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!
|
|
