PPC - Pay Per Click Management

If you are an advanced PPC professional and have managed PPC campaigns of varying lengths and sizes, you must have a clear idea about the challenges that are associated with a PPC campaign management project.

 

While addressing some core and regular points such as target audience, campaign approach, clear marketing message and what to put up for promotion is easy, resolving some unorthodox but more project management relevant drawbacks are more challenging.
These unconventional PPC project challenges, while putting the success of a campaign success in severe jeopardy, if addressed efficiently and appropriately can ease up the snags substantially for a project manager or administrator.

 

Here we have discussed such offbeat PPC project management challenges and reflected over how to resolve these with the best of the outcomes:

1. Irregular PaymentMoney matters and so does the proper and proficient management of the PPC campaign payments. Most of the times a campaign manager has to deal with confused clients, who barely can get a hold of seemingly random transactions from platforms.

Following are some recommendations for dealing with irregular payments in a PPC campaign:

 

• Just let the clients know straightaway that if they don’t pay regularly, PPC campaign won’t happen. Irregular payment will stop running ads on ad platforms and to function seamlessly, your agency requires regular payments as well. The sooner your clients pick up the hint, the lesser the hassle for your smooth campaign operations.

 

• Clients are not good at keeping pace and get ticked easily with frequent updates. So, instead of repeatedly asking them to make individual payments, remind and ask your client to pay for the total amount they are to spend on campaigns each month.
• Recommended clients to pre-pay Google and make fixed payments once or twice in a month to Google directly. This will make things easier for the accounting department.
• Always be professional while dealing with or talking about money. Give a certain and well-revised quotation for campaigns, check and double-check all the costs inclusive to a campaign and maintain receipts and vouchers for all transactions.

 

All these are your sure-guards against irregular payments. But yet, a mishappening might transpire once or twice. Don’t forget to have a contingency plan for that as well.

 

2. Tracking issue Tracking is very important for PPC campaigns. As the saying goes – “success is only proven if it can be measured”, this is imperative for a campaign manager to keep tabs on PPC campaign KPIs and implement, readjust strategies accordingly.Tracking can be a challenge while managing a vast and very complex campaign. What are recommended to deal with this as a piece of cake are:

 

• PPC project managers should be able to track the exact keywords or site placements which lead to the eventual sale. The end to end visibility of these keywords and factors always come handy.

 

• Use Google Analytics for tracking. Use the analytics to figure out the keyword performances and track the goals. As a campaign manager, having the Analytics certification is a rewarding credential.

 

• Keep tabs on the changes happening on the client’s website. Regularly contact and check what is remarkable going on their business front. Align your tracking strategies with the latest proceedings.

 

• Communicate with developer team and client team to resolve promptly, if any tracking snags are hit.

3. Delay with developer/designer

There is always a catch in working with technical professionals like Designers or Website developers. While we can always put it accountable on our business norms, such delays caused by technical professionals can often tarnish the business’s reputation. To deal with this:

 

• Accommodate days or time spans for such technical delays while estimating overall project schedule. Adding at least couple of days would be a safe play. You can even add more days if the size of the project is comparatively more robust.

 

• Confer effectively with the technical professions before estimating and providing timelines to clients. The clients should also be informed of the technical variables which might result in delays.

 

• The customer service game should be strong in dealing with such issues. Keep your clients always posted of the updates. Building a good rapport with clients will always allow you a couple of days breathing space!

 

• During consulting with clients, convince them to keep reasonable expectations. Don’t overpromise or be pushy for an unrealistic deadline.

 

• Even after all the caution measures if any such delay happens, politely communicate the situation to your client. Clients are way more lenient and understanding than what we are afraid of.

4. Less control where needed

Tug of war for control comes from trust issues. There would be clients of PPC campaigns who would willingly entrust campaign manager with all the responsibilities, decision makings and strategic control.

And then this is not also uncommon that there will be clients who are driven by past bad experiences with PPC services and would want to have their own say in everything from strategy to overall procedure control!

But you just can’t put the campaign’s effectiveness and success in jeopardy by letting too many masters maneuver. As the standard practice goes, there should be just one individual – whether that be the campaign strategist or the client – who would make the calls regarding all the significant decisions about the account.

Now, just in case, problems arise, here’s what are recommended to do:

 

• Patience is the Key! Clients might be a bit nosy or smart Alec, you have to communicate with them with diligence and convey the best practices suitable for running such campaigns.

 

• Prove the efficiency of your strategies and methodologies with results. Keep them updated with campaign goal accomplishments, no matter what the significance is! This will generate his trust and confidence in your capabilities.

 

• When things go much south and things are pretty tough to keep in hands, no matter what is the size of the client is; just discontinue and move on to find some better fit of clients.

5. Too much meeting, reporting and explaining

Well, it is scientifically proven that meetings are fruitless! In this modern age of technology, electronic communication media like emails and phone calls are enough to exchange important and vital correspondences.

Meeting with a PPC campaign client should be limited to a productive number, once a week would do fairly well. More meeting doesn’t mean more are happening, rather more are put in wait to do.

If there are too many meetings and reporting, figure out what is the pain point of the client and how to best resolve it sooner enough.
Here are some ways to deal in the best way possible with such challenges:

 

• First and foremost, engage a competent and silkily functioning report system. Automate your report system that will enable your clients to get immediate reports whenever they want.

 

• Educate your clients or work for already learned clients. Saves you tons of hassle as clients with PPC understanding will shoot you with less question and let you comfortably do your bidding.

 

• Ask your clients to compensate or remunerate for bevy of meetings. Pass the understanding to them that your Billings doesn’t allow you enough schedule blocks to accommodate much meeting sessions.

 

 

 

 

6. Clients are less knowledgeable

As mentioned earlier, dealing with clients who are less knowledgeable can be a hot soup mess up sometimes. Clients might not understand technical aspects related to PPC campaigns. They might have a limited idea of how to define appropriate audience base. So, if you have to get paid for a campaign service, you inevitably have to address this issue.

 

• Understand your client’s skill and knowledge level. Then, impart them appropriate amount of information based on their perception and processing capabilities. Most often, providing more information than necessary would bite you back as it will only confuse your client more.

 

• Continuously check whether clients are on the same page as you are, whether they have the exact understanding of happenings as those are taking place. If required, explain things to clients patiently and repeatedly.

 

• Take responsibilities for any project wise aberrations and mistakes. Owning up to any unexpected outcome and putting an honest effort to resolve that will in fact grow your client’s confidence in you.

7. High expectation in low budget

 

Clients resort to PPC campaign service for the growth of business. But sometimes clients rely too much on this service for customer acquisition and conversion. And this often leads to misappropriated expectations of result for a miscalculated budget.

 

Retaining a balance between client expectation and PPC campaign budget can often come as a challenging job for PPC campaign project managers.

To ace up such challenge:

 

• Project managers have to define campaign scopes realistically. They also have to help clients set reasonable expectation accordingly.

 

• Communicate this simple rule of PPC campaign: If you are to get a better result, boost conversion via the campaign, you have to up the campaign budget. The more the budget, the better the result.

 

• Get your customer updated with the estimated and projected result of the campaign sprints. Send periodical reports, make calls or set weekly reports to communicate the numbers with the client as this extra effort would always keep their expectations in check. Take into account seasonality and why some months that just won’t be possible.

 

• It’s true that, with the maturity of a PPC campaign, performance and result improvements become hard to attain and retain. But you have to be tactical enough to let your competence come into play by implementing new strategies and bring the very best result out of the campaign. This way, your client will always have their expectations met.

8. Lack of coordination between client and PPC ManagerThe worst that can happen in PPC service business is the fallout between Client and PPC Manager due to lack of coordination. What a PPC Manager can do to eliminate such challenges are:

• Reach out to your clients on a regular basis and maintain a transparent communication and lucid rapport.

 

• Always have a list prepared that you need coordination on from your client’s end. During periodical interactions, pass them their to-dos and communicate to get things done correspondingly.
• As much as we find it unflattering, but clients require to be pursued for proper coordination. Even after having a meeting and divvying up roles and responsibilities for coordination, remind them via email or calls in later periods.
• On weekly or monthly follow-ups with client, report them on the accomplished tasks and contemplated goals for coming weeks.
• Make your customers informed about the ramifications involved with not being on the same page with you and the significance of coordination. Ensure that you convey the messages politely.

In all intents and purposes, a PPC campaign might come with its own brand of complications and challenges, and a campaign manager has to come up with tailored and specific set of strategies to resolve these challenges.

 

If any time-tested trick or tactic that you have effectively implemented to resolve in PPC campaign management and that we have missed out here, kindly share in the comments below.

 

 

Author Bio:

 

Liakat Hossain is a content marketing professional at WebAlive, a company that provides web design, development and online marketing services. He is helping businesses grow with search and content marketing since 2011.