Digital marketing is a profession that is quickly evolving. There are many different ways to market a brand in the online space, and these different channels are constantly being changed and improved. Small and medium-sized businesses often don’t have the resources to employ a full eCommerce marketing team to keep up with these demands. They therefore rely on agencies to manage their digital marketing. One of the key components businesses look for is an agency that offers PPC management services.

A dilemma that many companies face is whether to use a specialist agency or one that offers a full marketing service. There are definitely merits to both approaches. Ultimately, it’s a question of balancing costs against effectiveness; a line that can blur fairly easily. In this article we’ll examine the pros and cons of both specialist and full-service agencies in relation to PPC management services. We’ll also explain why our own specialists at TEA Software offer the complete PPC package.

PPC Management Services: Full-Service Agencies

Full-service agencies may include an entire array of digital and offline marketing, or simply a focus on one branch or the other. The relatively recent growth of eCommerce has seen more and more traditional marketing agencies expanding into digital sectors, as well as the rise of purely digital marketing agencies. Regardless, the pros and cons seem to be similar for each type:

Pros

• A Cohesive Approach: When your entire digital marketing strategy is controlled by one agency, you can guarantee that all the different elements and channels will be operating on the same page. Not only can the agency work closely with your in-house staff, they can ensure that a cohesive effort is being made. This means your PPC activity will be in line with your social, website, and email campaigns. It’s definitely an effective way of marketing.
• One Point of Contact: Having multiple agencies attending to your different channels can be difficult to manage. Using a full-service approach means that there is only one central contact point. Therefore, as a business you can easily keep on top of the various marketing activities being carried out on your behalf. Having one agency take care of your needs also means that they can get close to the business and know the various parts inside an out, which is a definite plus.

Cons

• A Lack of Focus: Even though large digital marketing agencies will have separate teams, it’s rare that each of those teams will give your business their full focus. Rather than working on each individual niche, the full-service agency will focus on the broader strategy. Although this meta-level planning is useful, the finer details can sometimes be overlooked. Each process becomes less streamlined, meaning lead times will increase, as will costs. Ideally you want your PPC management services to be fully focused on just that. You need to get the exact details of where your budget is going, and where your traffic is coming from.
• A Lack of Passion: : Often holistic marketing agencies grow out of niche-specific ones. For example, an SEO-focused agency may start offering web design or email marketing. These other tasks, although encompassing all digital channels, will always have less love and attention than the agency’s original focus. This can lead to frustrations between business and agency and once again sees the detailed analysis being missed.

PPC Management Services: Specialist Agencies

In the same way that businesses must choose whether to use a specialist of full-service marketing agency for their PPC and other marketing activity, the agencies themselves often find themselves in the same situation. The development of digital marketing over the last decade or so has seen the rise of increasingly specialist channels. PPC, social, email, affiliate, SEO, and display marketing have become their own unique forms of advertising. Many agencies therefore opt to specialize in just one area. This has both plusses and negatives:

Pros

• A Deeper Connection: One of the main benefits of having using an agency that provides specialized PPC management services is the connection they are able to form with your company. Because they’re focused solely on this one area of marketing, they can spend the time to get to know your specific requirements. They can understand what your business’ ethos is, and how this appeals to your customers. Campaigns can then be tailored to more accurately meet these customer needs.
• A Wide Team of Experts: With a full-service agency, you certainly get the benefit of a broad knowledge base. However, with a specialist agency it’s possible to get an even greater depth of understanding about each area. These organizations usually have a real passion for the work they do, and they’re often willing to share that passion with their clients. This allows you to have an unrivalled pool of learning to help perfect your marketing activity.

Cons

• They’re Too Niche: One of the factors we celebrated about specialist marketing agencies was their ability to connect with and focus on one area. However, this can also be a drawback. Without being close to other channels, there can be discrepancies in marketing activity. One channel may be focusing on their particular message, whilst another is using something entirely different. It also means that their knowledge base may not extend as far as you want it to. Having many different agencies focusing on different channels can be difficult to manage holistically.
• Costs Are Higher: Using an agency (or multiple ones) can certainly be cheaper than hiring a dedicated in-house team. Your commitment is less, and you can shop around to get the best deal. However, using multiple specialist agencies can soon get expensive. With each new hire, your ROI is likely to suffer.

TEA Software: The Best PPC Management Services

At TEA Software, we believe that specialist marketing channels need specialist knowledge to effectively run advertising activity. Our software focuses specifically on how customers engage with your website, through PPC campaigns and other similar digital channels. Unlike traditional PPC management services, we have a broad and detailed understanding of eCommerce, with the resources to work with you to improve your PPC activity. There are a few different factors that we think distinguish us from other agencies:

• Predictive Behavior Charts
  As we’ve discussed, many full-service agencies don’t give their clients granular details. These are essential for running the most cost-effective PPC campaigns. For example, it may appear that keyword A is outperforming keyword B. However, the agency may not account for the fact that the initial customer engagement came from keyword B. They will then adjust their marketing strategy to favor keyword A, losing the traffic that was being driven by keyword B. Our powerful software can capture data at this detailed level. This means you’ll get a more accurate understanding of how your customers interact with your website. The predictive behavior charts that TEA creates can track the quality of your traffic over time, and how particular sources such as Google AdWords are really performing.
• Customer Insight
  Non-specialist agencies may look at your customer profiles on a broad level and then apply this to their marketing strategy across the board. At TEA we recognize that this may not be the best way to gain insight into how customers and potential customers truly interact with your business. We identify trends amongst your visitors, not only separating out poor-quality traffic and clickfraud from our reporting, but also by segmenting your real traffic. By identifying bypassers (users not interested in your products or services), potentials (users who are interested but did not convert), and actual customers, we can help focus the attention to the traffic that really matters. By doing this we can increase your conversion rate and get the potentials to become actual customers. This gives you actionable suggestions that can be taken without increasing your spend.
• Guaranteed Results
  We’re proud of TEA Software, and we also believe it will benefit our customers. We’re so convinced of this that we offer a guarantee of its success. Our automated AI bidding software will improve your PPC results in 30 days or less. If it doesn’t, we’ll give you your money back. Our automated clickfraud and engagement protection tools holds services like Google AdWords accountable for the money you spend. If botnets and clickfraud are draining your budget, we can identify it and block it. We’ll also send a report to Google, meaning they’ll refund you for any illegitimate clicks. You can cut up to 20% of your PPC marketing budget using our software.

An Effective PPC Management Solution

The TEA team is committed to delivering the best possible results for your business. Our expert knowledge of pay-per-click and other digital channels is one of the reasons that TEA is part of the Shopping Cart Elite complete eCommerce package. It offers unrivalled insight into customer trends and can save your business money. Other less specialized and full-service agencies won’t be able to deliver the same high-quality results that TEA can.