The marketing world can be a dark place, full of people who care little about your success and a lot about their own profit.

It’s no surprise that we see company after company that’s been burned by crappy PPC managers. From one train wreck to the next, business owners hop around hoping to find someone who can make it work from them but seldom can find what they need.

Why are there so many bad PPC managers in the marketing world?

Anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can post up at Starbucks and claim they’re the best. And learning Google Adwords management is also relatively easy with the wealth of material out there.

With no barriers to entry or regulating body – there’s essentially nothing stopping anyone from doing this. It is incredibly easy to half-ass a pay per click campaign by setting it and forgetting it, which, sadly many businesses let their managers get away with.

But the real beauty of online advertising is that it only gets better after the first month because of optimization through data.

If you own a business, there is little chance that you have time to learn how Google’s advertising platform works, and even less likely is that you have time to manage it daily. But just about every business that falls into some industry can tremendously benefit from a properly managed online advertising campaign in the form of leads, traffic, and awareness.

How can I tell if my PPC manager is ripping me off?

The good news is that this is quite easy. There are some tell-tale signs that should tip you off immediately.

Do you have a dashboard from which you can see your PPC campaign details – including conversion numbers? Do you get a recurring report? When you want to talk, does your PPC manager communicate directly with you? Are your landing pages converting the traffic coming in? Is your PPC manager driving traffic to the right places? Do you know if there is an optimization strategy in place, such as A/B testing?

If you can’t say yes to one or more of these questions you may be getting ripped off.

You might also want to audit the following question:

How much are you paying?

The market standard is to pay your manager 20% on top of what the media cost is. So, if you pay $1000 a month for ads, your manager would be getting $200 on top. If you’re paying less than 20% you may be getting a competitive rate but probably won’t be getting much done for that little.

Anything over that 20% is a premium price and you should be aware that unless the service is perfection – you’re probably being ripped off.

How can I tell if a PPC manager is legitimate?

From the start – there are some very easy ways to screen people to see if they’re legit.

Did they find you, or did you research and choose them?

If you got spammed and hammered by someone to get you to sign on the dotted line, big surprise, they’re probably highly sales focused rather than customer service focused.

As a general rule, agencies or contractors that use highly impersonal marketing strategies to get your business will run your campaigns the same way.

Do they have a Google Partner Badge?

Although this is not as significant as is used to be, it at least means there is one person on the team with AdWords certification, they are actively managing a sizeable AdWords campaign, and are over 2 months old.

At the very least this means they aren’t complete snake oil sellers. It alone though is not enough, though.

Do they really want to get to know your business?

Companies that throw you through a system and don’t get to know your business don’t care about your long-term success. The good ones will always ask questions about your industry, audience, competitors, and all about your product or service.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot of ongoing work that should go into running a health PPC campaign, like keyword research, competitor monitoring and data gathering, and general data optimization.

As an AdWords certified individual myself, I greatly respect PPC managers that do it full time because paid online advertising is a scientific, full-time job. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

This scientific form of advertising is incredibly easy to measure, thus, making it easy to see if you’re either failing or succeeding.

So, check in with your PPC manager and see if he’s working to get you the success you deserve.

Interested in what we have to say? See more about how we manage PPC here.