Paid Search Consulting Overview
FlexLeads started as a PPC company and still provides full-service PPC consulting to our clients. Our team of PPC consultants is US-based. We’re available in your time zone and offer a full range of pay per click management services.
Paid advertising works differently than Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You pay the advertising platform each time that a prospective lead clicks on your PPC ad.
Client Paid Search Management
As a PPC consultancy, we specialize in creating paid search campaigns for you – the business owner – whose best prospects are in their local area, including healthcare providers like dentists and optometrists. We also help home and commercial contracting companies get higher conversion rates and more leads within their local area. As a PPC consultant, we take care of specialize in creating paid search campaigns for you – the business owner – whose best prospects are in their local area, including healthcare providers like dentists and optometrists. We also help home and commercial contracting companies get higher conversion rates and more leads within their local area. As a PPC consultant, we take care of PPC advertising for your company. This means the creating and managing PPC campaigns for your business. We work with multiple platforms. Google PPC campaigns are most popular for our local clients. In some cases Facebook, Microsoft Ads, and LinkedIn Ads are rolled out as well.
We only perform PPC consulting activities for one customer within a geographic region. We won’t take on a company that is competing for the same local clients that you are. When you commit to working with us as your PPC consultants, we won’t do PPC management for any of your direct competitors.
You’ll be assigned a dedicated PPC expert. PPC advertising works best when you can develop a long term relationship with your assigned PPC professional. Many agencies shuffle around support staff, we do our best to ensure you have a consistent point of contact.
How Pay Per Click Marketing Can Help Your Business
After learning about your goals, your target audience, and your budget, a PPC expert will design a search engine marketing strategy that can generate leads for your business while at the same time providing a solid return on investment. The process starts with an in depth PPC audit of your current campaign performance. From there, we develop a marketing strategy to help your small business achieve your objectives.
As part of our PPC services, we will set up a PPC campaign for your business.
Below are examples of advertisements that a PPC consultant might use in an ad campaign to generate leads for your business. Note that the primary digital marketing channels we recommend most companies advertise on are the PPC platforms offered by Google, Facebook, and Bing.
Google Ad
When someone conducts a search for a competitive term on Google, advertisements typically appear on the top of the results. Below is a google ad for the search “San Antonio Plastic Surgeons”. With PPC consulting, marketers tend to start with Google as it allows you to reach your target audience at the exact moment they’re searching for your services.
Below is a google ad for the search “San Antonio Plastic Surgeons”. With searches like this, ads tend to dominate the top of the search engine results page on both Google and Bing. You can see that both (A) and (B) are ads for plastic surgery offices in San Antonio.
PC Consultants make sure that your ad shows in the search results
when someone searches for services that you offer.
PPC consultants bid on a relevant “keyword” in your ad account so that your ad only shows for relevant searches. A keyword in PPC actually consists of one or more words, and in this case, was likely very similar to the search phrase “San Antonio plastic surgeons”
The PPC consultant also designs ads to take advantage of all Google ad features. You’ll notice that the first ad (A) takes advantage of Google Ad extensions and is much larger than their competitor (B).
Which ad appears higher up in the search results is somewhat complicated as Google doesn’t provide full access to its ad ranking algorithms. It is dependent on your keyword bid, as well as having a keyword, advertisement, and landing page which are all highly relevant to each other. A PPC consultant will understand how to develop an ad strategy takes this relevance among keyword, ad and landing page into account. This in turn may lead to higher ad positions even if you’re bidding less on keywords than your competitor.
Note that Google AdWords is now called Google Ads. For more information, check out our Google Ads Services.
Facebook Ad
Facebook also offers PPC advertising. Facebook is usually the best choice for social media advertising among the various social platforms. The ad below is for a software company – Clickup – and appears on Facebook. This Facebook ad appears within the user’s news feed.
A PPC Consultant will use demographic data on Facebook to reach
the right audience with targeted ads.
With PPC consulting for Facebook, your business gets to take advantage of deep demographic marketing data. This allows you to dial in on your ideal target audience. Whereas Google is best for user searches, Facebook marketing allows you to target prospects by various factors, including demographics and interests.
Facebook also counts Instagram as part of its platform. If you advertise on Facebook, you can easily also run a PPC campaign on Instagram.
The Landing Page
When a prospective client clicks on a search or display ad, they are taken to a landing page. This is usually a page on your website.
Conversions occur when potential clients arrive on your landing page. Having high conversion rates (% of visitors who make contact / total landing page visits) is essential in order to meet your conversion goals and to have a profitable campaign.
Your landing page must have a conversion-oriented design. It must be carefully crafted to encourage your prospect to take action to reach out to the business. Usually, this lead conversion activity occurs by calling the office or filling out a form.
The copywriting on your landing page must be able to deliver conversions with an intense focus on getting the site visitor to make contact.
Local websites should also follow best practices. For example, it is best practice to have your business phone number in the upper right part of your website. It is also helpful if this number is fixed and doesn’t go away when a user scrolls down the page. This way, when the website visitor is ready to convert by calling you, they can easily find your contact information. Including your business email address also adds trust and can help with conversion rate optimization.
The result is that a prospect becomes a lead and eventually may become a client thanks to you running pay per click ads.
Having a website that converts prospects into clients requires a great design and a solid ongoing management strategy. Websites that are designed to achieve a higher conversion rate are essential. An ongoing conversion rate optimization process is also essential for successful advertising campaigns. As part of our consulting services, we also offer Website as a Service (Waas) solutions that boost conversions by turning prospects into clients.
PPC Lead Generation Services
Most of our clients are small business that operate in a local area. Our typical client needs customers from the area surrounding their business.
We perform PPC lead generation (lead gen) for these clients. Our typical lead generation strategy is to learn the goals of our client to deliver them high quality leads that meet their criteria.
A lead generation campaign is then constructed. The main components of PPC lead gen involve the following:
- Performing Keyword Research – Determine what keywords a quality lead is likely to search for in Google and creating ad campaigns around those keywords
- Create Ad Copy to Entice the User – We will then create ad copy that closely matches the searcher’s intent, and encourage them to click on the ad and be brought to our client’s site
- Create a Landing Page That Converts – Arguably the most important component of the PPC Lead Generation Campaign is creating a landing page that converts paid traffic into a qualified lead for our client
Other PPC Consulting Services
We offer PPC consulting services using a variety of different digital marketing channels. Below are the PPC services that we offer to help your business generate more leads.
Consulting for Search Networks
Your PPC consultant will generate leads by marketing your business on Bing and Google – the two primary search networks. We usually recommend setting up an account for both search networks. PPC using both of these services is great at attracting prospects who have an immediate problem that needs to be solved.
As part of our consulting services, your PPC consultant will come up with the proper campaigns, keywords, and advertisements for your account.
Campaigns – Each PPC Campaign will be logically structured and managed according to the targeting constraints (usually budget, locations and services).
Ads – The job of the ad is to use effective copywriting to get qualified prospects to the appropriate landing page on your website. All ads will use effective ad copywriting to encourage desirable prospects who are a good match to click – while deterring poor prospects from clicking.
Keywords – Our staff of PPC Consultants will use keywords to trigger ads that are relevant to the services you offer.
Consulting for Display Networks
You can also devote your digital marketing ad spend towards display networks on the major search engines. For most customers, this isn’t the best use of their marketing budget – with the exception being those clients who are looking to run branding campaigns.
If you are interested in participating in branding activities on Display Networks, your PPC consultant will design a different marketing campaign for your business on these networks. For example, users on Facebook aren’t generally looking for your services – but you can use PPC to target and capture these users based on demographics and get them into your marketing funnel.
Your PPC consultant will come up with the proper demographic targeting based on your ideal customer. They will also come up with the ad design and bid strategy. Measurement and reporting are also essential to ensure that you’re getting a good return on your marketing dollars.
Pay Per Click Social Media Marketing
Any reputable PPC agency will usually recommend starting with an advertising campaign on the Google Search Network as the first step in your digital marketing efforts. Once your PPC specialist has earned you a positive ROI, we advise moving to the Microsoft Search Network – and then Facebook.
After you’ve exhausted search and network options, your PPC specialist may recommend advertising on Social Media – most notably Facebook and perhaps Twitter. Facebook has amazing demographic targeting options. It is more challenging to get solid results with Twitter, but it is worth experimenting if you have sufficient budget.
Ongoing Campaign Management
As part of our ongoing PPC services, your PPC consultant will create, monitor, optimize, and maintain the search and display network PPC campaigns for your business. Most of our clients are on a recurring monthly plan and receive relevant reporting updates regarding all paid search activities.
PPC Consultant Hourly Engagements
While most of our clients engage in long term month to month engagements, we offer hourly PPC consulting. In these short term engagements, a PPC specialist will conduct an account review and design a PPC strategy for your organization.
As part of this PPC consulting analysis, we will look at your account details, including campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and advertisements. We’ll also take an in-depth look at your website to ensure it is properly designed for conversion.
The result is a plan that will detail the PPC management activities that your organization should be periodically performing to maintain your PPC account’s health.
PPC Pricing
Hourly
For some businesses, we will offer hourly pricing for short term PPC work. Hours will vary based on the work being performed. We don’t publish hourly rates because the rate will also vary based on the needs of the individual client. If you have a short term advertising campaign – or need help revamping an ad campaign, contact us.
Flat Rate vs. Percentage of Ad Spend
Most FlexLeads clients pay a flat fee each month. This fee is determined based on the requirements of the client. We don’t publish flat fee rate information, because each client has different needs. This flat fee is incorporated into our contracts with clients.
Many agencies charge based on a percentage of their client’s ad spend. We dislike this approach as it actually incentivizes the PPC agency to increase client ad spend – even when it may not benefit the client. Our goal is to meet your requirements – which in most cases should be to increase return on investment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a PPC consultant?
PPC consultants are adept at creating and implementing paid search campaigns across one or more advertising platforms with the intent of generating leads (or sales) for their clients. The PPC consultant strategy requires providing a demonstrable return on investment for the customers’ Internet marketing dollars.
What are the Types of PPC?
There are multiple advertising networks offering pay per click advertising services to help your business get your message (or products) in front of a potential customer. Below are a few examples of types of networks that support PPC.
- Search Advertising PPC – Google Ads (Google Search Engine), Microsoft Ads (Bing Search Engine)
- Display Advertising PPC – Google (AdSense), Facebook
- Social Media Advertising PPC – Twitter
- Ecommerce – Amazon
Note that our PPC Management Services include lead generation, not eCommerce. We don’t work with Amazon PPC.
What is a Good Pay Per Click Cost?
This is one of the most common PPC related questions and it is difficult to answer as the price of a click varies based on many factors.
A good cost for a click varies widely by industry, advertising platform, and display network. Even within an industry, advertiser experiences can vary radically. In general, the more competitive an industry is, the higher the cost for a click is going to be.
According to Hubspot, two examples of more expensive PPC costs are for terms like “offshore accident lawyer” ($815/click) and “emergency flood repair” ($265). In these industries, ad spend will obviously be very high. PPC marketing must be highly optimized to bring in only the best possible web traffic to your landing page. You must also be certain that the site visitor experiences a well laid out website that meets their needs and leads to conversions.
A keyword with a higher pay per click cost is not necessarily a bad thing. Conversion rates and return on investment must also be taken into consideration. If you’re achieving a high conversion rate for your more expensive keywords, they may be providing a much better return on investment for your digital marketing ad spend.
For higher CPC keywords, conversion rate optimization becomes even more important. Your PPC Specialist will examine your landing page to ensure your advertising campaigns are supported by websites that have the ability to convert prospects into customers.
Are PPC ads worth it? Are they right for your business?
It depends.
The key is to analyze the data and choose the digital marketing strategy that works best for your business. You obviously need to make a multiple of your marketing expenses. This includes click costs as well as the agency management fee.
People oftentimes wish to compare marketing with PPC vs. marketing with SEO. Our digital marketing agency offers both PPC and SEO services so I’ll highlight some of the differences below.
PPC Marketing – PPC Marketing on search networks is arguably the best way to learn about how your target market searches for your business services. You have the ability to design the ad that the user will see on the search results page.
The downside is that it can be expensive in some industries to get a solid ROI on PPC. Another negative is that when you turn ads off, all the leads you’re getting from paid ads will suddenly stop.
Note that marketing your business running paid ads on social media networks usually doesn’t yield the best results. While experimentation is the key to marketing success, opening up an account on a social site like Twitter is usually one of the last places you should spend your ad budget.
SEO Marketing – The best part about SEO is that it brings free clicks to your website. Unlike paid ad services, when your business appears in the organic search results, you aren’t forced to spend money when someone clicks on your ad.
SEO does have drawbacks, though. Content marketing is a key component involved in SEO. It involves developing a detailed content strategy that uses in depth keyword research and content development. The goal is to publish high quality content on your website in order to rank high up in the search results. This process can be expensive.
Marketing Using Both SEO and PPC
The good news is that you don’t have to choose just one strategy for your business. A common approach is to implement both PPC and SEO campaigns at the same time. PPC will usually yield quick results and provide good data for SEO campaigns. SEO does take longer, but oftentimes the cost per lead ends up being cheaper for your business in the long run, allowing you to taper down your PPC budget.
As part of our consulting services, we offer both PPC campaign management and SEO.
Is FlexLeads a Google Partner or Bing Partner?
No. We are not a Certified Google Partner. We have chosen to no longer participate in Google or Microsoft Partner certification programs, and we have no interest in obtaining Google Premier Partner certification.
Historically, our company has been a certified partner for both Google and Bing. Unfortunately, there has been a trend for digital ad platforms to make partner certification somewhat dependent on the implementation of recommendations that are more likely to increase customer ad spend instead of being focused on generating leads for clients.
FlexLeads represents your business. You are our partner – not the online marketing platforms. We will only implement the best PPC marketing strategy to get your business the highest return on your investment – regardless of the search marketing platforms’ suggestions.
Do I have access to my Google Ads Account?
Many clients come to FlexLeads after working with an agency that completely controlled their Google Ads account. The client was unable to log in to the account, and when the contract was terminated, the client was left with nothing.
With FlexLeads, we use your ad accounts. If needed, we will help to create the ad account, however, you are the owner of all ad accounts that we create and manage.
This same policy applies to all ad accounts that we manage – you are the owner of all ad accounts.
All that we ask is that you make no modifications to your ad accounts while we are in charge of advertising account management.
How do I know PPC is actually working for my business?
Fortunately paid search advertising provides the opportunity for wonderful feedback. We’re able to easily track all of your ad spend, what ads are clicked on and what users are actively searching for.
We also get great insight into what is working. We learn what keywords and ads have a great conversion rate. We can also – with a great degree of accuracy – determine what keyword and ad combination led to a prospect making contact with your business (through phone call or form) to become a lead. The reports also identify seasonal trends as well as budget and expense trends which can help you to properly plan marketing efforts.
We make all of this available to you with our ppc reporting. Reports are available real-time, daily and monthly and contain the KPIs that matter most to your business.