What is PPC consulting?

Well, this is quite a broadly defined topic and one that we used to do about three years ago when I first started out, helping people with their PPC accounts. PPC consulting is generally where you have a client, like a local business, such as a dentist, a doctor or a local gym, and you run their advertising accounts, such as Google AdWords or Facebook.

You basically manage their advertising account, for a set fee per month. So for us, that used to be a plastic surgeon, our first decent sized client, and we were getting paid a couple of thousand Australian dollars.

He was an Aussie client, and we used to manage his Facebook and his Google AdWords spend, and try and get him as many leads as we could. That was a model that we did about three years ago, and since then it’s changed quite a bit, but yeah, that is the definition of PPC consulting in my eyes.

“I was trying all sorts of entrepreneurial endeavors, including selling pot plants buying property, and making generally some bad decisions”

How did you start out?

Well, it’s a long and painful journey actually. I graduated from university, with a degree in chemical engineering. Then I went straight into working in the water industry. I was good at maths and science and things like that, so it was one of those things that I did because I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. From that, I realised pretty quickly, it wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I was trying all sorts of entrepreneurial endeavors, including selling pot plants and buying property, and making generally some bad decisions.

I tried all these things, and then eventually, I stumbled across a website called, Wealthy Affiliate University, which was all about selling other peoples products, or services using search engine optimization. I think I made my first dollar online by selling iPhone insurance, for a company.

So I would build a website, someone would type in iPhone insurance, they would find my website, click on the link, and go through and buy iPhone insurance, through this big client’s website, and he used to pay me half of whatever that website generated. So that’s how I started out in this game.

I was in and out of work, in and out of my full-time job, it was a real struggle”

What happened next?

The next progression for me was, I figured out that SEO was really difficult, and I wasn’t smart enough to do that. I began searching for ways, to help clients other than SEO.

The immediate option was pay per click marketing. At that stage, Facebook was in its infancy, and I learnt Google AdWords, so I had a mentor. I got a guy called Mike Rhodes, based in Melbourne Australia, and I followed his courses and learnt how to run Google AdWords campaigns. Initially, we started out doing this, in the ‘traditional’ consulting way, where we were finding clients.

I think I was door knocking at that time, trying to get our local businesses. We had a real estate agent, and I think a car sales company. We would be paid a monthly retainer, to manage these clients advertising accounts.

So I went from affiliate marketing and SEO, it took me a couple of years to get there, and then I finally started a business, where I was doing the PPC consulting. Meanwhile, I was in and out of work, and in and out of my full-time job, so it was a real struggle. That’s how I started, and eventually, I got to the stage, where we were selling leads as a business, rather than consulting fees for monthly retainers.

“I made bad hiring decisions, and then all of a sudden, this was a business that was spiraling a little bit out of control”

Why doesn’t PPC consulting work?

It’s something that is pretty dear to my heart actually, because I was that person, as I’ve just explained, where I was working for a dentist, a plastic surgeon, a real estate agent, and I was hustling my backside off trying to get them leads, and they were paying me anywhere between, £500 and £2,000 a month, so I had maybe five or six clients. At that stage, I thought I had enough to quit my job, and I made my first hire.

I was bringing in maybe £7,000 or £8,000 a month, but then I realized I needed more clients because I had a staff member to pay, I had to move into an office, I had to pay business insurance. I had to pay an accountant and a bookkeeper, and all of these things start adding up. I realized that the money was not enough, and it was not a sustainable business, so I went out and tried to get more clients, and we did that, then I had to hire someone else. I made bad hiring decisions, and then all of a sudden, this was a business that was spiraling a little bit out of control, and the only way to make it work, was to get more clients and hire more people.

The income was going up, but so were my overheads, and it was a never-ending spiral of pain, to be honest with you. So when I say PPC consulting doesn’t work, I know that because I’ve been there. A little caveat, there are some people that make it work, but generally, these are people that have got some real authority in this space.

They might have written a book, they do a lot of networking and presentations, at marketing events and things like that, which allows them to land really big clients. For the majority of us, it’s a really difficult sell, to be charging large fees, when you’re doing PPC consulting. The other reason why PPC consulting doesn’t work, is because of the sales process, that you have to go through to land these clients. It used to go something like this for me.

So Mr client, would you like us to look after your advertising accounts, and get you leads for your business? What we need from you is a three-month commitment. Our fee is £1,500 a month, and we also need to charge you for some landing pages. We also need to charge you for some creatives. We need to get your analytics set up, that’s gonna take time, we’re gonna have to charge you for that as well. So all in all, we were asking for, at least a minimum of three months commitment.

We were asking them to fund their advertising accounts for a minimum of £3,000 per month, in order to make it work. Then when you add that all up in your head, you realize that you are actually, asking them for a £10,000, £15,000 commitment, when they don’t even really know you. They don’t know how good you are, and they don’t know whether you can get them results, so it’s a really, really hard sell. That is another reason why PPC consulting, is a tough, tough market.

“As we’ve gained experience over the years, we know how to generate great quality leads”

What is the alternative?

What we do now, is we actually sell leads to the businesses that we work with, rather than sell consultancy services. The way we approach the clients, is we say to them, here we go, we can deliver you a hundred leads, would you be interested? They say yes or no, or they say yes, we say fine. We set up their landing pages, we set up their ads, and we drive a hundred leads to them. They pay us for those leads up front. If they work they buy more leads, if they don’t work, then we go to the next client.

It is a much easier way to close a deal. It’s a much safer investment for the clients we approach because they’ve got a minimal risk, it’s only a hundred leads. As we’ve gained experience over the years, we know how to generate great quality leads. Generally, if we land a client whose got deep pockets, we will work with them until they’re happy with the quality of leads that we’re supplying. So the alternative to traditional PPC consulting is selling leads through digital marketing.

It’s what we’ve been doing for the last three years, and it is what has changed my life. What results can you expect and how fast? Generally, if a client wants to buy leads from you, they don’t wanna wait four weeks, or five weeks, for you to build the campaign out. We’ve developed a system now that allows us to build the ads, the landing pages and everything we need, in order to generate leads within two or three days. And generally, once we have the system set up, and the leads going into their CRM or being emailed to them, we can get going in four or five days.

“We have clients now that are ordering over a thousand leads from us a week. So it can scale up very quickly if you’re able to generate great quality leads”

What kind of results can you expect?

Well, if you start off and you’re generating a hundred leads per day, and this client has deep pockets, they will generally increase by increments of a hundred. We have clients now that are ordering over a thousand leads from us a week. So it can scale up very quickly if you’re able to generate great quality leads.

As far as the margin between what the leads cost to generate, and what we sell them for, usually around 50%, so it is quite profitable. We are holding a masterclass weekly, for the next eight weeks I believe. It could be longer, depending on how well it goes, and how much interest we get. But we are teaching what we do, and the whole process of how we reach out to the clients, how we find the clients, what the offer is, how we set up our campaigns in Facebook, how we generate and build the landing pages.

We explain everything to you within this masterclass, so please click the link and I will see you there.

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