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How to Choose PPC Consultants

Executive Summary

Choosing a great PPC firm is like choosing any service: Look at years-in-business, the client list, references, and proof of results.

Still, consider a promising young firm, not only well-established firms like DISC. Despite the importance of a firm's track record, we at DISC know that there are and will be many eager and talented people just starting out who have done their homework. This industry needs more such people, and we encourage you to give newcomers a chance.

For options and pricing, please see the yellow table at the bottom of the section on Explanation and Details below.

Explanation and Details

This page and other parts of DISC's site should provide sufficient knowledge to enable you to ask the right questions of your prospective PPC firm. This site is not an SEM information portal such as SearchEngineWatch.com. It does, however, reflect and share the insight that comes from over ten years of research and practice.

In the PPC industry, ROI reports based on line-item PPC referrals, costs, and profits provide a solid measure of success. You should ask to have such ROI reports emailed to you.

It is crucial that you ascertain who within the firm would work on your account. Large firms hire many new people and have constant turnover. One of DISC's very satisfied clients had first engaged the world's largest SEM firm and got no results. That firm's results may typically be good, but obviously the team working on this client was not adequate. Go beyond a prospective firm's sales people -- acquire detailed qualifications and client histories of the individuals who will work on your account, and speak with those individuals.

As in all professional services, if the price seems too good to be true, it is – the firm is very likely cutting corners or is engaging in unethical practices. PPC prices vary more than they do for SEO because of the many options for tracking and refining PPC campaigns. Winning in PPC requires many labor hours by experienced professionals. Any labor quotes under $4000 for an entry-level PPC campaign should alert you that the firm may not perform due diligence. Prices for larger PPC campaigns require detailed evaluation of the PPC firm and the people who would work on your account, as well as rigorous ROI analysis before and after you choose a firm. (Please see our Prices and Procedures page for more information on DISC’s rates.)

Does the firm offer small, objective feasibility studies to determine whether and how much you should invest in PPC? ROI for PPC is more predictable than you might imagine. A PPC firm that is sincerely committed to your ROI will offer you predictive reports about ROI and other benchmarks.

Should you hire an employee rather than contract with a firm? To make this assessment, you need to know the talents and skills required to do the job well. To help you decide whether to outsource and who to hire, we have reprinted CEO Rob Laporte’s article on outsourcing SEM posted on the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) web site. Please see the reprint on our page about SEM Training.

DISC's PPC Prices

DISC offers a PPC campaign assessment, which tells you how much more ROI your existing PPC campaigns can achieve, for between $1200 and $1800.

The minimum cost for DISC to implement a PPC campaign is $4500. That covers initial set-up with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, and a summary report after about one month, and then either your team manages the campaign or you engage DISC in monthly management. While these entry-level campaigns are designed for minimal monthly maintenance, we recommend paying an additional $600 ($5100 total) for DISC to review and adjust the campaign after one or two months, before your team takes over. Often, the success of our PPC campaigns prompts clients to have DISC continue managing the campaign, but your doing whatever is most cost effective for your company will help DISC achieve it relentless goal of maximizing our clients' ROI.

On the higher end, DISC's PPC services include: extensive ROI analysis before and during the campaign; use of MSN and perhaps other second-tier PPC search engines; set-up of third-party PPC management software to report on and semi-automatically adjust bidding tactics; and a precisely planned sequence of monthly refinements, tests, and written reports for at least six months. Prices for this higher end service typically range from $4375 to $8750 per web site for set-up, plus $2100 to $6125 per month for at least six months of optimization. Of course PPC jobs with huge and diverse product lines can entail much more investment and returns.

Click costs are not paid to DISC but we do include them in the initial ROI planning and in our monthly assessments of your total ROI. You pay the search engines directly. PPC firms that are paid by a percentage of your click cost are motivated to increase that cost. DISC manages PPC with all of the line-item rigor of direct marketing. We factor in the the small but significant branding value that can be overlooked in direct marketing metrics.

DISC's proposals and phone conversations will provide more details and answer all your questions.

DISC offers rock-solid proof of our years of superb results in all of our services, in the form of detailed ROI reports delivered to actual clients. We need a signed NDA in most cases, so we offer this proof only to people who have received a proposal and remain interested in DISC’s services.

DISC's estimates in our proposals are firm. We do not exceed them unless you add more work. If you have us do work that is not specified in contracts, it is billed at these hourly rates:

  • $75 per hour for HTML programming
  • $100 per hour for graphic design
  • $175 per hour for database work and non-HTML programming
  • $175 per hour for SEO, PPC, and other SEM
  • $175 per hour for general consulting and training
  • To learn about DISC’s pricing philosophy and practice, and our account management structure and workflow, please see our Prices and Procedures page.

For a list of all of DISC's service prices, without descriptions, please our "Sell Sheet."

Please click here to request a proposal. The RFP form takes less than 3 minutes to fill out. Thank you!

 
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