When to Take PPC Into Your Own Hands
Jul 2nd, 2007 by msdanielle
My entrepreneurial friends and I are getting to “that age” where we’re either going to make it or break it in our own business ventures soon or give up and surrender to “the man.” Personally, I don’t want to work for the man, or the woman, for that matter — I want to work for myself. It’s just how I’ve always been. Therefore, I understand the entrepreneurial mentality and what it takes to create something from nothing. I also understand how difficult it can be to decide when to take risks and do things myself, versus mitigating the risk and delegating the duties to someone better qualified.
One of my good friends, who is a small business owner, told me a few days ago that he wanted to start a marketing company to generate leads online for his brick and mortar business which concentrates on financial lending. Not knowing about the PPC industry, he’s considering advertising via Yahoo! Search Marketing [YSM]. Granted, YSM yields high quality traffic with great potential for lead generation, but a small business owner with no prior experience in internet marketing or online advertising could have a considerable amount of difficulty navigating their system, optimizing campaigns, maintaining conversion levels, and maximizing ROI.
So when do you decide to take PPC into your own hands?
In this case, I offered my services to my friend, who may or may not have taken me seriously, and would do him the favor of maintaining his campaigns for a very small stipend fee for my time. It’s not that I don’t feel he can learn PPC management, but with the limited amount of available time he has, combined with the immediate time table in which he potentially wants to launch, it would be easiest and wisest to hire a PPC specialist to carry out his plans.
PPC is not very difficult to learn if one is internet savvy, can learn about the industry and conduct the proper market research, and spend ample amounts of time testing. In the past year, I’ve learned a lot about site development, optimization, advertising, marketing, etc, which I’ll be able to apply to virtually any industry. PPC management is a valuable skill that anyone with interest can learn, but not all business owners have the time to invest in what I believe is a truly specialized field. Things to think about when considering launching your own PPC campaigns are:
- How much time will you give yourself to learn PPC management?
- How quickly do you plan on advertising?
- How much time will you need to spend per week managing these campaigns, and do you have this much time to spare?
- How well do you understand your products and your competition?
- What keywords are you competing for?
- What is your monthly budget? And your projected ROI?
- What is the benefit of managing PPC yourself versus hiring a specialist? And vice versa?
- What is your maximum CPA (cost-per-acquisition) spend per lead?
- How will you consciously and successfully avoid wasting ad dollars?
These are just a few of the things to weigh when considering adding internet advertising into your traditional business plan. My best advice on when to take PPC into your own hands is when you are sure you have the available time to invest in learning PPC, and are realistic to the fact that PPC is its own specialized field. But thinking that you can just spontaneously “do” online advertising and put up some campaigns isn’t the best strategy. It’s like jumping into a rushing river without a life vest. Bye bye ad money…
If you decide to hire a PPC specialist, some places you might want to look for quotes are:
Just remember that online advertising is just like any other advertising venture, meaning you’ll have to spend money to make money. It’s your choice whether the money spent will be invested in your own time or someone else’s.
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As the owner of two businesses, one of the things that I have learned through much trial and error is… A man has got to know his limitations. Always, always, always hire an expert to handle things that you don’t fully understand. It will cost you less money in the long run.
I consider PPC to be one of those things. We wasted a lot of money attempting to run our own PPC campaigns in a highly competitive market because we thought we knew what we were doing.
hi david, thanks for your feedback. i was hoping other people could shed some light into their experiences with ppc. your comments remind me of those who resist stopping and asking for directions… sometimes you just have to ask for help. but even still, those of us who do ppc everyday have to stop and ask for help too. it’s all trial and error
Hello miss thang,
come visit me, i would be happy to have u as a guest.
ppc=paid per click! haha! i know one thing! j/k anyways, i look forward to reading your blog and hearing about your ppc-tales. they are always comforting before bedtime
I feel Google and Yahoo are trying their level best to let owner control everything. Incourse of time the UI, and PPC services would be so user friendly that there would be no expert need, just like a WIZARD…
Becareful people.. these service guys want to eliminate the middle experts… Researches would be as easy as searches, Loans would be easy as an e-mail…
This is the electronic Era…
But still experts are experts….
An interesting post. I always assumed that PPC should be very quick to learn. When our new marketing manager joined, I asked her to learn ppc and start running our campaign. I assumed it will take about couple of weeks to get everything ready. Well, a month later, I do think we are almost ready. I do think the main reason small business owners choose to handle PPC themselves because of budget issues. Don’t you think?
@jennifer - i definitely want to come visit you, i’ve never been to ny. thanks for all your help…gonna miss you here
@santosh - i understand what you’re saying. but i’m not sure PPC will ever be so easy to where anyone can tinker with it once and put their campaigns on auto pilot. the software may become more advanced but i’m not sure that equals “easier.” but i know what you mean about “experts are experts.” the experts can now be anyone who takes the time to learn the systems.
@khalid - i hope everything goes well with your new advertising venture. it does only take days to get everything set up, but the trial period is those crucial days after the launch. hiring a marketing manager to learn PPC can also be a good idea since you now have a dedicated team member to monitor your ad performance. and yes i do agree that there may be small business owners who delve into PPC themselves because they sense the potential in advertising online, and could save money by not outsourcing…but they have to be able to come out with a positive ROI. anyone can do PPC, it’s not impossible, but you have to know your objectives and how not to lose a lot of money (more money than if you were to hire an expert who knows the systems well, and is giving you a positive ROI)
Ok, you said to stop and ask questions. I have been fiddling around on technorati for weeks, can’t figure out how to get my links up. How do I link to your site on technorati, besides putting everything under favorites. I want a link from my blog to the sites that I most enjoy. Please help.
I’ve heard a lot about unexperienced business folks trying to work out PPC campaigns for themselves. The stories can get pretty interesting…
Sometimes it’s better to simply hire someone that knows what they’re doing so long as they’re not charging a million dollars an hour (I’ve seen people charge up to $1000 p/hour, seriously).
That kind of money can be hard for a small business to compete with major corporations.
[…] Are you thinking of running a PPC campaign? Should you do it yourself? Danielle answers when you decide to take PPC into your own hands. […]