Pay-per-click advertising can be a great way of generating new visitors to your website. If done right, it can also increase key metrics such as conversion rate and revenue. A poorly run strategy can just end up costing you money however. If you aren’t running PPC marketing already, is it something you need to start getting involved with? This depends on a great number of factors, including the size and scale of your business, your niche, and your budget. It may be that you’re a small trader with a unique business, achieving a sizeable amount of your traffic through organic search. PPC could help you grow, but the money could be better spent elsewhere. However, if you’re committed to exploring this avenue, do you need a PPC management firm to help you?

Marketing agencies, whether generalized or niche-specific, can help transform your online marketing. They’re often full of experts in the field who genuinely enjoy doing what they’re doing. Before you can determine whether or not you need to partner with a PPC management firm, there are some questions you first need to ask. In this article we’ll explore these questions, and put forward a case showing the benefits of our own PPC management software, TEA.

Do you want to increase visitors and revenue?

If you’re not familiar with PPC advertising, here is a simple explanation. It’s a type of advertising where an advertiser (your company), pays a publisher (usually another website or search engine), every time your ad is clicked on. On the surface it seems like a great deal. You can be one of the top results when a particular keyword is searched for, without having to go through the SEO gauntlet to get there naturally. With a program like Google’s AdWords, you can place a maximum bid on a particular keyword or phrase, and if you’re amongst the highest bidders, and if your ads are of a high-enough quality, you’ll appear at the top.

This seems like a fairly simple process, and it is indeed easy enough to increase the traffic to your website. However, there is a great deal of research, trial and error, and analytics that goes into running a successful campaign. The real aim of PPC is to draw in new relevant traffic. This means users who are going to come to your site, engage with it, and ultimately make a purchase. A measure of this is referred to as conversion rate. So, if you want to increase your conversion rate and revenue, PPC is a good marketing channel to achieve this.

Can you do it yourself?

Knowing how PPC works in principle may seem like enough for you to either do it yourself or assign some internal resource to do it. The initial time sink will be the keyword research that your business will have to do. PPC activity should be aimed at relevant keywords and phrases that your customers associate with you. You’ll need to look at how much it costs to bid on certain words, and whether there is much competition. Budget calculations are essential here. Oftentimes, the more you pay the more traffic you get. As we’ve said however, traffic alone isn’t enough to drive sales. With PPC marketing, maximizing your return on investment is important.

If you do decide to run your pay-per-click advertising yourself, rather than go with a PPC management firm, your work doesn’t stop once the ads go live. This type of marketing requires constant attention and refining. You’ll need to dedicate time each day in order to assess what’s performing for you and what isn’t. If all this seems a little overwhelming, you have two main choices; hire a dedicated team or member of staff to take care of your marketing, or partner up with a PPC management firm.

Can you afford to hire a new team?

If you’re committed to the idea of PPC marketing and can’t currently do it as an individual or with your existing resources, then you may think about increasing your head count. There are definitely merits to this approach. By having a specialist on your books, you will always have access to the inner workings of the PPC campaign. The data you have will be up to date, and you can make any necessary changes on the fly. The new team or individual will quickly learn how your business operates and what’s important to it, making for a more streamlined and targeted approach. However, there are downsides to hiring new staff members compared to a PPC management firm.

It’s expensive to add a permanent staff member or members. It’s a big commitment, particularly if you’re only starting out with this kind of marketing. Alternatively you could hire an all ‘rounder, such as a Digital Marketing Manager. They would be responsible for many different marketing channels. The downside to this, of course, is that they’re unable to focus on specific area. Other avenues may be more pressing, and matters such as PPC may become neglected.

Can you manage your data?

We mentioned this briefly above, but there is a lot of data that needs to be analysed for PPC marketing to be successful, or at least profitable. Your initial keyword data and predicted budget is only the start. Once a campaign goes live, you want to be getting the most up-to-date data possible. This means daily analysis of the keywords that are working well and the ones that aren’t. You’ll need to make adjustments regularly to get the best ROI.

Furthermore, you need to know the kind of traffic that you’re driving. The biggest issue in PPC marketing is clickfraud. This is a term that refers to competitors or scammers clicking on your ads in an effort to interfere with your campaign. Because you’re charged for each click, and because the traffic won’t ever convert, it ends up costing you money rather than making it. Can you keep track of this? And are you able to hold sites like Google AdWords accountable for this wasted money?

TEA Software: The Right PPC Management Firm for You

Hopefully in addressing these questions you’ve decided whether you need to hire a PPC management firm or not. The chances are that a company such as our very own TEA Software can help you maximise the effectiveness of your pay-per-click marketing. To demonstrate why we think we’re such a great choice for PPC management, we’ve explained some of our most unique features:

A commitment to making you money
One of our key features as a business is the software that we use. TEA stands for Threat and Engagement Analytics. It’s a powerful tool that can help automate and manage your marketing activity. We firmly believe that we can outperform any Google AdWords expert; our software uses real time data to analyse the campaigns you’re running. It can then make the necessary adjustments in reaction to the data, rather than having to wait the 18 hours it can take for Google’s AdWords algorithm to update. We’re confident that our automated AI bidding software will improve your results in 30 days or less. If it doesn’t, we’ll give you your money back. We estimate that up to 20% of your PPC budget could be saved by using TEA.

Detailed insight into your customer base
We can help you get to know your customers better. TEA is capable of separating out good traffic from bad, removing and reporting on clickfraud and botnets whilst further segmenting your real traffic into manageable groups. You can find out what percentage of your website visitors are genuine, and what your true conversion rate is. We’ll also provide actionable outcomes that will help improve your website and PPC performance.

We want to be your partner, not just your vendor
Having a good working partnership is essential to success. It’s one of the reasons we work so closely with eCommerce platform Shopping Cart Elite. We want to work with you as well, and our team of friendly experts love sharing their knowledge. Together we can help you make the most out of your online advertising.

Choose a PPC Management Firm
What we’ve hopefully demonstrated is that PPC management firms such as TEA Software can benefit almost any business. Running pay-per-click marketing activity requires a lot of care and attentional, as well as a great deal of knowledge. Our company can provide both of these, as well as some powerful tools that can help deliver results.