When it comes to online marketing, I see and hear about way too many companies that don't take the paid traffic channel seriously enough. They either don't do it (huge mistake), or they do a less-than-professional job of it. Maybe they do it in-house. Or, they have an agency do it, but one that doesn't have a dedicated paid traffic specialist. While Google, Bing and others continuously refine their systems to make campaign management "easier" than ever, many changes that are made to make management "easier" come at the sacrifice of ROI. Also, there are strategies that professionals use that others simply won't know because of lack of knowledge and experience.

From my experience, that all adds up to it being very close to 100% of the time that the money wasted from shoddy account management more than exceeds any management fees that a professional account manager would charge.













Not only that, but if you let a pro handle it, you save time and energy and can focus on improving other aspects of your business. So, how do you know if you've set the bar high enough for choosing a PPC manager? Well, you should have a sense if someone is living and breathing PPC, but here are some things you never want to hear a PPC manager say.

Bad PPC Thoughts...

"I check it every few months to make sure things are still running ok."

"No, I don't have brand keyword campaigns. You already rank #1 organically for them."

"So, what keywords do you like?"

"I just send everyone to the homepage. That way they can shop for whatever they want on the site when they get there."

"I control the daily budget with the budget tool."

"I only bid on terms that cost under 50 cents."

"What are match types?"

"What are negative keywords?"

"I bid so I can be #1 for your main keywords. Being #1 is the best, right?"

"I bid what you can afford."

"I use automatic bidding because Google says it's the best option and I'll get the most clicks for the budget."

"Isn't that great how Google gives all those suggestions for your account?"

"I (fill in the blank) 'cause Google said so."

"I have no idea how much each visitor to the site is worth to the company."

"I don't spend much time on crafting ads. I mean, they're only a couple simple lines, right?"

"What's AdWords Editor?"

"I really don't have time to test."

"When I test ads, I keep the one that earns the highest click-through rate."

"I use conversion rate as my success metric for all the keywords."

"If a keyword doesn't convert, I delete it."

"I just run the Search and Display Networks in the same campaign."

"I have a few campaigns with a few ad groups in each campaign."

"Mostly, our ads communicate to the searcher what's great about you."

"We just use search ads for the display network too. We wrote good ones that should work anywhere."

"I don't look at the competition too much. I just focus on making you the best."

(For marketing executives) "We don't need a professional. We can just do it ourselves because we want control over our messaging."

Thanks to Stoney for his contributions!