Best UK PPC management company

[niallfred]

I'm looking to outsource my PPC management and would love some feedback on which companies are worth paying for this service?

I'm worried as there are so many cold calling scam artists out there and I want to choose the best company for the job.

I have been considering "Adrac" as they only charge when they save you money! Sounds too good to be true so I'm automatically sceptical.

Can anyone vouch for Adrac or suggest a better/different company?

[activitysuper]

What's your monthly budget 'roughly' £100+, £1000+, £10,000+?

When you say only charge when they save you money, what do you mean, what's there model?

[niallfred]

£1000+ budget.

Model = If they lower the average CPC lets say from £1.00 down to £0.50 the would take half of that difference (£0.25) and times it by the number of clicks for that month. Lets say 2000. So I would owe them £500.00 for that month.

There's no lengthy contract and I can opt out at any time if not happy.

Obviously they could simply ramp up my CPC for 1 month and then lower it considerably the next which would get them a nice juicy fee. When I asked them about this they said I could set a maximum CPC that they would never go higher than.

At the end of the day its cost per conversion I'm interested in not CPC but the model sounds good to me. If the CPC goes down and my cost per conversion goes up I'll cancel their service after month 1.

Hope that make some sense

[activitysuper]

Ok,

Just so I got this straight,

You give them £1000p/m to spend, they try and lower the CPC lets say £1 to 50p which now means instead of getting 1000 visits your getting 2000 visits.

Yeah you would assume the CPA would stay the same and the conversions would double, if the traffic was still relevant.

The model is a little confusing even for someone who runs PPC & SEO.

Usually you would want a CPA model like you said.

You say you want to target a CPA of say £20 and you would be very happy if it came in at that. They then try and optimise the account below the £20 and slice off the amount below.

So before it is handed over its doing £25 CPA 100 sales p/m, agency takes it on, now its doing £15 CPA and 200 sales p/m. You win because your now doing more sales at a lower CPA and agency win because they are taking £5 on every sale because they are £5 lower on the target CPA you set.

Its also an incentive for the agency to push for more sales (which is what really matters).

[niallfred]

Not quite... They are not taking a portion of the CPA and make no promises to change the CPA. The take the cut  based on the average CPC. Like....

**Model = If they lower the average CPC lets say from £1.00 down to £0.50 they would take half of that difference (£0.25) and times it by the number of clicks for that month. Lets say 2000. So I would owe them £500.00 for that month.  **

The fee is purely based on them lowering the average CPC. I'm worried they might ramp up the CPC in the first month and then lower it back down again the second therefore earning a huge fee without benefiting me.

Lets say they raise my Avg CP from 25p to 50p for one month and then in the second month lower it back down to 25p. I would have to pay them (12.5p x amount of clicks) for that month. So If I had 8500 clicks x 12.5p it would cost me: £1062.00 in fee's.

Hope that makes sense. It's really hard to explain.

[JasmineA]

This is a very interesting payment structure. Here's why I am not a fan::

• Lowering your CPC means your ads won't appear higher on the page and you will potentially not capture as much converting traffic, and that's the ultimate goal of AdWords so this seems pointless to me.
• Setting a max CPC is limiting for keywords that will perform better if you give them a higher CPC. If you have to give them keyword specific CPC information, you might as well be managing the account by yourself!
• They can jerk you around quite a bit, as you're already weary about it.

If you want to continue the conversation with them, I would ask for case studies featuring spend and conversion numbers.

I work at Distilled and we do PPC management in the UK. For comparison, we charge a flat rate for accounts below £10,000. I think there are quite a few agencies that run this way, and it will be more consistent to judge the effectiveness of your agency, not necessarily the effectiveness of how to bid.

Seeing as your initial question was "what are other reputable agencies" and I don't have a definitive answer for you, give me a day or so to look into a few that I think would be a good fit.

[JasmineA]

Thanks for being patient while I did some digging.

First, I think because you aren't a huge spender you need a flat rate.  This is going to make payments predictable and you can really start to value the work being done and trust the manager of the account. Your money will go toward working for you, rather than being micromanaged at the bid level.

Second, when you are calling around and making decisions about who to work with be aware of their internal structure. If you were my client at Distilled, I would be your point of contact and I would be the one working on your account. I think you should look for a company with an internal structure where you will also have this direct path for communication because you know you are getting pure, unadulterated information on your account.

Recommendations::
The moment you've been waiting for!

Because I think it's so important that you have a flat rate, I'd suggest GetSquare.co.uk, I spoke with a trusted, knowledgeable friend here who said "for small spend accounts we generally charge a fixed monthly management fee that covers optimisation, management & reporting." They're located up in Edinburgh, if location matters to you.

Another alternative to Anicca would be Boom-Online.co.uk. I also know first hand that there are knowledgeable people here who you can trust. They are located in Nottingham. They do a review, then off the back of the review price a one time set up fee, then it's a flat fee based on spend & number of campaigns.

Whatever you do, be sure you feel you are getting the most out of your preliminary conversations with any agency you are working with.

Let me know if this information has been helpful, or if you have any lingering questions!