AdWords… It’s About the Bottom Line (Video)

Hey Jason -

Good post...couple of comments:

Whole or Parts - While I agree that the holistic view is important (ex. the "bottom line"...the profit), the best way to improve the performance of a campaign is to look at the "parts", and the small changes cascade into bigger results. If you focus on and improve your CTR from X to 2X, then you're doubling the traffic for the same price and increasing your potential sales funnel. If you focus on how to improve your conversion rate from 1 to 2% for example, then you double your revenue on the same effort. NOW, increase your traffic AND increase your conversion and you see BIG impact. I think the only way to affect the "bottom line" is to look at the dots that connect that line.

Fixed Fee vs Management Fee - There's a lot of talk about this in the industry. We're an authorized Reseller of Adwords and work with their business channels, and even the big G talks about this. Some folks do pure fixed fee regardless of monthly budget, some do an agency/management fee, some do a startup fee, and some do a combination of things. Some of the larger SEO organizations handle smaller budgets (<$500 monthly) so the only way to make ends meet is to do higher mgmt fees. Regardless of how a client is charged, it comes down to this...is the consultant providing added value that equals or exceeds their fees? If you look at it this way, then you can focus on ROI and performance based marketing. I will pay and outside company X if their activities provide a value of greater than X.