Should You Hire a Pay Per Click Advertising Agency? [Checklist]

Whether you do it yourself or hire out, you should be doing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to assist in driving traffic, leads, and sales to your website. 

Paid Google advertising is an important component of a robust inbound marketing strategy. Like most other components, it requires in-depth research, experience, and experimentation to get right. Unlike other components, you're directly paying for the results that you get.

Pay-per-click advertising works exactly as its name implies: you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. This brings up a host of problems that directly affect your ROI. For instance, if you choose your target audience poorly, people will be seeing your ads, clicking them, and taking no further action. You're shelling out a bunch of money for nothing in return.

On the other hand, if you target your audience correctly, each click should be relevant and valuable for both you and your audience.  There's a much higher chance that they'll convert, which ideally means more leads and sales.

When we ask the question "Should you be doing PPC advertising?" what we're really asking is "Are you committed to doing what it takes to create a successful PPC campaign?" If you're not willing to do the work, consider hiring an experienced pay per click advertising agency to do it for you.

Should You Do Your Own PPC or Hire a Pay Per Click Advertising Agency?

PPC advertising is a GREAT idea for you if:

• You want to supplement your SEO's slow & steady results with quick, immediate traffic. PPC works to bring visitors to your website immediately, making it a great choice for new businesses, new websites, or new strategy implementation.
  
  
• You have seasonal or timely products or services to promote. When your products or services change over time, or sudden market changes require a shift in focus, PPC can help you get the word out fast.
  
  
• You want to A/B test your content or CTAs. A/B testing uses two different versions of a landing page, CTA, content offer, or other piece of content to evaluate which is more effective. PPC is a quick, easy way to do A/B testing with metrics and analytics built in.
  
  
• You want to increase conversions on a particular page or offer. You might have a really great content offer that you'd like to promote, or you want to get more eyes on your RFQ form. Since those aren't the types of pages people usually see in organic search, PPC can help you promote them.
  
  
• You want to try retargeting or remarketing. Retargeting is a marketing technique that targets people who have already visited your site. It works under the assumption that people who have visited your site before are somewhat interested in your product, and therefore a good audience to serve ads to.
  
  
• You want to do research on keywords, CTAs, or content. As with A/B testing, PPC's quick results are a great platform for research and experimentation. You can even experiment with things that ultimately have nothing to do with PPC - like, whether people respond better to "you" or "me" language (e.g. Download Your eBook vs. Download My eBook). That information will influence the language of all your other inbound tactics.
  
  
• You understand that PPC cannot stand on its own and bring great results. PPC works best and provides the greatest ROI when combined with SEO, social media, content marketing, landing pages, and other inbound marketing strategies. 

If you identify with most of these qualifiers, PPC could be a great boon for your company.

However, we mentioned before that PPC can go wrong very easily and quickly. That's why if you identify with any of the issues below, that's a sign you should hire an expert pay per click advertising agency rather than attempt it yourself.

You need a pay per click advertising agency if:

• You won't be tracking or checking on your campaigns consistently. Whether it's due to lack of money, time, or you're simply not interested, you won't be paying close attention to your campaigns. PPC needs constant babying, so if you don't want to put in the effort, hire out.
  
  
• Mobile is not on your list of priorities. Mobile search and mobile users are extremely valuable to any well-rounded PPC campaign. If you don't know how to optimize for mobile, you need to bring in an expert.
  
  
• You're unfamiliar with quality score and how to optimize for it. Quality score affects ad placement and how much you pay per click. If your ads aren't optimized for quality score, they won't be served as often and you'll pay more for clicks.
  
  
• You don't/can't/won't do in-depth research on keywords. The keywords you choose are incredibly relevant to cost per click. If you don't do any research and prefer to throw keywords at the wall to see what sticks, you're guaranteed to overpay for PPC.
  
  
• You don't want to create personalized landing pages for each ad. Visitors are most likely to convert when landing pages match the ad they clicked on. The less work THEY have to do, the happier they are. If you're currently sending every visitor to your homepage, you're wasting money.
  
  
• You don't have the time or motivation to follow up with the leads you do get. A lead not nurtured is a sale lost. If you're not nurturing leads once they convert, you've been losing out on great opportunities. A high-quality pay per click advertising agency will understand lead nurturing, workflows, and follow ups.
  
  
• You plan on using PPC on its own, rather than as a component of a fully realized inbound marketing strategy. PPC is OK on its own, but it really shines when used in tandem with SEO, social media, and other inbound tactics. If you don't have a full inbound marketing campaign in place, you may want to look into that before investing in PPC.

The PPC Advertising Agency You Deserve

A quality PPC agency will be able to work within your budget to produce great results. They'll understand all the best practices and implement a personalized campaign to get the most bang for your buck. 

Like we said before, if you don't know what you're doing in the realm of PPC, it's easy to throw your money into the void with no response. You can slog through the process of trial-and-error yourself, or, if you're more interested in getting results than struggling in the name of self-sufficiency, you can find yourself a first-class PPC agency who will get the job done.

Good luck!