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How much should I spend on Google Ads?
Posted by on August 7, 2020 at 6:30 pmOr rather, “How much should I tell my client to spend on Google Ads?”
Am I jaded? Or, is this questions ridiculous?
I currently white label PPC services for a few agencies. Frankly, I’m barely a small time freelancer, but I love what I do and I specifically love educating agencies and other freelancers on how to use PPC platforms better, get clients, manage relationships, and the works.
There are pros and cons to the white-label life. On one hand I get to have steady work, on the other hand I don’t get to hand pick the accounts I work on. I work on whatever accounts the agency needs work on.
But lately I have been running into a new problem. One of the agency owners I am contracted with wants to grow his business and client list – which I support in more ways than one. I am contracted to do the behind the scenes work, but with this agency I keep getting looped into client meetings, and eventually the agency owner expects me to manage the relationship. He has even asked me to create proposals for EVERYTHING, including new website builds, seo, social media, and PPC. (I only do social media, paid ads, and offer UX input). I tried to explain – these are YOUR clients, and that he needs to make the proposals.
I dont understand. But back to the real reason why I’m making a post.
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**How do you respond to clients who ask what budget they should be spending?
Here’s what I do:
1) I request access to any current or previous PPC accounts to check CTR, avg CPC, and CVR, etc.
2) I request access to GA to look at onsite behavior and determine if there are any issues.
3) I check the website to see if it looks *good enough* to convert the paid traffic.
4) I calculate with the client to determine the minimum level of success to generate a profit.
*VOILA.* There’s your minimum budget required to start.
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If you are given NONE of these things. How do you approach this question “How much budget should I tell the client to spend?” with your client (or agency in my case).
Do you request a low budget to collect data?
Do you have minimum spend requirements to sign with a client?
Do you flat out ask the client what budget they have set aside for this marketing campaign?
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I find this question ridiculous because either the budget is determined by data, based on desired performance, avg cpc, and conversion rates. OR. Its based on the predetermined budget that the company has set aside.
But, I keep getting asked this question, and I feel like I’m being asked to pull the rabbit out of a hat. Am I getting jaded or is this actually frustrating for anyone else?
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2 Replies
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Sometimes ya just gotta make it up lol
Use the keyword planner to get a sense of CPCs and go from there. Just MAKE SURE you set the expectation that budgets may change because it’s kind of a shot in the dark.
in these instances, I’ll sometimes set a small “trial” budget just to get a better sense of how things perform
EDIT: FWIW we do set spend minimums at our agency. highly recommend this to avoid clients with high expectations and ridiculously low budgets
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As little as humanly possible is my answer.
You can approach that with two answers:
1. Would you mind putting a million dollars into google ads if you’d make 2 million dollars back?
2. Do you want to keep improving the ads until you got a formula that works where you can do 1?The way I set it up for clients is the following:
1. We start with a research period where we try different keywords, A/B test ads and work different pricing models.
2. We improve based on that progress and the analytics and search console numbers.
3. We create a Google Data Studio sheet that you get monthly
4. Possibly create a CPA code for e-commerce, bookings etc…
5. Keep improving until the price goes down and you know that with every time you spend 1 dollar you get 1.2$ , 1.3$ back etc…That way you can slowly lower the cost until the thing practically runs itself as well as working on a retainer for a longer time and charge monthly, with time your work becomes less, clients are happier and they’ll start recommending you.
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The agency you’re working with is taking advantage of you, you have to be quick to put your foot down on bullshit, otherwise you’ll be stuck in that.
Start charging for proposals and time used on preparations if its not your job, tell them you’ll be happy to do it but you have at least one mouth to feed, possibly more, clients will respect your time and do the groundwork before they bother you as you are sending bills to them.
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Never be afraid to lose bad clients. A 200$ you lose on free work for a bad client is also a 200$ you could have made somewhere else, it adds up quickly.
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But to answer the question. I’d put down 2-3 scenarios with budgets and just do a testing proposal.
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