Do This Before You Hire a PPC Manager (Episode 523)

0:19Chris Schaeffer: Hello and welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris and today I'm going to answer question from a listener. I do this every now and then. If you'd like to send in a question, you can do so paidsearchpodcast at gmail.com. Today's question came in and it brought up a topic that I don't know if I've ever talked about before. And I'm going to share some really good advice about how you can manage your PPC manager. So more about that in a moment. I'm going to share some advice that I have been first party to for a couple decades now. And I think you're going to find it quite useful. So stick around for that.

1:07Chris Schaeffer: Before I do, I want to tell you about my sponsor. My sponsor makes all of this podcast possible. It is optio.com slash PSP. That is the URL that you can use to try their tool for free. This tool has expanded and grown to something extremely powerful over the years. You're now looking at one of the most powerful PPC manager tools on the platform, period. This has now used the power of AI to create an essential power tool, not just a recommendation tool, not just something that you can build campaigns with, but you can do everything with this. It can help you in unlimited ways, work with your data, check your account performance, audit your ad copy, generate ads based on landing pages, find keywords.

1:55Chris Schaeffer: All this stuff can be done in Optio. It's a wonderful tool you can try for free. This brand new feature is available. You can try it for 28 days for free. If you go to optio.com slash PSP, that's the URL. Just let them know that you heard about it here on the podcast and you'll get that 28 day free trial. Okay, let's get into it. Let's read. Well, I'm technically not going to read the question. I'm going to summarize a question from Matt. So Matt owns and runs his own exterior remodeling company. Okay. And he sent a message to me and he's looking to hire someone to manage the account, but he first wants to know how to do this account management himself.

2:46Chris Schaeffer: And Matt, I know that your question was really geared to, you know, how can you, you know, improve your Google ads account. But I'll tell you, I'm not going to directly answer that question. Instead, I'm going to answer questions you didn't ask that brought up something that I think is something you should really consider based on my experience. Should a business owner learn Google Ads first before hiring someone else to manage their Google Ads account? I think that's the more important question because those of you that are running Google Ads and listening to a podcast like this because you want to know how to run Google Ads better yourself, is it important that you learn Google Ads first before hiring someone should you become knowledgeable in PPC management before engaging with a company to manage your Google Ads and I have worked with hundreds of companies over multiple decades in Google Ads and I can tell you these points that I'm going to share with you is how you manage your PPC agency.

4:03Chris Schaeffer: Whether you're hiring an individual like me, or you're hiring a big agency, this works across the board. This is important on how to interact with your PPC agency, how to interact with your PPC manager, to make sure that you give them the tools, the knowledge to succeed, and also not sabotage your own campaign by screwing up and telling them to do things that you shouldn't have said or things you shouldn't have divulged or things you should have said and you didn't say and screwed up the success of your campaign. So I'm going to go through these points. Let's see, I have seven points total, and I've written all of these out.

4:48Chris Schaeffer: I've thought through this pretty heavily because I believe pretty firmly the answer is this. I do not think that the best method to hiring an agency is to first learn Google Ads yourself. I think that's a mistake. And I do absolutely believe that you can manage your own Google Ads. but if your process is to I'm going to learn it first and then hire someone to do it for me let me um let me give you an analogy of why that doesn't work let's say you're building a house right you're going to you're going to build a brand new house and you say well I'm going to learn how to build houses first and then I'm going to hire someone else to build my house for me so that I know what to look for.

5:39Chris Schaeffer: I got news for you. Their opinions, their methodologies, their process to building a house and making decisions on how they do it and what things they do and their exact process of doing that is going to be very different. It's still going to be a house. They're still going to do what it is that you want, but your experience and how you did it is going to be different from how they approach it. It could actually bring a point that might conflict. You know, you say, well, I did it this way. And they say, well, yeah, I know, but I do it this way. It actually might cause you to have a stumbling between the person who's building your house and how you've done it before.

6:28So in fact,

6:30Chris Schaeffer: In fact, having experience in Google ads management could bring complications that you would otherwise not have. You say, well, you know, one day I changed my campaign and I increased the budget 100 % and I immediately got 15 leads. So that's definitely what we should do. You know, and you're basing that on what? You're basing it on just circumstantial evidence that does not hold to experience. So I'm going to show you seven rules on how to manage your PPC manager. Make sure they succeed. Make sure they do the right things so that you can get on with your job. Okay. And Matt, I thank you for your question.

7:22And I hope that everyone finds this to be useful because the manager and business owner relationship, I think, is very important. You each have your own roles. And I'm going to lay it out right now.

7:38Chris Schaeffer: Okay, so number one. Number one rule. When I set this out to write this, this is the very first thing that I wrote. number one, own everything. You should own your own Google ads account. You should own your website. You should own your landing pages. You should own your phone numbers that are used as tracking numbers on your website. Own everything. Uh, this might be a shock to some of you. You say, well, of course it's my, I, of course I want to own it. Well, some of you are, realizing that that's my number one point and it might actually be very important because you haven't done it. If you don't own your Google Ads account, you are highly endangering a lot of factors that could lead to failure and also having to restart your Google Ads account every single time you change agencies or anytime you come to failure, you fire that agency, you bring someone else in.

8:42You're going to have to restart with a brand new account. Own your Google Ads account. Make them work out of your own account. Own your website, your landing pages. Do not rent your PPC from someone else. Okay, that's number one. Number two, goals. Start with a goal. Now, I cannot say that and expect you to understand what that means, so I'm going to give you examples.

9:06Chris Schaeffer: What is a good goal and what's a bad goal? A good goal is I want to get 10 qualified leads a month. Okay, that's a good goal. A bad goal is you tell your manager, I want three signed contracts a month. You've already made a mistake because you must focus on volume of leads first. quality comes later. If you measure based on signed contracts, your PPC manager has absolutely no control on how many signed contracts you get, right? How many sale completions you get. They can only control the volume of conversions and the quality of traffic. They can't necessarily control the quality of conversions.

10:02So for that reason, first let's just get conversions. And then that brings us to point B of the goals rule. Evolve your goals over time.

10:17Chris Schaeffer: You must adjust your goals based on failure because failure is common and success is rare. So I'm going to get more into this on how to evolve your goals and how you can expect to fail in some areas and how you can lay that out. But in reality, you must expect failure and you must establish your goals based on the phases of success that you plan to go through. So more on that later when we get to number six. All right. Next is establish priorities. Okay. So let me explain what that means. You have perhaps five services that you offer or maybe five products that you sell. Do not just say to the Google Ads manager, I want you to advertise these five products.

11:14Chris Schaeffer: That is a mistake. You must prioritize and rank those services based on the value to your company. So I'm going to use Matt's example. He does exterior work on houses. And let's say, you know, your business does siding, windows, and roofing. You know, all these different exterior remodeling services. So when you tell the agency, here's what I want to sell, here's what I want to advertise, you don't just say siding, windows, and roofing. You would say, well, windows is my least valuable because very often it's a small job. You know, we get a lot of requests for roof or like window repair and small little, you know, replace this one window.

12:03We don't really want that. So that's the least valuable. Next is roofing. And then our best service is siding. You've immediately set yourself up for a heightened chance of success because spend

12:21Chris Schaeffer: should never be based on volume or how many searches there are. There might be a ton more searches around windows, window repair, window replacement, you know, window fix and window update and all this kind of stuff. There could be so many more searches around window work for homes and less for roofing and maybe less for siding. So if you just gave them those three services, immediately the traffic might skew in a direction that's unprofitable for you. So you might spend more on windows, which is not good for your business. So instead of just giving them services, give them services based on value to your business.

13:06Chris Schaeffer: So base their, you know, spend percentage, you know, say I want to put 70 % into siding. I want to put 20 % into roofing and 10 % into windows. You know, that really gives them a direction and you're setting yourself up for a higher chance of success. All right. Number four, track conversions. You must track conversions. Conversions are sales, forms, actions, phone calls, leads acquired or sales acquired through your Google ads campaigns. You must track those. So any action that's of value on your website should be tracked. Okay. This is very important. I have nothing else to add. It's as simple as that, because there's, there's no, you know, there's no guidance here.

14:03Chris Schaeffer: You just, you have to track conversions. You must do that. And otherwise, you know, you could be doing well in your Google ads and not track conversions, but you'll never truly attain the higher levels of Google ads success without tracking conversions. Okay. So number five, be a leader. And so that's very generic. You know, what do you mean by that, Chris? Well, let me explain. And the best way to explain is to give good and bad examples. So the bad is you tell the PPC manager, my cost per click should always be less than$5 per click. I do not want to pay more than$5 per click. That's a bad leader.

14:50Chris Schaeffer: You have directed them to make mistakes from day one. Another one, say, hey, my friend used exact match and he said that's the best match type and I want to only use exact match. Do not use broad and don't use phrase. I only want exact. Bad leader. You've made a mistake. You're leading them towards success. You're leading them into a pitfall that will waste your money. Not because cost per click should always be expensive. Not because exact match is a bad choice, but because you've decided without testing that there are things you do and don't want to do. That is a mistake. All things are on the table.

15:37You should test and retest and constantly try different experiments to find what the best for you is.

15:45Chris Schaeffer: And my gosh, this one's new and it absolutely infuriates me. I don't want to hear you say, I ran your report through my AI. I ran your report through Claude. I ran your report through whatever. And AI says this, I'll tell you what, I have been known to fire clients and that will lead you quickly down the path of no longer having me as a manager. That is infuriating. It's such generic, crappy advice. I'll tell you, AI is great. You know, it's great. Sure. write me a poem, write me a song, but give me advice based on a report of Google ads that I, you know, that I upload a PDF that I upload. Oh my gosh.

16:36Chris Schaeffer: It's ridiculous. Don't do that. So instead, what's it, what's a good leader do? Ask questions like, have you tested these match types? What match types are we using? Have you tested other bidding strategies? Are our keywords birds targeting high funnel or are they targeting low funnel are we are we doing both um how are we addressing those i mean these this is more strategy you know this is pulling ideas out of them forcing them to think about strategies rather than nitpicking and micromanaging okay so number six is a is is a very personal thing to me because i came up with several years ago something called the phases of success and you must know these phases because you need to know where you are in your google ads process so that you can accurately make goals and decisions and understand where you're at.

17:39So I have entire episodes devoted to this, but I'm going to very quickly summarize it. There are four phases to Google Ads. There is phase one, getting qualified traffic. That means you're getting the right traffic. You're getting traffic that is essential to what you're selling, what you're providing other people. You're getting traffic that represents people that want to buy that. phase two is you're converting that qualified traffic people are now coming to your website and they're buying that they're they're they're calling you they're interested in it so they're not just qualified they're now converting and buying or at least you know calling you or filling out of form.

18:25Phase three, you're now achieving and maintaining your KPIs. So that's, that's, that's marketing jargon. Essentially, you're now attaining your cost per sale. You know, you hope to get 10 leads a month. You're now doing that and it's happening month after month. And now phase four is the best phase to be in. Very rare. Not a lot of people get here, but it is phase four, growth. You're growing your campaign. You're spending more. You're adding keywords. You're expanding. You went from 10 conversions to 13 conversions to 20 conversions a month. And it continues to either maintain itself or grow.

19:07Those are the four phases. I will not spend an hour discussing the intricate details of what these look like. There's other episodes I have that you can certainly go back and listen to, or you can reach out to me. I'm happy to go through them with you. Explain, discuss where you're at, how to improve them. I do Google Ads coaching live with people. You can talk to me directly, even if you only spend 500 bucks a month. I've worked with big and small accounts. Happy to do that and get more into how you can progress through the phases of Google Ads. All right, number seven. And this one's very important.

19:49those managers, those agencies out there, they really want you to spend more. I just spoke to

19:54Chris Schaeffer: a gentleman that told me, yeah, I'm tired of agencies. Every time we ran into a problem, all they said was spend more. I'll tell you what, rule number seven, spend more after you've proven success. More spend does not change failure to success. So you can't be failing, throw money at it, and it magically changes into success. The rule of thumb is to base your spend increase on the phases of success that I just went through in point number six. So don't be pressured. Don't feel like you need to just spin more because the agency says spin more. Use a process to make that decision. More spin does not magically convert failure to success.

20:54Okay, so surprise, I have three more. I said I had seven. I have three more. I actually have 10 points to share. So I'm going to share those last three here in a moment. Remind you, please go check out Optio, optio.com slash PSP for the free 28 day trial of their multi-channel tool. It does Google ads, LinkedIn, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok. It does all of those. Try it for free for 28 days. Number eight, read your marketing manager's reports and ask questions. you say, well, how do I read it? I don't even know what to read. Well, at least look for and analyze the search terms that are on your PPC report.

21:47So if you don't see search terms, this should be very concerning to you. You should always see search terms, not keywords. They should show you your search terms, your actual data of what you are paying for. Ask to see your search terms. Look at those.

22:05Chris Schaeffer: Is this qualified traffic? Is this traffic that's worth paying for? Does this make sense? Okay, you say, well, Chris, okay, I looked at that. What else should I look at on a report? How do I ask questions? Well, look at the cost per click. Do you see dramatically decreasing or increasing cost per click? let's say you started at a$10 cost per click and now you're at a$2 a$1 cost per click this is actually a fairly concerning problem because it could show that you're getting a lot of unqualified traffic coming through your Google ads because guess what junk traffic is cheap Good traffic is expensive.

22:57Chris Schaeffer: So if the manager is focusing and telling you, hey, we got the cost per click down. Hey, we got the cost per click down. You should be concerned about quality. Well, okay, that's great. But am I still paying for the same quality? Look at your search terms. Has your cost per click doubled, tripled, quadrupled? You know, well, why is that? What are they changing? You know, so read these reports. Consider what's changed month after month and ask questions. all right number nine is probably my favorite you be the business expert not the google ads expert so provide feedback on the things that you know avoid giving instructions on the things you do not know okay of a very famous phrase that i have said in on my website and on my videos on my website for many years has been, you provide, the business owner provides the business expertise, and my job as the manager is to provide the Google Ads manager's expertise in Google Ads.

24:11Together, we make a full piece of expertise,

24:16Chris Schaeffer: but if you try and tell me what you know about Google Ads and I try and tell you about what I know about your business, well, now we're in trouble, right? So provide feedback on the things you do know about your business, about your clientele, about the industry, and let the agency, let the manager provide their information about how Google Ads works and how to properly implement your PPC. So an example of this, do the search terms represent your ideal clients, right? So that should be something you should be able to answer with your, not Google ads expertise, but with your business expertise.

24:59You should be able to look at the search terms and know, yeah, these are customers that I want to sell to. Yeah, they know what they're talking about. They are looking for a specific type of sighting. They're obviously looking for the things that I want to sell. another question you could answer as a business expert is does the ad copy speak to your business advantages right is it actually saying things that are unique about your business in your ad copy not you know not ppc don't throw ppc knowledge at it look at it and say does this speak about your business is it specific enough is it using the right language about your business one last example you can you can look at the keywords and and and very quickly determine are these very generic unqualified keywords you know let's say that uh um you know this is a really simple example i hope no one would be suffering from this but let's say let's go back to the siding example, let's say you do a siding, uh, remodeling repair, uh, on, on homes is your keyword siding or just home siding, right?

26:16Chris Schaeffer: Is that a keyword? Well, I hope as a business owner, you would look at that and say, you know, that, that keyword doesn't really represent the precision of what we're actually trying to drive to our website. It should really be something like citing repair, citing replacement, citing exterior home contractors, you know, something like that. Something a bit more precise as to what you're actually selling, not just the word citing, right? You don't have any input on whether it's broad, exact, or phrase. You're just looking at the keyword and saying, I don't know that this represents the right kind of clientele.

26:54and then last if it's really kind of breaking down explain what a good lead looks like to your marketing manager to your ppc manager tell them okay here's what a good lead looks like not if they're male or female or this age or that age i don't care what are they searching for like what is their need that you can best meet right uh our best clientele is someone who has a home that's over 30 years old and their home is, you know, starting to show wear and tear, they need to paint their siding or they need to replace their siding, or maybe there's been a recent storm that's caused damage to their siding, right?

27:36That's what a good lead looks like for you. Explain that and let them work towards that. Number 10, last one. Let's, let's understand now what timing should you expect and this goes with number 10 rule 90 days you should see your campaign progress through the phases of success and in 90 days you should at least be in phase two of the phases of google ads which is convert your qualified traffic you should be in phase two by 90 days, at least, hopefully higher, but you should not still be lingering in phase one where you're just trying to get qualified traffic. You should now be converting some of that qualified traffic and hopefully getting to phase three.

28:30So within 90 days, if this manager is working and you're looking at it, you're looking through my 10 points here and you can really tell, you know it's been 90 days it's been 120 days uh i can't really say that this traffic is even really qualified you might need help i would be happy to help you you can certainly reach out to me chrisshafer.com i manage accounts big and small um located in texas taking clients uh you can reach out to me i'll provide an audit of your account if you're interested you work with me directly. I don't have a team. There's no one else here. It's just me. So you only speak to me.

29:12You only work with me. I'm not an agency. I'm an expert. So reach out to me if you're interested in that. Otherwise, you'll catch me here every Monday for PPC advice. I hope this one has been helpful to you. Have a great week.