The client is always right? Not in PPC

If you are running PPC campaigns for other people, you probably got the chance to meet this “I know everything” kind of client.

This client will tend to tell you right from the beginning of the activity why your text ads suck and that he’s idea is much better. Of course I’m not talikng about a client with long history of online marketing, but on a “newbie” client that thinks he knows everything his customers want. Do you know what I mean?

Well, lucky us that there is no “the client is always right” in PPC management.

I suggest this:

First of all, don’t get mad. Try asking him where did he get this information on his clients from?, did he ever do a PPC campaign that you’re not aware of ?. If not, than try to explain that online customers might act differently from offline customers.

If that doesn’t help, it’s time to pull out your secret weapon. Ask him if he believes in the saying “the client is always right”. As a business owner, he must agree with this saying, so tell him “let’s leave it to your customers to decide”. Explain to him that the PPC campaign is the best way to finally understand what is the client’s best USP by trying different text ads. Ask him to imagine how knowing his best USP can improve his business understanding and comprehension and eventually his ROI.

Most clients will give up here. But if yours doesn’t – than I’m afraid you have to. Unfortunately, although I believe that in PPC there is no “the client is always right”, there’s just “the users are always right”, you sometimes just have to give up. Just make sure your opinion is heard before, so the client wouldn’t go and blame you for his bad performance.

If you also have an example of this “I know everything” client – please share.

PPC Week Highlights

First let me start with a confession. It’s hard to be a blogger. writing posts can take up to a few hours, and I don’t ever double check myself when I write it. It’s just that I have this 9 to 6 job that is taking most of my time and energy. Don’t get me wrong – I like doing what I do (PPC), but it’s hard to have a full time job and my own blog.

I just had to get it out of my system. No more whining in this post I promise.

Anyway, I want to start a new “PPC week highlights” posts in this blog.  What do I mean, you ask? I mean that every week or so, when ever I don’t have time or energy to write my own posts, I will just mention some cool and interesting posts in other blogs which I read that week.

Let’s Start:

• Praise and Caution for the AdWords Opportunities tab – PPC hero wrote a nice article about the new Opportunities tab you should check out. I think it’s a very nice tool for keywords ideas and expansions. And by the way, if you can’t find your “tools” tab, it’s because all your tools are now in the Opportunities tab.
• Be Careful When Evaluating Paid Search Tests – George Michie wrote on SearchEngineLand about the difficulties PPC marketers sometimes have when running a new test on their accounts. Advanced Stuff..
• Google AdWords Bidding Tutorial - Hal Varian, one of the big guys at the paid search department in Google, has posted a new video in which he explain how to use the bid simulator and some advanced calculations to decide your bidding strategy. He’s explaining some really important stuff and although its title is “tutorial”, it’s defenitely not for beginners.

More news that are not worth reading posts about:

• adCenter now has an ads preview tool. So now you can use it to find where your ad is and if it’s showing without adding another impression to your ad.
• Yahoo removed their Norwegian, Danish and Swedish interfaces. Who ever used it is now forced to use the English interface.
• I’ve been to London this last weekend and it was great!