​Hiring an Agency to Manage Adwords Vs. Doing It Yourself

Given that a lot of businesses (Australian and otherwise) have long discovered the benefits of marketing their products and services online, it’s hardly surprising that search engines have also come up with services to aid the online marketing process.

Adwords is an example of such a service. It basically generates a text ad out of the words and/or phrases that characterize a business’ product or service offerings and places them as a sponsored link on a search engine’s results page. These sponsored ads are rigged to make an appearance in a certain order whenever an Internet user would input a related word or phrase into the search engine’s search box.

Adwords are also known as a “pay per click” service, where a company can bid for a premium spot on the sponsored ad listings of a search engine. However, the client would only have to pay the said bid whenever someone actually clicks on the ad that they sponsored. And since a whopping 87% of Internet users normally don’t scan past the first results page, ensuring that a company’s sponsored ads appears there has become a full-time job of sorts.

Thus, the question facing most Australian companies who have availed of the Adwords service is whether to manage it internally or to hire an agency that specializes in such a task.

And while using the Adwords service effectively might seem to be all about being the highest bidder to come out on top of the list of sponsored ads, not all Internet users who click on the said ads necessarily end up as clients. Some of them find that the products and services on the website to be irrelevant to their needs, and thus end up leaving the page without making a purchase. And since Australian companies who use the Adwords service have to pay for each click on their link and not for each new client they gain, the previous scenario isn’t exactly cost-effective.

Still, if the person in charge of overseeing the company’s Adwords is savvy and experienced enough to manipulate the technicalities in favor of converting the PPC (pay-per-click) traffic into actual business, then hiring a PPC management expert or agency wouldn’t be necessary. Going this route would result in the following advantages:

1.)It would save the client a considerable amount of money since contracting a PPC management expert or agency’s services is quite costly.

2.)If a company’s contracted Adwords were managed internally (i.e., within the business or company), then the image presented by the said Adwords would remain consistent with that of the company’s vision.

However, since the skills and the knowledge needed to run Adwords effectively are often acquired through a great deal of study and experience, there are very few people (if at all) among most Australian companies equipped with such. Thus, in cases like this, most companies would outsource the management of their Adwords to a competent PPC agency.

The benefits of doing so, as compared to going it alone, include the following:

1.)Better keywords generated – Legitimate and qualified PPC agencies and experts spend a great deal of time and effort researching keywords and their effectiveness. These PPC management entities are also usually equipped with effective keyword research tools. Such things would be quite costly but not very cost efficient as its usage isn’t in line with most companies’ business processes. So, it’s usually not advisable for an Australian company to purchase one on their own.

2.)Better tracking, especially with regard to the sources of sales generated from PPC campaigns – Since PPC agencies or experts are tasked to track the traffic coming in from the clicks, they are better placed to determine which placements and keywords result in the highest number of actual sales.

3.)More cost-effective navigation of campaign settings – It can often be confusing to decide whether to reach out to one’s target market via Adwords locally, nationally, or globally. The same applies to decisions regarding whether to customize sponsored ads for each setting or not, and whether to partner with affiliate sites or not. Inexperienced handling of the aforementioned settings could lead to an Australian company’s budget quickly being exhausted. Since PPC management entities and experts spend years studying the cost and benefit ratios of each one, hiring them could very well save the business a lot of money in the long run.

4.)Potential insider knowledge on industry competitors – For PPC management agencies who’ve been around for quite some time as well as those who cater specifically to a certain industry, they’re highly likely to have worked with a lot of the said industry’s major players. This gives them an inside scoop on a company’s competitors. In turn, this would make their input on increasing the competitiveness of their client’s Adwords campaign rather invaluable.

5.)Protection against click fraud – Since most search engines make money off clicks generated by an ad, it can be quite easy for some companies to fall prey to bots or other such applications that automatically generate clicks. Unless one is knowledgeable and experienced enough to know which signs to look for, it’s best to leave the monitoring of such things to an expert.

6.)More time to devote to the business’ core activities – Most business owners, those based in Australia and beyond, often have their hands full attending to the needs of their company as it is. Hiring a PPC management agency would not only take costly guesswork out of the equation, but it would also afford the client more time and energy to focus on their business.