Why A PPC Agency Beats An In-House PPC Account Manager

Things may be going well or going badly but either way you’ve decided you cannot run the company or department AND do your Pay Per Click Management yourself. Congratulations! It’s a big step as outsourcing anything is always a hard decision since we are mostly convinced in our own abilities to be the best at everything. It may even be true, but as there are only 24 hours in the day, at some point we have got to start trusting someone else to help us get the job done.

So you start comparing ppc management agencies, maybe even make some calls and talk to a few agencies. It all looks sweet, but then the questions form at the back of your mind; You think will they understand my business? Will they commit enough time to get things done right? Will I be able to afford them, with the Google Advertising costs already sky high? You start overthinking it decide for what you expect you’ll pay a PPC agency you could look to advertise for someone to work in your office full or part time. They will only be focused on your business and YOU will have a full control, so nothing really changes. You congratulate yourself on the great idea, except.. it isn’t and here’s why:

COST. It starts from the moment you call your recruitment agent. In the “best case” scenario, they will charge you 15% of your employee’s first year’s salary with a minimum fee of around £1,500-£2,000. Need more than one person? Multiply that. In reality the only way to justify having a dedicated person or a mini team solely focused on PPC in-house is a Google Adwords budget of around £100,000 assuming average margins and ROI’s. Also you then have to think about someone covering holidays and sickness as each person will probably only work 46 weeks per year so if you have one staff member who’s goign to cover the other 6 weeks per year?

Another thing to consider is having a person capable of taking the position over, should your key PPC employee decide to leave for a competitor, which is more common than you think in the PPC  sector, (Linkedin is trawled mercilessly by recruiters!). Also, don’t forget that training a new recruit falls under cost as well. This wouldn’t be an issue with an agency. If your company isn’t spending that much currently, having a dedicated in-house PPC expert is a money burner. If you realise that after bringing them on board, you are facing another problem: redundancy, and that’s never a pleasant chat.

EXPERTISE. Just because you have someone in-house, doesn’t mean he or she is a wizard that can solve all your problems. Your clicks are there, but the conversion rate may not be so great, what do they suggest about on site factors? They don’t know because this is of course not their job, you hired a PPC account manger and one that fitted your meagre budget. Even if they wanted to help you, their expertise is in PPC. Yup, they did write in their CV they know how to optimise websites. They can tell the difference between a call to action button and a testimonial but do the know how to run A/B and multivariate testing on the things that really matter? Probably not but what else did you expect? Guys that do have expertise like this don’t pigeon-hole themselves at smaller companies and work alone, they work at big companies or agencies in teams where they continue to expand their skill sets.

VARIETY. Having an agency dealing with your PPC gives you a team of people with different ideas and varied experience in many sectors. There is never a shortage of ways to deal with one problem, something you could not expect from a one man band or a smaller team. Also, the fact there is often more than just the PPC side to the agency (as most do web design, landing page optimisations, banner design, remarketing and SEO), allows you for approaching a challenge from many different angles all of which help to increase conversion. Your agency PPC manager, unlike your in-house staff, has the ability to work on various accounts every week therefore he/she won’t suffer with monotony and boredom, and try to look busy when in fact the account would benefit from just leaving to run for a few days without constant changes so data can accumulate then more informed decisions made; the reverse often leads to simple, yet costly mistakes due to trying to take meaning from too small a data set.

ACCURACY. PPC mistakes can be painful and very expensive. Especially when they happen on a Friday afternoon and are being left over the weekend. A good PPC Management agency is less likely to make a serious error than your in-house staff because they systems and  a team in place, where an account manager’s work is checked by a senior account manger. What’s more, if an expensive mistake is made, you can usually work something out with the agency to make that good – something you cannot expect from your employees.

SPEED. Agencies usually have vast technical resources at their disposal and what would take your in-house team a week an agency can often do in a day or two using the most advanced PPC software to help create large campaigns. Unlike an in-house team, agencies can easily accommodate a seasonal increase of activity and traffic to your site without acquiring new employees and increasing your cost. It’s an important fact if your business is season-dependent.

INSIGHT. A good service provider will make sure their team knows all the ins and outs of their trade and undergoes regular training to keep their knowledge up to date. The advertising world changes daily and the worst thing you can do to your business in this regard is to stay in the dark ages. Not keeping your hand on the pulse regarding interface, feature changes and T&Cs of the search providers like Google or Bing can get you in expensive trouble.

So an Agency PPC bill of say £2,500 for a very large account each month may seem expensive compared to a wage bill of say £1,8000 for an in-house ppc account manger but in reality that extra £700 per month buys six weeks extra work and a wealth of knowledge, experience, resources and capability, not forgetting recruitment fees, notice periods, replacement woes and stress; it’s not a like for like comparison by any means so ensure you fully calculate the pros and cons of an in-house V and agency ppc manager before deciding.