“How Do I Hire a Good PPC Services Firm?”

You want to hire a PPC Management Firm to manage your pay per click campaigns but you don’t want to get ripped off, right?

You know that a good firm can help you get more leads and more sales but you’ve heard all the stories about people getting ripped off by less than reputable PPC firms.

What’s The problem with most PPC Services Firms?

First, it’s very easy for anyone to put up a website and call themselves a PPC Management firm. You don’t have to go to college or get certified to manage pay per click campaigns. This makes it far too easy for anyone to get into the business.

Second, many large firms hire inexperienced people to manage their client’s accounts. You don’t want someone less experienced than you managing your account do you?

Just because a company has a nice looking website or appears to be big have a large list of well known companies as client’s does not mean that they’re the right firm for you.

You must be prepared to ask every firm you’re considering a series of tough questions to ensure that you don’t get ripped off.

12 Questions to ask every PPC Firm before you hire them!

Setup a phone call: I suggest getting on the phone and speaking with your potential ppc management firm. You can learn a lot about someone just by speaking with them on phone. (For example I offer a 30 minute free consultation where you can get on the phone with me and we’ll review your PPC accounts and you can ask any questions that you have.)

Who will be managing your account?: This is very important! Many firms will simply assign a lower level account manager to your account. You want to make sure that this does not happen to you. The main reason that you’re hiring a firm to manage your account is so that you have someone with more experience than you doing the work. Be sure to sit down in person or on the phone with the exact person that is going to manage your account. Make sure that they understand your business and can show you how he/she personally has helped other firms just like your firm to achieve success with Pay Per Click advertising. Here’s my background to use as a reference point.

Make sure the firm’s main focus is to help you generate leads or sales: Many firms will talk about clicks and traffic and not about leads and sales. Pay Per Click advertising is a direct response advertising medium. Everything you do should be focused on generating a lead or a sale. Ask your prospective firm how they intend to generate more leads or sales for your business. How will they show you that they’re making improvements over time.

Track conversions: A conversion refers to someone taking your desired action. If someone fills out a registration form on your website or orders your product that is called a conversion. Google and the other major pay per click search engines offer a free tool for tracking conversions. You want to make sure that your firm of choice is tracking conversions on your website. Tracking conversions allows you to measure the success of your pay per click campaigns. If no one is converting into a lead or a sale then something is wrong. If you aren’t tracking conversions then you’ll never know the true success or failure of your campaigns.

Make sure that your Pay Per Click traffic is sent to a specific landing page: You want all of your traffic or visitors to be sent to a page that contains a specific offer. Do not send your traffic to your homepage. You want to make sure that the firm you choose intends to build specific landing pages for you. These pages will capture leads or offer your products for sale. Your firm will then track the success of your program against the number of leads or sales that are generated as a result of your Pay Per Click advertising campaigns.

Does your firm continuously conduct split tests on your ads? The success of your pay per click advertising campaigns is a direct result of continuous testing. The best way to reduce your costs over time and increase your traffic is to continuously split test your ads. If your potential firm does not openly talk about split testing your ads be very cautious!

Does your firm use Google’s Website Optimizer tool to test your landing pages? Google offers a free tool for testing your landing pages. This tool is called Website Optimizer. This tool allows you to automatically run a series of tests on your landing pages to improve your conversion rates. If you want to generate more leads or more sales it is absolutely necessary to use this tool. Make sure that your potential firm speaks openly about using this tool for your landing pages. Make them show you how they’ve used this tool to help their clients. Here’s an example of how we used Website Optimizer to help one of our clients.

Are you targeting the right keywords? Keywords are the foundation of every successful pay per click advertising campaign. You need to find the right keywords and enough of them. Keywords are the words that your potential customers are typing into the search engines when looking for your products and services. Every firm that you’re considering should use third party tools to research keywords for your campaigns. WordTracker and KeyCompete are 2 of the most powerful and popular tools for keyword research. Ask your potential firm what tools they use for keyword research and see if they mention either of these tools.

What should you giveaway to your potential customers if you’re goal is to generate sales leads? The most effective lead generation pieces are Demos, Software Trials, White Papers, Webinars, and Teleseminars. Ask your potential firm which piece would work best for your goals. Ask them what experience they’ve had with the above lead generation pieces. This will give you a better feeling for how much your potential firm can help you.

Do you pay month-by-month or are you locked into a long term contract?: Be very careful here. Many firms will try to charge you a large up front fee to setup your account (usually a few thousand dollars) then they’ll charge you and on going monthly fee to manage your account. Many firms will also try to lock you into a 3, 6, or even 12 month contract. Be very cautious of this. Any firm worth their weight will allow you to pay month-by-month without a large setup fee. You want your firm to prove themselves to you. A month by month relationship is the best format for this. You need the option to get out of your agreement if pay per click advertising is not working for your business.

Will they answer the phone when you call? If you have questions your firm should be there to answer them. Make sure to ask how much phone/email support is available to you.

Ask to speak to as many current customers as you can: One of the best ways to get to know your potential pay per click advertising firm is to ask to speak with their customers. Ask their customers the same questions that you see here on this guide. This will give you a good gut feel for how good your potential pay per click firm is. Do not skip this step!

Conclusion:

Print out this guide and use it every time you speak to a pay per click advertising firm. It’s in your best interest to do so.

I offer a free 30 minute consultation where you and I will sit down over the telephone and log into your pay per click account. I’ll look for all the problem areas and areas for improvement. After our call I will send you my suggestions. This is not a sales call, simply a call for you and I to get to know each other better.

Click here to sign up for your 30 minute free consultation. I look forward to speaking with you.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker
Pay Per Click Advertising Specialist
President- Jeremiah Baker LLC.

This entry was posted on February 4, 2008 at 8:45 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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