I am looking to hire a Google Adwords Professional or a company. Normally what are the terms of paying for services of a GAP ? Do they charge a monthly fees or charge per click? If I just pay them on clicks, it wont work in my favor in the long run as I might be spending too much by way of just clicks and no returns. How are others working this out ? What's the best strategy that works out for both ?
Most account managers I've seen charge a percentage of your spend. Usually it's between 10 to 20%. I charge depending on size of your campaign. It's a fixed amount every month and my clients like that.
what is your expected ad spend? Which search engines do you plan to advertise in? Under $5,000 many agencies work on flat rate management fee's. this is simple and allows for flexibility during seasonal times or when profitability is realized. Above the $5,000 ad spend, a percentage of ad spend is often implemented. this may have a sliding scale from 25% to 5% depending on many factors unique to each account. you may expect to pay a setup fee in the first month as well. Your management fee should pay for itself with a professional dedicating more time and following googles best practices. They will also have a google account manager to reference with any abnormalities experienced with the account. avoid anyone who talks about "search engine placement" and most people that will not allow you access to your own account. be sure that you will retain ownership of account and analytic data should you part ways with the agency. Do not be afraid to be more aggressive with ad spend in the beginning which allows a manager to optimize the account by gathering conversion data. Be sure to accurately define a conversion and establish an exact cost per acquisition as goals in a needs analysis call. talk to a few and go with the person who gives you the best information.
Anybody that charges you a % of spend is surely going to encourage you to spend more!! I feel that a set up fee and a fixed monthly amount works
maybe, but that all depends if that extra money is well spent. If you double your spend and treble your profits then that's a good thing. Depends on the size of the account and the scalability that you want from the company. If you have a large account with a lot of keywords then you can't really expect the time that account deserves to be paid for by a low set monthly fee. BTW - any company you find offering you a certain number of clicks per month for a set amount is 99% sure to be c**p. So, really it depends on the manager, not on the way they charge. If you find a good manager then either payment way it's a good thing - if you find a bad one then either form of payment costs you money for nothing.
We have a few clients..(we are very particular) that we manage campaigns for. We charge a set fee to manage a campaign. We also charge a set fee if we need to work on your landing page. There are many variables that make a PPC successful. We work as partners with our clients to make sure they get the biggest bang for their buck...that's why we are very selective who we work with. I do not want to have to train clients every couple months so we focus on keeping our clients. Cost is a relative thing....one of our clients was spending just over $26 to acquire a lead. (not a bad price in their industry) After tweaking their landing page, setting up conversion tracking and split testing the campaigns we decreased their per lead cost $16 and change. (that included our monthly fee). If you pay a monthly fee and your cost per lead/sale does not decrease then I dont care if you pay by percentage or flat fee you are not getting value for you advertising dollar. j
Most of the time is a percentage based on your monthly media spending but a marketing firm may decide to charge setup fee if you're interested to have additional data/insights and additional reporting. It all depends what you're trying to accomplish with your website... which I agree with jvmarket!