We've recently engaged Software Promotions (SoftwarePromotions.com), who were recommended to us by Patrick (patio11).
Just getting started with them, but so far we've been really impressed.
Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#12I don't have any experience with them but Trada's model seems attractive. They might be worth a look. www.trada.com
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Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#13I'm the partner and co-founder a PPC Agency. The right way is to do it yourself first. But make sure you have conversion tracking, so that you know the basic metrics. For instance, if you are doing PPC for sign-ups, how much are you paying per sign-up. Then you try to improve it, by either cut Cost per acquisition (CPA), and/or increase your volume of acquisitions. Increase volume of acquisition is always harder. Mos…
Please forgive me if this is taking things OT, but if you want to go down the "do it yourself" route but are new to this area, what would be an efficient way to quickly grok the space?
I'm aware there is a plethora of PPC communities and blog posts, but if you are a smart geek who just wants to ramp up efficiently is there a book/ebook/concise set of posts that you(/others) would recommend that covers the basics and moves through to the tips, tricks, optimizations, etc stage?
Thanks
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#14If you're a startup, don't use an agency. Trust me. Hire someone internally to manage your PPC campaigns, it will be cheaper and they will do a better job. You know your customers better than anyone. You know what their interests and demographics are, what they're searching for, where they go online. Use this information to inform your campaigns, and hire someone to worry about the technical details like optimization…
So, how would you go about finding someone internally to do this? (where, what experience?) Could someone part-time do it?
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#15I'm an engineer that has been working for > 8 years with advertising or advertising-related companies. This summer I co-founded AdGrok to help people do their own internet marketing.
I agree with what others have said, and will throw a couple more assertions into the mix:
* Start by managing this yourself, or hire someone internally to do it. Agencies (and trada, unless you do cost-per-conversion) aren't necessarily incentivized to spend your money wisely.
* AdWords isn't a magic bullet, and depending on the vertical, can be absurdly competitive. Running Facebook ads, display ads for relevent publishers, and retargeting should be on your marketing radar as well.
* Don't "set and forget" your AdWords campaign. You won't get it right the first time. You'll be surprised by what text ads win and which ones lose. You'll need to "negatively target" certain words, and if you do display ads, really watch what placements work and what don't. None of this is possible without experimentation.
* Don't send all your traffic to your home page. Specific targeting for segments of your customer base will do much better than general messages that don't speak directly to anyone.
* Don't spend money on AdWords without knowing where your money is going. Set up conversion tracking.
AdGrok's beta program is free right now (in exchange for feedback on what works for you, and what doesn't), so you can't beat the price. We'd be happy to help get you started! Just go to beta.adgrok.com say you're from HN.
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#16Another option is to set up an affiliate program and pay for leads / sales. That way people will start on the one hand to create landingpages or put your ads on some pages, but they will also try to earn money by bidding on keywords and sending traffic to your site. If you are sneaky you can track the sources and adwords with a tracking software like google analytics to find out which keywords are working well and th…
How do you find affiliates once you create an affiliate program?
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#17I'm the partner and co-founder a PPC Agency. The right way is to do it yourself first. But make sure you have conversion tracking, so that you know the basic metrics. For instance, if you are doing PPC for sign-ups, how much are you paying per sign-up. Then you try to improve it, by either cut Cost per acquisition (CPA), and/or increase your volume of acquisitions. Increase volume of acquisition is always harder. Mos…
Please forgive me if this is taking things OT, but if you want to go down the "do it yourself" route but are new to this area, what would be an efficient way to quickly grok the space? I'm aware there is a plethora of PPC communities and blog posts, but if you are a smart geek who just wants to ramp up efficiently is there a book/ebook/concise set of posts that you(/others) would recommend that covers the basics and…
OMG, are you throwing me a softball here, what with the "grok" reference?
I just posted a longish reply to the root post with some general guidance, but I also just wrote http://adgrok.com/getting-started last week to help total newbies get going.
What we're hoping to build with AdGrok (and admittedly, we're not completely there yet) is a tool that lets you act like an "AdWords Certified Professional" without all the pain and suffering of studying for those tests.
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#18If you're a startup, don't use an agency. Trust me. Hire someone internally to manage your PPC campaigns, it will be cheaper and they will do a better job. You know your customers better than anyone. You know what their interests and demographics are, what they're searching for, where they go online. Use this information to inform your campaigns, and hire someone to worry about the technical details like optimization…
This is the OP here. Let me say first that this is all great advice. I used to work at an advertising agency, and I don't necessarily agree with your statement of a "profound misalignment of incentives" considering that my colleagues at the agency and others under the parent company umbrella did look for performance in their campaigns so it did have a positive result on what they were looking for.
Some more color into our situation:
- we've successfully put in place the core metrics for PPC and set up conversion tracking
- we're utilizing the Analytics API to track custom goals, in our case, things like email signups or purchases
- we've tested different landing pages, choosing one that had 300x better conversion rate but I feel there's still more room to improve
- we've run Facebook Ads, AdWords and Display on Google's Content Network and search has been the most effective at getting what we need (emails)
From my POV: I've done it myself and can continue to teach myself, but there are too many moving parts (from what I can see) for me to successfully lower our CPA and manage on a day to day basis while running the company effectively and efficiently
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#19I'm the partner and co-founder a PPC Agency. The right way is to do it yourself first. But make sure you have conversion tracking, so that you know the basic metrics. For instance, if you are doing PPC for sign-ups, how much are you paying per sign-up. Then you try to improve it, by either cut Cost per acquisition (CPA), and/or increase your volume of acquisitions. Increase volume of acquisition is always harder. Mos…
We've done it in house, got the core metrics, improved upon the CPA and now need to take it to the next level - particularly, around your point of "profitable ROI" on our advertising spend.
I couldn't find your email address in your profile. Mind connecting off HN? My email is HN handle at gmail dot com
Re: Ask HN: What agencies would you recommend to manage PPC and AdWords?
#20I'm an engineer that has been working for > 8 years with advertising or advertising-related companies. This summer I co-founded AdGrok to help people do their own internet marketing. I agree with what others have said, and will throw a couple more assertions into the mix: * Start by managing this yourself, or hire someone internally to do it. Agencies (and trada, unless you do cost-per-conversion) aren't necessarily…
no place to point out a referral source