Independent PPC Management vs. Google Representative
If you’ve ever started your own Google AdWords campaign, you know that within a few days you’ll get a call from Google themselves. The Google representative will likely offer to manage your AdWords campaign for you. They’ll tell you that they’ll optimize it and they’ll help set it up. Best of all, it won’t cost you anything.
Sounds good right?
Well… Maybe. The throwdown match is about to begin! Let’s take a closer look at whether you should let Google manage your AdWords campaign. Oh, and this applies for Bing Ads too.
What’s in it for Your Business?
The fact that Google will perform this management service for free is a pretty powerful draw. You’ll get the services of (what we can only assume is) a professional AdWords manager. They’ll put in some work to set up your campaign and target a few keywords you suggest. They’ll set it up according to your budget and they’ll probably even keep an occasional eye on the account.
What’s in it for Google?
This is the question you really should be asking yourself: “What’s in it for Google?” Any time anyone offers something for free, you can bet it isn’t. Follow the money.
Basically, Google gets your advertising dollars. And they want to pull as much money out of you as they can.
How this Dynamic Plays Out
Here’s where things start to go wrong. The primary objective of Google is to increase it’s AdWords sales as much as possible. It’s not to help your business perform the best it can in AdWords. Your motivations don’t really align.
Now, don’t get me wrong. They’re pretty close. Obviously, if Google doesn’t manage your account performance “well enough” you’re going to stop using their service. But, in the end, they’re not trying to optimize your account performance. They’re trying to optimize your account spending.
Hiring an Independent AdWords Manager
Independent AdWords managers are motivated differently. They will be looking out for your campaign performance first within the budget you’ve given them. This is because your performance is more important to them than your spending. An experienced independent AdWords campaign manager is hired by you to look out for your best interests.
Additionally, there’s a lot of thought and time that goes into setting up a successful AdWords campaign. It’s a lot of subtle (and sometimes major) adjustments to find the best places to spend your PPC advertising budget. You’ll want someone who is attentive to your account and continuously improves your situation. A good AdWords account manager will even help push you to improve your landing pages and linked content. In other words, they want to improve your lead generation or sales… Not just your click through rate.
Even more, a good AdWords manager will help you properly understand the data you are collecting in your account. Did you know you can learn a lot about your potential customers by looking at their search preferences and AdWords metrics? This is information available to you, but could be very hard to interpret if you don’t spend a lot of time in AdWords.
Google Representative vs. Independent AdWords Manager
Of course, the downside of hiring independent is that you will have to budget for their management fee. However, I would suggest that in the long run it is more cost effective to use an independent AdWords manager. The independent AdWords manager can make improvements to your account that will ultimately lead to more business for you. They’ll get more out of your ad spend than the Google representative. Simply because they’re motivated to work for you.
Disagree? What do you think? Independent or Google Rep? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
PS – In full disclosure, PPC and AdWords campaign management is something devEdge Internet Marketing performs for our clients. We have an excellent track record and would be happy to talk more with you about it.
