Get A Life

If you become a PPC expert, then you are ahead of the game!   I fear that the game has evolved and sprouted some sharp knives that one must avoid.  Google is always playing cat-and-mouse with those trying to game the system.  So, once you land on a strategy, it gets reworked by Google.  

You and I, both have very healthy advertising budgets.    In this response, I'm going to champion a good advertising budget and push back on the need to DIY.    I could likely DIY this, but I just don't find it enjoyable.    I used to DIY my pool, but I was terrible at it because it wasn't enjoyable and I was lazy.  My paid experts seem to be lazy too (but that's an angry story for another day!).

For the rest of us, whom are either too lazy or busy to do this (I'm both), there can be value in hiring a competent PPC advertising expert to help you.  This is important, because bad PPC is very costly.   Good PPC is less costly.   Knowing how to tune the the results to get optimal costs takes skill and time, as some of the tuning comes from trial and error, feedback and trial and error some more.    Things that impact your costs are your Google Website score, Google Ratings, the quality of your ads, the quality of your landing pages and how well things that are searched are matched.   Ultimately Google ADs are a computerized bidding war.  My costs for a top advertising position for a given search term are lower with good fundamentals. 

For reference, I'm paying $350/month for managed Google PPC advertising.    Last month, I spent $700 on ads, which resulted in 7,716 impressions (# times one of my ads was presented) with 619 clicks @$1.13/click ($700/619) and 260 calls-to-action $2.69/calls-to-action ($700/260).  (I think the 2nd costing method (actions) is a better way to score success).   Do this wrong and you can easily pay 10X for the clicks and thus get less clicks overall.    I'm not tracking the actual conversions and true cost of conversions (because I don't want to invest that next bit of effort to do so and don't think I need it.  Yes, I'm violating the marketing rule that says you track every conversion).  I get monthly status reports with tons of data that I could review.  Instead, I have my ad manager interpret the results for me and send me a monthly summary in addition to the raw data.  She tells me how we are doing compared to previous months and where we are making changes, etc.   Reading the raw data can be overwhelming and interpreting it correctly more so.   I may spend 15 minutes on the detailed data reports.

With Google, we can specify a targeted ad budget and they reduce the number of impressions shown to stay within or close to your budget.   The real challenge is finding someone who is actually competent with PPC.  There are many who say that they are the best, but are they???   How can you tell?

Secondly, I'm not investing in SEO for my website.   It's hugely expensive to fight your way to the top.  I'm using advertising instead.   Now, there are some SEO principals that you must mind and it wouldn't hurt to have your website cleaned up to at least a C+ grade.  I follow an SEO technical forum, but do not have any desire to be an expert on this topic.  I try to pick up the latest buzz only.    

If someone had some good data, it might be interesting to see if using a hyper-SEO optimized website service such as Kukui @ $1000/month (or more) is more valuable than advertising?   I know nothing about this topic or vendor.

P.S.  Not that long ago, I was only paying $300/month for this SAME service.   They had the audacity to raise my rates!   😡   Later, I followed suit.  😇

Interesting insights on advertising!

Does anyone have experience with Kukui and they effectiveness?