7 Reasons You Should Hire an Agency to Manage Your Google and Facebook Ads
Out of all the mediums of advertising, online digital marketing is the cheapest per impression. That’s because the Internet is the cheapest form of communication media the world has ever known. Digital media just transmits information more efficiently. You can download a book in seconds from anywhere in the world. If you print it out on paper and ship it, or try to read it out loud over CB radio, it becomes more expensive or at least more cumbersome.
Isn’t that nice to know? Small businesses start with expectations that all digital marketing has a minuscule cost, and that holds true for the most part. A web host, a WordPress blog, and a few social media accounts are all you really need—as long as you don’t mind taking a very long time to grow.
Most businesses can’t afford to be that patient, so they invest in digital advertising campaigns. And that is also inexpensive, as we said. The only problem is that they try to manage the advertising themselves. Now, some of us with a related degree happen to be gifted in communication and the media arts. But at some point, every small business owner has to let go of the small, time-consuming tasks and focus on the bigger picture, delegating the details to the staff. There are only so many hats you can wear before they start sliding off.
The thing that businesses notice over time, if they keep managing their ads in-house, is that their advertising dollar just doesn’t buy the customers at the rate they’d like. That’s because they’re throwing money at a problem but aren’t doing it efficiently.
If you’re wondering “Is it time to outsource the management of my Facebook and Google ads to an agency?” then you’re in luck, because that’s exactly the question we’re here to answer. There are a lot of factors at play, so what works for one company, might not for another. Your timeline, budget, and your market all need to be considered.
Now, let’s explore when an agency might be able to help you and what are the benefits of having an outside agency manage your advertising channels.
1. Advertising is a Business in Itself
There is a lot of knowledge work that goes into effective advertising management. You’re probably expecting us to bring it up at some point, so we’ll point out a classic TV show around here, AMC’s Mad Men, about mid-century Madison Avenue marketing executives. Here’s a short scene, just five minutes long, it’s worth at least ten minutes of your time.
“It’s toasted!” Advertising and stage magicians have a lot in common because they both know how to direct attention. This example, arguably one of the peak scenes of the series, shows how you market cigarettes by pointing the audience away from the health concerns and towards a simple benefit, even if it’s one the other companies have. Granted, cigarettes aren’t a popular topic now. But you take that lesson and apply it to another industry. You take two more lessons from that industry and apply it to another one.
Advertising transcends product. The person who has struggled to market one product for ten years knows only their product. The person whose product is marketing knows all products, but only for the minutes it takes to direct their ad campaign. Advertisers see beyond products, services, and businesses.
Speaking of which, here’s another area of expertise you’d rather not have to pick up yourself…
2. Ad Management Agencies Know the Software
Ad management agencies also know the technology behind it, and the maze of policies in place between Google, Facebook, and display ad networks. Keeping up on this field is the kind of thing you only want to do if it’s your main job. That includes using our own ad management and tracking software. Even the Google Ads’ interface isn’t exactly the most user-friendly software.
It helps to know that Facebook Ads and Google Ads differ in several significant ways.
Ad management is a field as immersive as the legal or accounting field. True, you could read a stack of contracts or pound out a folder of spreadsheets yourself, but it works better when you have a legal or accounting department.
3. Ad Management Agencies Know the Design
It’s easy to tell who outsourced their logo design to a professional and who spent five minutes in their son’s Photoshop account and called it a day. Design isn’t just a matter of training; it is also about having the trained eye of a professional to pick out what ad design will be appealing to your target market and also fits your product.
One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to Facebook and Google ads. Ads may be an image, a video, a slideshow, a lightbox, or other forms. They may call for simple text that gets to the point or dazzling eye candy that draws the viewer in through the atmosphere. There’s a lot more to say about ad dimensions and media types, but we cover that better here.
In ad design, you not only know the different design tools, you know when not to use something because it’s become a tired cliché. Like when you advertise diet plans using women laughing at salad. Or dig this: We really like those pharmaceutical commercials on TV where the drug they’re advertising makes people run around at the park or on the beach. It’s getting to where we can’t jog outdoors without hearing this voice-over going “side effects may include drowsiness, dizziness, nausea, vomiting…”
Design in ads isn’t just a discipline of fluffy aesthetic ideas. Ad managers use A/B testing to evaluate different variables with the goal of maximizing click-through rates (CTR). This includes color schemes, font choices, font size, form fields, messaging, call-to-actions (CTAs), and photography choices.
4. Ad Management Experience Is Invaluable
A specialized agency has a staff that has collectively seen thousands of campaigns come and go. There are a few skills you pick from this experience that you can’t pick up any other way, such as…
- when to push for risks
- when to play it safe and stable
- when to reach out to untapped markets
- when it’s important to compete aggressively
- when to market to the bottom of the sales funnel or the top
There are times when you don’t need much experience. During peacetime, with stable, predictable growth for all, anyone can do digital marketing then. Then there’s what the old proverb refers to as “interesting times.”
We don’t mean to beat on this sore topic again, but 2020—what an interesting year! The coronavirus pandemic threw world markets and economies for a loop. In the first half of 2020, we saw the stock market crash, recover, crash again, and then just start randomly zigzagging. We saw record-breaking unemployment numbers, an economic impact so bad that it created the need for emergency government stimulus, and industries were thrown into chaos. It’s the year without Disneyland. In the middle of all that, suddenly a 1965 Civil Rights movement came back from history and riots broke out all over the world.
Is this the time to have an amateur hand on the tiller? Choppy economic seas call for an experienced marketing team that’s weathered a few crises before. There’s a difference between marketing now and marketing during the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage Great Recession. There’s a difference between advertising effectiveness under COVID-19 and advertising under Swine Flu. There’s a difference in the economic climate between the George Floyd riots and the Rodney King riots in Southern California in 1992. Yet there are also similarities, so an experienced hand knows to apply that wisdom to the present.
No doubt about it, someday we will look back on the year 2020 and, who knows, puff a CBD vape to treat our PTSD in all likelihood. But in the far view, there’s really not that many unique problems that we haven’t seen before. It’s just lots of problems in layers this time.
5. Ad Management Agencies Know the Sales Funnel
The Sales Funnel is a model of marketing engineering that describes a customer’s journey, from wherever they were when they first heard about you, all the way to your cash register. It’s called a funnel because it’s wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. At the top, you’re broadcasting to the whole wide world, even people who have never tried your product before. In the middle, you’re targeting people who have already entered this market but have done business only with your competitors so far. At the bottom, you have secure, loyal customers who have bought before, and you retain them with a loyalty rewards program.
We’re generalizing, of course. Whole books have been written about this funnel. It’s a fun model, but the important part is simply that you know where you are on the funnel at all times, and how you talk when you get there.
At the top of the funnel, you have mostly low-value prospects, people who have a problem or need but aren’t quite ready to buy as they’re not sure what they need or if they want to make a change. They’re the least ready to convert. In the middle, you have strong buyers who are actively trying to find a solution, they’re researching options, and some may be very interested in your product or service. The bottom of the funnel contains people that are ready to buy.
Each of these sections needs different kinds of advertising design and messaging to be effective. It makes a difference whether you’re welcoming a new consumer on board, selling a service that the consumer didn’t know they needed yet, comparison shopping with the consumer in a tight market, or offering a perk to get somebody else’s loyal customer to switch.
6. Digital Ads Require Knowing Social Media
That may sound like the silliest point. Of course, everybody knows social media! Don’t we all go on Facebook? Well sure, but you go on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube too? Of course, you do! How about TikTok? Not likely unless you’re in the youngest bracket right now (or you have kids). Perhaps Reddit, Tumblr, IMGUR, or Yahoo? Those are well-trafficked websites, so we know we’re not the only ones keeping tabs there.
The point is not to list how many social networks we can name (did you know MySpace and Digg are still in business?). The point is to read, study, and compare all those networks with accounts all over the world, to find out what the world is talking about today and where your target buyer is spending time online. It’s easy to miss a lot if you even skip one day. You might innocently go out there talking about pancakes only to be blindsided because Aunt Jemima is canceled and Land O’ Lakes butter just has the land now without the native American.
For that matter, you had also better know the political shades of a market, because there are some people whose blood pressure rises at the mention of the word “canceled.”
Daily phone browsers might say they spend just as much time on social media as marketing experts, but there’s a difference in quality. Most users have, at most, two or three accounts with as many websites, and spend all day on one website with a couple of glances at the other two. When marketers study social media, they mean all of it, because that’s how you spot trends and surf ahead of them.
Advertising has to work in a small space or a short period of time. To do so, it’s also important to know what’s on the Internet’s minds, what language they will respond to, or what message will resonate with them the most. Last but not least, knowing the social media platforms, in general, helps you not get flagged or banned on them; a tricky proposition in some cases because moderators are finicky creatures in how they apply policy.
7. Businesses have Enough to Focus On
Really, if you still want to be involved in your company’s sales conversion process, you can do a world of good for yourself and pour that creative energy into your landing page. It does no good to have the best Facebook ad campaign in the world without an effective landing page to click through. Put your value proposition upfront like you promised in the ad. Make sure the site loads quickly and is mobile friendly.
Managing Facebook ads to drive leads or scaling Google ad campaigns to maximize effectiveness is the kind of advice we’re happy to share, but we find that once companies get tucked into the rest of the work it takes to launch a small business, ad management gets neglected due to lack of time and energy. There are better places to devote that entrepreneurial energy, such as designing and producing products or services that are an easier sell in the first place.
Now that you know the benefits that a PPC advertising agency can bring to your business, you’re probably wondering how much does it cost to hire a PPC management company? You’re in luck. With this information, you’ll be able to decide if you should hire a PPC management company.
Feel free to reach out to us with any questions or for more information on our PPC management services.