math based on prior cost-per-conversion and other key metrics.

If you haven’t run a campaign before or don’t have data you believe in, you can still use a similar process. Create low, high, and middle ranges for key metrics like cost-per-click, conversion rate, daily budget, and (if doing lead campaigns) offline sales conversion rate. Employ some rough math to create several ranges for cost-per-sale, put in the number of sales desired, and factor in your risk tolerance and profit margin.

If you haven’t worked through this process before, working with a PPC company experienced in Google Ads campaign management is your best bet to help you develop your forecasts.

No. As much as we’d like to, we can’t and won’t guarantee results. There are too many variables at play, including ones out of our control (like if you have a web developer who changes jobs in the middle of a campaign setup). Sometimes things just don’t work out for whatever reason. Having written that, we’ve been running search ads campaigns successfully for many years and have developed a good eye for where we can drive success. And if we don’t think our chances are strong, we’ll tell you we shouldn’t work together. We aim to provide the optimal PPC campaign management experience, and if that involves giving you the hard truth upfront, it’s our preference that we do so.

Bottom line: never trust any Microsoft and Google Ads campaign management agency that guarantees results. Run far, far away.

Google has been the dominant player since shortly after it burst on the scene in 2000. For most countries you target, start with Google Ads. If you’re looking at grabbing more market share, especially in North America, you definitely want to use Microsoft Ads and may even want to try Yahoo! For all but a handful of countries, Google is #1. Those exceptions include:

China (Baidu, Shenma, 360)

South Korea (Naver, Daum)

Russia (Yandex)

Japan (Yahoo! Japan)

Although Microsoft (formerly Bing Ads) doesn’t have the reach that Google does, we still use Microsoft Ads for most of our clients targeting the U.S. and Canada. It performs better in some industries than others, so it’s important to check conversion rates.

Often our clients will see less competition and lower costs-per-click, though it tends to be for a smaller audience. And for those advertisers who believe their prospects don’t use Bing, keep in mind that Microsoft Ads serves ads on other search engines and partners like Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, giving you a spread of opportunities that Google can’t provide.

Yes! The good news is that in all but a handful of countries around the world, Google is the #1 player. For the most part, the fundamentals for pay per click remain the same in foreign markets. Just be sure to follow exporting best practices.

Your success will be improved by understanding individual cultures, using localized translations, and knowing your competition.

If you are interested in targeting countries where Google isn’t the top search engine and you can legally export to those places—China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, and Taiwan—, you can still mostly get some coverage through Google. Just note that China remains the one exception (although that may be changing soon).

If these non-China markets are key to your business, you’ll want to advertise on top platforms like Naver, Yandex, and Yahoo! Japan. And if you’re exploring China, you’ll need a presence on top engines like Baidu, Shenma, and 360.