Consultants to manage Adwords campaigns?

I got a call from MSN a couple weeks ago asking how I was doing with their PPC ads. I told them it had not proven cost effective, and I didn't have the time to spend tweaking it. They offered their expert assistance, I said that would be great, and then they never called back.

Does Google offer such a program? I've seen the certified Google consultant logos but the requirements look weak, I'm reluctant to hire some random consultant with no gauge of their ability or results.

 

So your looking for results?

 

Yea, although I'm not sure if they have certain spending thresholds you need to crosss in order for them to do it for you.

ps - I've seen their work and have been less than impressed...

 

That doesn't surprise me. I guess there's no choice but to have 16 of me, so I can dedicate one or two of them to hassling with AdWords 24 hours a day...

 

Just I'm clear, I wasn't knocking any of the independent adwords consultants out there. The work I've seen that I was less than impressed with was from Google employees who "optimize" AdWords campaigns for some clients.

Never let your suppliers write your checks

Let me know when you get that cloning thing going - I could use a few more of me too

 

Also, they are quite pushy when it comes to implementing their work. Not something I've ever been a fan of.

 

you dont need to spend 24 hours a day on it, spend 2 hours a week doing a little research with dp tools, spend the rest of your time doing things that will get you free traffic, and get you ranked high organically

 

Considering this is the adwords forum and he's asking an adwords question...

(I think Brian has a good idea of what he's doing)

 

I am managing many campaigns for my customers and would like to add a few items to this discussion:
1. The adwords professional qualification test requires very good knowledge of the adwords system both theoretical practical. Trust me I am certified
2. While I've seen Google reps manage some of my customers accounts in a very good way, I found that most times my campaign managers improved the results after we took over the account. Not sure why this is, but I think Google reps might have a conflict of interest here.
3. An experienced campaign manager can get results from adwords that most people can't simply based on the amount of campaigns he has learned from.
4. Some professionals can offer you a "once over" your campaign and provide you with a list of action items that would improve your campaign in a significant manner.
5. Last but not least, you can also find an SEM expert and offer them to manage your campaign based on results only (CPA).

 

Hi Brian! I'm up here in Costa Mesa. Well if you find someone good let me know! I havn't tried it for my linkexchage site but when it so, and if it doesn't work, maybe I'll need someone certified in this.

 

I fully agree.

We get contacted by an Adwords "Optimizer" after each client reaches a 10k (Euros) spend per month. The reports generated have all times bar one been brutal.

We spent about 40 man hours about 4 months ago "Fixing" the "Optimization".

On the other hand, speaking to a dedicated Google rep has done wonders. They really put the foot down with larger spenders who show incentive to spend more.

 

It might be worthwhile for the site owner to look at seo in addition to ppc when considering consultants. Many sites that are content rich are excellent candidates for seo success, and in these cases the ppc campaign can be seen as mainly supplemental, to help with the more competitive keyphrases. I will often take a two-pronged approach with my clients, leaning toward ppc in the beginning as we begin the seo work, but scaling down the amount of ad spend as the natural search results start to improve.

 

Spot on. I completely agree. I wrote a post a while back on this: SEO and PPC

I don't believe however that PPC should be scaled back assuming you are generating a positive ROI.

 

We have a situation where we spend a lof of money on PPC and now have very good organic. The question is how much or if even to scale back PPC. I would be interested to see any hard data on advantage of #1 2 3 spots on a google for example in organic for CTR's. Anyone have any source data for this?

 

All three newtroks offer this service! I also think that they dont really care for the budget! They could something for someone who spends $100 or someone who spends $1000. The problem is that what they do is not great! Obviously they want you to spend more money!

 

I think the results depend on a number of things.

If the search term is your company name, then they'll probably click on your natural result if they can see it if you have no PPC advert, so having PPC as well would result in paying for traffic that you'd have got for free.

If you are the only person bidding on a term, and are top of the natural search as well, then you'll probably get a high level of cannibalisation again...

On the other hand, if there is a lot of competition for the terms, then two adverts on the page is more likely to return twice as much traffic, particularly if your brand name isn't particularly strong.

I think that you have to judge these things on a case-by-case basis, but if anyone has any results from experiments on this, I'd be very interested...

 

Unless you're losing money left and right (ie is ppc producing an acceptable roi?) then I would leave it running. 90% + of the time I leave paid search in place even when the organic rank for that same term(s) moves to page 1.

 

The Google Advertising Professional test requires only a grasp of basic AdWords principles -- nothing about achieving high results or any real practical knowledge. Trust me, I've been ghost-certifying for several of my clients

 

I have to admit, when I passed the exam, I wasn't really an expert.

It tests your knowledge of how things work, not your ability to turn it into results...

 

Eeeeexactly.