We hear it time and time again from our clients: “I tried PPC, but it didn’t work – it was just a waste of money!”

This is a shame, because we know it DOES work. In fact PPC can start generating leads and sales within hours. The problem is that the top PPC advertising platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Adwords tend to lead business owners to believe that it is easy – and better – to manage their own campaigns personally.

Yes, it certainly is possible for anyone to build and manage a PPC campaign, BUT (and it’s a big “but”!) it takes an awful lot of time, experience and constant tinkering to get it right and start seeing that return on investment. If you’re a plumber, electrician, hairstylist, accountant or any one of a myriad of small business owners or solopreneurs who need to pull in more punters in your local area, do you have the time to devote to learning the ins and outs of PPC? Do you have money to spare in your marketing budget for making costly mistakes while you “learn on the job” when it comes to running your PPC campaign?

There are so many pitfalls to beware of when it comes to PPC, from overpaying for a bad ad position to targeting keywords that are not as spot on as they appear to be.

Not to put too fine a point on it, there are some very good reasons why you should stick to your day job, and put your PPC campaigns into the hands of experts who not only have the right analytical tools for the job, but also a wealth of experience and creative know-how.

Here are some good reasons why running PPC campaigns yourself is risky:

• Social and search platforms don’t run their advertising channels out of charity, to give you a voice – they are motivated by money. Google Adwords, for example, is the search giant’s top revenue source, so they want you to spend as much money as possible. That means that although they ostensibly offer plenty of features and support to get your ads well targeted, they don’t really care if you are getting the biggest bang for your buck. An expert agency, however, will be keen to keep your business, and therefore do their utmost to maximise the amount of traffic you get at a lower cost than Google or Facebook will recommend. Experienced PPC managers know how to avoid Google’s tricks!
• Creating punchy, engaging effective adverts and landing pages is not only an art, but also a science. Both ads and landing pages need to be optimised so that your quality score and clickthrough rate will put you in the top spot, without having to bid more than your competitors. This sort of skill only comes with design qualifications, copywriting experience and technical knowledge of SEO. When you need to target customers in a hurry, there isn’t time to spare for this steep learning curve.
• Where many do-it-yourself PPC campaigners fall down most is on the quality of their keyword research. This is essential groundwork, and if you get it wrong you will waste money. PPC experts have learned to think outside the box and determine keywords that will not only be specifically targeting the right audience, but also be more cost effective because they won’t have so much competition in the marketplace.
• PPC advertising gets more complicated all the time. There are so many campaign switches and settings to play around with that you could get overwhelmed, especially if you are not tracking results appropriately. A PPC expert who works on campaigns every day will know exactly what to tweak, when and how, with instant beneficial results.

Here at Dentons Digital our experts take the time to get to know you and your business, build an optimised campaign, then take care of all the essential elements before your campaign goes live, potentially saving you a great deal of money in non-converting clicks. We’ll keep you up to date with every aspect as the campaign progresses, and share our reasoning with each adjustment, so you can rest assured you won’t feel left out of the loop.

If you have an existing PPC campaign in operation that is not performing as you would wish, have a chat to us. We’ll be able to optimise it for better results, leaving you to get on with dealing with all those new customers who will be clicking on your landing page!