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Regardless of your marketing budget or objectives, when it comes to running pay per click (PPC) campaigns, you want to make sure that you have knowledgeable and experienced people on hand to help you manage them. If you or another person in your business already has the requisite knowledge, you might choose to manage your PPC campaign by yourself. The alternative is to hire the services of an outside agency that specializes in PPC advertising.
Both approaches have their own merits in different circumstances. Understanding these will help you choose the right approach for your business and campaign.
Managing PPC Yourself
Choosing to manage your PPC in-house, either personally or by hiring an internal specialist, brings two key advantages to your business. The first is that the PPC marketer will be able to focus on applying their expertise to your business. A PPC campaign manager who is working from within your business will have the perspective they need to make smarter and more informed marketing decisions. The other advantage is that you will be adding more skills to your skill pool.
Managing your own campaign also means that you can give it the attention it deserves. An in-house PPC specialist will be able to dedicate the entirety of their skills and knowledge to your campaign, ensuring they get the best results possible. Your project won’t be just one of many that they are handling at the same time. There is enormous value in having someone who is able to focus entirely on you and your business’ needs.
Another advantage of having your PPC management under the same roof as the rest of your business is that you can react to events much more easily and efficiently. In the run-up to major holidays and other important dates such as Black Friday, your competitors may well be looking to increase their bids on crucial keywords. With your PPC campaign manager in-house, you will be able to decide how to best react to these new circumstances, and you will be able to implement those measures with a minimal delay.
You can always take the lead in managing your PPC campaign yourself if you think that you are up to the challenge. There is certainly a lot of value in learning how to manage PPC campaigns on your own, but if you haven’t attempted it before, you should try and work alongside someone with a reasonable amount of experience, so you can learn the ropes.
Depending on the size of your business, and in particular, the size of your marketing department, you might have a number of people on staff who possess useful specialist skills. For example, if you have someone who manages your content strategy, you can involve them to make sure that all your copy is targeted appropriately. Similarly, an SEO specialist can optimize your keyword bidding to improve effectiveness and reduce cannibalization.
Hiring a PPC Agency
Working with a PPC agency will give you a lot more horsepower to draw from. You won’t just have a single talented individual to rely on; instead, you will have a whole team of experienced PPC marketers. In most cases, this will mean that you can save a lot of time and resources by offloading the management of the PPC campaign to the agency. They then only need to consult with you to understand what it is you’re trying to achieve and to report their progress. Hiring a reputable agency means that you don’t have to concern yourself with micromanaging every aspect of your campaign.
An external PPC agency may well want to work alongside your marketing team to ensure that there is synergy between all your different marketing methods. Allowing the external agency to manage your marketing team for the duration of the PPC campaign will ensure that you are able to get the most out of it. It will also leave you with a marketing team who have first-hand experience with how PPC works; knowledge that could prove valuable in the future.
The skills and knowledge that you bring on board when you hire an external PPC agency can often filter through to the rest of your business. Make sure that you have your key marketing personnel watching what’s going on closely.
Working with a PPC agency is not completely without risks or challenges. For one thing, you will need to be able to clearly define your goals to the marketing agency. If you aren’t able to convey to them what it is that you want to achieve, you are likely to end up with a very generic and mundane campaign. Some businesses prefer to work with local PPC agencies, finding that they tend to have an easier time communicating with one another. For example, if the owner of a business in Atlanta is running an online campaign to support a physical retail store, working with a PPC company Atlanta, such as this PPC agency Atlanta, will be more effective than outsourcing to an agency that doesn’t know the area.
Which Option to Choose?
As is always the case in marketing, your available budget will play a big role in determining which option is the right one for your business. If you are working on a small budget, an agency will probably be overkill. More than anything, without the necessary funds to pay them, you will find it hard to get what you need out of the agency.
Hiring a single individual won’t give you access to the same range of skills as a marketing agency. However, you will then have access to those skills on your team if and when you need them in the future.
If, however, you have a large marketing budget to use, you should make the most of it! Hiring a full-scale PPC agency will allow you to run the campaign of your dreams. Not only will you be able to maximize the efficiency and value of your campaign, but you will have the opportunity to demonstrate to your team how PPC marketing should be conducted.
PPC is an important part of many business’ online marketing strategies today. If you don’t have a dedicated PPC manager on your team, you will want to bring one aboard for your next campaign. Whether this is an individual or an agency will largely come down to your available budget.