Stephen Claridge

One-stop-shop Internet Marketing vs Pay Per Click Consultant

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Ok so in this blog post I will try to make the case for why you should use a Pay Per Click consultant to manage your account vs going with an one stop shop internet marketing provider. Just to clarify a one-stop shop internet provider will do your website, SEO, PPC, social media and maybe even hosting.

One Stop-Shop

Pros:

Hey you are getting all your internet needs met through one company which makes things a lot more convenient for you. In theory your whole marketing effort should be an integrated marketing machine that should work smoothly together to meet your needs. Finally most people tend to trust bigger internet companies because they have an established reputation and brand name.

Cons:

The one big con (no bun intended) is that most one stop shop internet providers charge you an astronomical amount of money to give you the privilege of even sitting down to get a quote with them in the first place. Secondly they usually charge an extremely high monthly fee or even worse a % of your pay per click spend to manage your accounts. This can be a problem because you can get tied into long contracts that are difficult to get out of.

The biggest thing I have seen is that they try to get you to fork out $10,000 to $15,000 for a new website when in most cases your existing site just needs face lift. That money can go along way towards PPC and SEO initiatives.

pay-per-click-consulting

PPC consulting is serious business

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Stephen Claridge

Best Pay Per Click Networks

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So if you are not sure which pay per click networks to advertise on or even start with, this post should help.

Google Adwords Search

By far the biggest and in many respects best PPC Network is Google Adwords. Your ads can run beside relevant search result or on the Display network where your ads will show on other people’s websites. The disadvantage with Adwords is that it has the highest amount of competition right so you will end up paying a higher cost per click than on other networks.

Vancouver Pay Per Click recommends starting with Adwords for search first. The amount of  traffic is high and very targeted which helps with testing keywords and ad copy.  Within 4 of 6 weeks of advertising on Adwords search you will have enough historical data to build out your account. I have seen accounts go from 1 campaign with a few hundred keywords to 20 campaigns with tens of thousands of keywords in as little as a month. The first month requires a lot of work and expertise to prevent you from going in the wrong direction.

Adcenter & YSM

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Stephen Claridge

Free pay per click management tools

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There are many tools that a PPC manager will use to make their lives easier when it comes to pay per click management. The great thing about all the tools listed here are that they are FREE.

Adwords Editor

My favourite tool is Adwords editor. This is the first tool you should download even before you create your first campaign because it will save you so much time. The time saver is the ability to copy and paste any elements of your account and then search and replace it. Common keyboard shortcuts work seamlessly in Adwords Editor. Not only can you make campaigns for Adwords but Yahoo and Bing both allow you to import CSV files directly from Adwords Editor.

Adwords Keyword Tool

The online Adwords Keyword tool is great for keywords research. Just go to the opportunities tab of your Adwords account. The nice thing about this tool is that you can set the location or your choice, so that you can get a good idea of traffic and competition levels in your own area. Another advantage is the ability to export data to Excel, which allows you to see competition values instead of the ambiguous graph online.

PPC Keyword Generator Read more

Stephen Claridge

Do you need to outsource PPC management?

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I will try to be as unbiased as possible in this article but I am a PPC consultant so this article is definitely one sided. However you should still ask yourself these questions to see if you should outsource your pay per click management.

What are your online marketing goals?

If you goals are to dominate the internet for your industry then you need a pro. However, if you only want to get a few more leads or sales a month form the internet but aren’t concerned about dominating then you don’t need to outsource you PPC management.

What is the level of competition in your industry? Read more