The Value of a Paid PPC Account Assesment.

The excerpt below is taken from the free white paper "12 Questions You Should Ask a PPC Management Company Before You Hire Them!".

If you would like to sign up to get a free copy of the complete white paper you can find it here. The white paper is available in PDF and Audio MP3 format.

Question #11 - How will you optimize or set up my PPC account?

Pay Per Click account optimization and setup is a fairly technical business. But no matter what your level of sophistication, any company that you are considering making a serious investment with should be able to explain to you in plain English what they will be doing to your account and how this will help move your business forward. Sometimes there are limits to the amount of information that a skilled Pay Per Click company is willing to share “pre-contract” because they are very wary of “do it yourselfer” types who are just calling around trying to get some free advice. You need to be sensitive to this, but still push for the information that you need so you can be sure they know what they are doing and they have a specific action plan to follow which makes sense for your business.

If you have found a PPC company that you think you want to hire, my suggestion is, before you get into a long-term relationship with them, pay them to conduct an in-depth assessment for you. Most competent companies will be more than happy to do this for you for a one-time fee of $1,000 to $2,000. In this assessment ask them to thoroughly research and analyze your market, your PPC competition, your PPC account (if you have one) and your website and to create a summary report. The summary report (which they should review with you over the phone so you can ask questions) should clearly outline your strengths, your weakness, your opportunities and your risks.

***Before you hire someone to do a paid assessment of this nature, make sure they will offer a money back guarantee so if you are not satisfied with what they deliver you can get your money back.

If you are impressed with your paid assessment, move full speed ahead with them. But, if the company comes back to you with something generic, weak or out of touch with the realities of your business, you have just saved yourself several thousand dollars and several months of wasted time. Move on – don’t hire them, and now you are much wiser as far as what you really need to look for in a PPC expert.

Note: Paid assessments have become a standard practice for us at Net Return Marketing. We won’t take on a long-term, performance-based client until they have participated in a paid assessment. This greatly reduces your risk as a client and ours as a provider. It allows us and our clients to know exactly what we are getting ourselves into (the risks, the potential rewards and the complete plan) before we make a larger commitment to each other.