What is PPC Management?
Many think PPC management is just about pressing a few buttons and watching the leads and sales roll in. Unfortunately, that’s not true. It’s a full-time job that demands strategic thinking, constant optimisation, and a solid understanding of the business and the advertising platforms. And when done right, it can be one of the most powerful tools.
Whether you’re a founder juggling multiple hats, a marketing lead trying to stretch a limited budget, or just tired of wasting money on underperforming campaigns, proper PPC management can be the difference between scaling fast or burning cash.
This guide will explain PPC management, what a specialist or agency should do for you, and whether outsourcing is right for your business. Suppose you’re looking for real ROI, not just traffic. Read on.
Table of Contents:
What is PPC Management?
In short, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) management is the endless time invested into creating and maintaining a business’s PPC accounts. The ultimate goal is to ensure that the budget invested in PPC campaigns continues to return the desired return on investment (ROI).
Four main activities form part of PPC Management. The first is setting up advertising accounts and tracking. The second is research and campaign creation. The third is budget and bid management. And lastly, reporting and long-term optimisation. PPC management can happen in two ways, either in-house (by yourself or your team) or by a third-party agency or consultant.
If you want a bettering understanding of what PPC Advertising is, read our What is PPC Advertising article here.
What Does a PPC Agency or Specialist Typically Do?
Below are some of the key activities that should form part of the duties of any PPC agency:
Creating PPC Strategies
Agencies will work with you to understand your product or service and the inner workings of your business. They will then use their knowledge and expertise to create a PPC roadmap for your business. This document should explain who they are targeting, how they plan to do this, and what results they aim to achieve.
Keyword Analysis
Look at clients’ potential words when searching for your specific service or product and create a list of keywords and phrases that must be included or excluded from your PPC activities.
Competitor Analysis
Your agency will research tactics and strategies your competition uses in PPC. The result should include actionable insights into what you can do in your PPC campaigns and what you should avoid doing.
Account Set-up and Tracking
An advertising account is created for your businesses if one doesn’t already exist. The agency should set up your new or existing account using platform best practices. Part of this process is implementing tracking on your website. Tracking will ensure that traffic gets attributed to the correct marketing source.
Campaign and Ads Set-up
The agency will actively create campaigns on your advertising account and set up ads. For search advertising, keywords will determine the campaign structure and ad assignment. For Display and Shopping ads, the agency might group campaigns by themes or categories.
Daily Campaign Management
This is the ongoing process where the agency tracks search terms and conversion actions on the account to keep PPC campaigns moving in a profitable direction. The agency may add negative keywords to your account when you appear for undesirable searches. It can also include new keywords to your strategy or adjust ad copy.
Ongoing Reporting and Optimisation
When agencies provide real data on your PPC account performance on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. Reporting should measure actual results against agreed-on KPIs and include actionable plans the agency will take to improve your PPC account’s performance in the coming days.
A/B Testing
In the long run, agencies should continuously test new things to improve the performance of the PPC account. Testing can include testing different versions of ads, landing pages, and client journeys. A/B testing is when multiple assets are tested simultaneously by splitting user traffic between them.
Who Should Hire a PPC Management Agency?
Hiring a PPC agency will come with an added expense, but in most cases, it should pay for itself. It’s still important to understand if hiring one is right for your business before throwing good money after bad.
If Your Business Identifies With the Below, You Will Likely Benefit From Hiring a PPC Agency:
- Your business is new to PPC advertising and doesn’t have in-house skills and knowledge.
- Hiring a full-time PPC expert is not an option for your business. A good full-time PPC specialist in the UK could cost between £40,000 and £65,000 per year.
- Your business does not have the internal resources required to support an internal PPC specialist. For example, graphic designers, website designers, developers, copywriters, and managerial capacity.
- Your business has a large enough marketing budget to support a long-term PPC campaign. For reference, you would likely need to spend more than £2,000 a month to see great results on PPC. This cost will likely exclude agency management fees. If you want to know more about the cost of PPC agencies, read our How Much Do PPC Agencies Charge article here.
A dedicated PPC agency should have the skills and expertise needed to do proper PPC management on your business’s behalf. PPC agencies will also cost less than hiring a full-time PPC manager, or at the very least, a lot less than setting up an internal team to support one.
The Advantages of PPC Management by an Agency
When a skilled, knowledgeable and competent PPC Agency gets involved in managing PPC campaigns for your business, there are many benefits in the short and long run. Here are a few examples:
Lower Cost to Your Business
Hiring an entire marketing team that can sustain PPC, web design, development, and creativity can quickly become costly. PPC agencies can spread these operational costs between numerous clients they work with. This gives your business access to high-value PPC skills, expertise, and competence at a much lower price.
Less Time Consuming
Setting up an internal PPC management team can be a never-ending time investment. You have to find competent people and hire them. The team will need resources, management and training to succeed. And in the end, people tend to resign and leave, which means this process starts again. You don’t have to worry about this when using a PPC management agency. Agencies will take care of the hiring and training on your behalf. The only thing that you need to focus on is running your business.
More Accountability and Flexibility
Agencies work on a contract basis, which could expire or be terminated. They are usually aware of this, and client retention should be at the heart of their business. When agencies perform poorly, you can end the relationship and move on. When internal teams underperform, it’s a lot more complicated to make a change.
Agencies Have Connections with Platforms
Many PPC agencies have special access to support within platforms like Google and Meta. When you use a PPC management agency, you can leverage their relationships for your business. Agencies could help resolve support queries faster. They can also get early access to new platform features.
Tap Into Industry PPC Knowledge
Most agencies focus their efforts on specific industries. They accumulate a wealth of PPC-related knowledge agencies can bring to your business. When a PPC agency has experience in your industry, they can help you hit the ground running and avoid pitfalls.
Final Thoughts
PPC management is far more than just placing ads. It’s a strategic, data-driven process that requires constant attention, testing, and optimisation to deliver real results. Whether you’re running campaigns in-house or through an agency, success depends on your ability to align PPC with your business goals, manage spend wisely, and continuously adapt to changing platforms and competition.
For most growing businesses, a PPC agency is the most effective route. It allows you to benefit from their knowledge, faster execution, access to more support, and spread out costs. Investing in a PPC management agency could be smart if your business is ready to get serious about paid search and drive consistent, high-quality traffic.
ADdictive Digital is a transparent, results-driven PPC agency in Manchester, United Kingdom. Book a Free Discovery Call with us today.
Derick Turner, Founder of ADdictive Digital
About the Author
After a decade in digital marketing, I’ve observed that many agencies fall short simply because they lack sufficient understanding of their clients’ businesses.
At ADdictive, we take a different approach. We invest the time needed to understand your business, your objectives, and the unique challenges you face, so we can help you navigate them effectively and achieve lasting results.
Derick Turner, Founder of ADdictive Digital
