The decision to hire a PPC (pay-per-click) wizard employee -VS- hiring a PPC Agency can be a tough one.
You see, a few years ago I was in the same position. We had grown Production Prints to the point where we were ready to invest in a full-blown PPC strategy.
We had seen results from years of working passively on our own accounts, but there was never a full, concerted effort to put the time and energy into maximizing the potential of this extremely powerful marketing channel (for us mainly Google Ads).
We were past the point of experimenting to see if it was a viable channel for us…
It was.
But we lacked the dedicated personnel because myself and Nate (other sales rep) were too busy handling account management for new and existing customers.
You see, we had 11 years worth of new and repeat business which was great, but how can we double and triple our results?
It became the chicken and egg analogy. The ole horse and cart.
Yes, we knew we could grow and that the market potential was huge, but to hire another account manager, we needed more leads. In order to get more leads we needed to finally put the effort into building out our Google Ads account.
Up to this point, it had been a *very* part-time effort at digging in and improving our Google campaigns. Sometimes we would go months before making any improvements.
It’s almost like Google knew that too. After some time spent in the account making improvements, we’d see nice results soon thereafter, but then the slow and precipitous decline would follow. It was like Google knew we were neglecting it and and the poor performance that followed was Google’s punishment.
Over a period of several years we had saw-tooth results. Good results, followed by lackluster results and on and on.
We First Tried PPC Freelancers
We tried two freelancers: One that was local and one that wasn’t.
Our 1st Freelancer
The first one (local) sounded good, but ended up being a complete bust. The monthly management fee was very reasonable, but we lost money each money for months on end.
While it is not uncommon to lose some money before hitting break-even and then achieving profitability (after all you have to first spend money before it starts flowing back to you), there was no real improvement to the account to start turning things around.
Ultimately we got 1 mediocre job out of the deal and ended the relationship with a net loss to the tune of several thousand dollars.
Our 2nd Freelancer
The 2nd freelancer was recommended to us by a friend who also had a business.
He was described as young, energetic and hungry. I liked that.
I could relate, because that is exactly how I started Production Prints in 2007. I was scrappy and full of energy because I had to be if I wanted to survive as a new business owner.
Important to point out: My friend HAD NOT used him for their own Google Ads management. This young man had reached out to him after he appeared on the ABC Show ‘Shark Tank’ for his business Pet Paint.
While he didn’t have a need at that point, he referred him to me.
So, I gave him a shot.
Again, very reasonable price-wise, but he quit after just a few weeks to go back to college full-time.
Well…
I guess I’m out of luck and it’s time to try another strategy.
You see, freelancers didn’t work for me for 2 reasons:
- They lacked business experience- They didn’t know how to properly ‘invest’ my dollars to get me a ‘return’ on my investment. They didn’t stop and take the time to ask me the important questions like what is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ with the most demand and highest margins to start there. To work towards getting a return on investment as quickly as possible and then spreading out later to more competitive markets.
- They only worked inside the Google Ads account and with no Landing Pages- You see a big part of PPC and Google Ads marketing is doing on-page optimization. Meaning, sure they could spend my dollars to drive traffic to my site, but nothing was being done to convert the traffic into leads/ sales in the most efficient way possible so we would ‘leak’ too much money, thus making something that should have been ROI positive…. not ROI negative.
Our First PPC Employee
Now that we have the early years out of the way, it’s time to talk about what we did next.
With 2 freelancers unsuccessfully either fired or off to college, it was time to do something new. Something different.
It was time to hire our first dedicated PPC Manager… In-House
A little over 3 years ago, we put a $20 ad out on Craigslist in our local Bend, Oregon area.
It was a complete shot in the dark.
If it worked, great. If it didn’t, ok fine.
We got all of 8-9 resumes and interviewed 2.
The 1st interview was David. He was still in college and had a year or two remaining so part-time seemed like a good fit.
He didn’t have any experience with Google Ads, but he was very computer literate and had built some of his own sites and had done some coding.
But he was eager for an opportunity to learn new skills.
We now knew that building landing pages and doing the on-page optimization was an important part of what was needed to drive sucessful campaigns and so we took a chance and hired him.
A few training sessions and some Udemy courses later and he was off to the races. Extremely capable of learning fast.
Being in-house meant we could constantly meet and discuss the campaigns, techniques, strategies. Talk about what was working, what wasn’t working, etc.
It wasn’t long until our marketing dollars started to produce more fruit on a small scale.
Since that was working, we could increase the budget a little which would produce a little more return.
So on and so on… until we were spending several thousand a month on Google Ads, but also generating $6 in revenue for every $1 in adspend.
The math started to work. David graduated college and came on full-time.
It worked so well, we started Production Clicks as a PPC agency and the rest is history.
In-House PPC Employee VS PPC Agency
Now that I have discussed how our journey started and progressed, you might be thinking… ‘Well, I just need a David’.
And that may be true considering your particular circumstance.
But we also learned a few things along the way.
The purpose of this article is to talk about a dedicated full-time PPC Employee vs a PPC Agency (not PPC Freelancer).
You see there is a big distinction: Namely a PPC Agency usually has a team of people working on your account instead of just one person.
And there are some MEGA benefits to this.
So much so, that it spawned this article to talk about the difference, the pros & cons if you will.
So let’s start with the ‘PPC Employee’.
PPC Employee Advantages over a PPC Agency
Finding an experienced and talented person to join your team as an employee whether they are part-time or full-time has some advantages and I wanted to write down the pros and cons of each as we compare between a new hire (employee) and a PPC Agency. So here it goes:
Pros of a PPC Employee
- An employee gets to learn your business on an ‘intimate’ level
- An employee can be molded to your style and preferences of doing things.
- An employee can receive direct instruction regarding what task or project to work on next.
- An employee may benefit from ‘osmosis’ and will just learn things by being around others on the job.
Cons of a PPC Employee
- An employee may be in-house but unless there is someone managing them with the right guidance, they may just be adopting bad habits/ practices or not fully utilized.
- An employee over the long-run is more expensive when you factor in their base pay + raises over time + benefits, etc
- An employee is permanent so you can’t simply ‘pause’ their pay if you are in-between projects or tasks. That employee is going to expect long-term consistent work.
- An employee may be really good at Google Ads, but they are probably not a creative designer who builds landing pages and has run a business before to determine strategy.
- If the employee leaves your company, you’re starting all over again finding a replacement.
As you can see there are definitely some advantages and disadvantages to each. Now let’s take a look at the pros and cons of a PPC Agency
Pros of a PPC Agency
- Scale up and down depending on needs
- Data on keywords and ads that work, negative keywords and data that doesn’t work
- You get a team that is well-versed in a variety of disciplines needed to run successful campaigns. (designer, conversion rate optimization, strategist, etc)
- No Human Resources to worry about or benefits to pay
- Built-In incentive to do well to continue showing results to keep account
- Built-In project management & continuing education is being handled by the agency
- Enhanced skillset and exposure from working on multiple client accounts (a method discovered on a previous job can be used on your job to get similar results)
- It’s a lot easier to fire an agency (assuming you aren’t under contract) than it is to fire an employee
Cons of a PPC Agency
- Communication may be less frequent since agency is off-site but can usually be solved with scheduled calls.
- Agency is rarely full-time or exclusively working on your account since they manage more than one account.
These are the main pros/ cons of each way. There may be others that I missed which if so, please feel free to leave comments down below.
Let’s Do the Math
Now let’s take a look at some rudimentary comparisons to take a look at cost vs value. I am not going to talk about revenue figures, because that will be different from client-to-client, but we can look at costs and get an idea of how much value is brought to the table.
Employee PPC Manager Math
According to Indeed, the average salary for a PPC Manager in the United States is $62,805 (as of 2020).
Keep in mind as any employer knows, you also have to pay the “employer side” of FICA for income taxes which works out to about 7.65% which for the average salary above comes out to an additional $4,804 for a total annual pay of $67,609 (or $5,634 per month).
This is a generalization and in many cases this may or may not include benefits (health, dental, paid vacation, retirement match, etc). But for the sake of this article and simplicity I will assume the benefits are included in the total $67K.
A good PPC Agency with a team of people working on your account start at about $2,000/ per month and go up from there depending on the scope of the projects, adspends and other factors.
But to get a side-by-side comparison, let’s assume you are paying $3,500/ mo for a team of 3 people working on your account.
I’m also going to assume you have decided as a company or organization that you want to put some horsepower into your pay-per-click strategy and your needs require 8 months to fully build everything out.
With a full-time employee, you will end up paying approximately $45,072
With a part-time PPC Agency you will end up paying $28,000.
That’s over $17,000 in savings that can be better allocated to more Adspend!
But because the PPC agency has 3 members all working on your account, you are able to get all the work done in those 8 months or maybe sooner even at part-time vs the 1 full-time employee.
Add to that, the 3 team members offer different areas of expertise like design, strategy, and in-account management.
Conclussion
While my overly simplistic comparison is just that… overly simplistic, I would like to think it does offer some good insight into how to accurately measure and add value to your organization given the pros and cons of each method and the value proposition between the two.
There is a lot to consider and I will be the first to admit there is some bias here since we are an agency, but you know what? I have also lived this personally with my own business and can attest to the differences of both.
I will leave you with one final thought: Building out a Google Ads or PPC Campaign really is two-part:
First there is what I call the ‘construction’. That is the initial set up which is quite involved from custom landing pages and account set ups like ‘audience definitions’, making sure Tag Manager is configured properly, etc.
Then there is the maintenance. This is the ‘fine-tuning’ to make sure everything is running smoothly and adding new negative keywords, etc.
Hiring an Agency is an investment and sometimes you need the construction crew to come in and build everything out before being able to manage everything internally with a lower cost-basis.
You may even have an existing employee that can take it over once constructed.
I hope you have found this information helpful and if you would like a quote or have a question, please feel free to reach out to us directly or leave a comment.
-Jeff
