416 Blair Ave,
Reading, PA 19601
Study shows that small businesses waste 25% of their Pay per Click budget! Learn how working with a PPC certified individual/agency could help you maximize the return from your PPC advertising.
Check out our Google Partners Profile Page and Bing Ads Accredited Company Profile Page
Hi, Justin Miller here from DaBrian Marketing Group, and I want to talk to small business owners, and small businesses in general that are running pay per click advertising. There was a study done not too long ago, that shows that up to a quarter of their pay per click budget is being wasted, and how and why is this being wasted? It has to do with not being knowledgeable of the platforms, and how to properly target your ads, as well as just not having the time to properly manage them, and keep them up to date. So, how can you be sure that you’re not wasting 25 percent of your PPC budget? If you need help, looking for a certified agency, or individual, can help cut down that waste, and maximize the return.
But how do you know who is certified, and what exactly does it mean to be certified? So, let’s look a little bit more into that. First off, if you want to run Bing Ads, you’re definitely going to want to look for someone that is Bing Ads certified. What does this mean? It means they’ve passed the knowledge based test.So Bing Ads has put together a test to make sure that these individuals have the knowledge of how to set up, how to run, maintain, and keep up with best practices using the Bing Ads platform, which reaches not just Bing, but also Yahoo Search, as well as Apple’s IOS, on mobile devices. So you can see here, I’m logged in to my account, and I have passed this test. I am one of several that are, Bing Ads certified.
And what you want to look for, as a small business owner, is this accreditation badge. If you see that badge on somebody’s website, that indicates that that individual, or at least that agency, has someone in house that’s employed, that has passed this test, and has proven that they’re knowledgeable and successful at running a Bing Ads campaign. Okay, so that’s Bing Ads.
Next up is Google. Google has a similar type of test, or series of tests actually. So for Google AdWords, if you want to be Google AdWords certified, you have to pass the fundamentals test, as well as one additional specialized test. The specialized tests include search advertising, display advertising, video, shopping, or e-commerce, as well as targeting mobile devices, and advertising via mobile phones. Again, to be certified in AdWords, you have to pass the fundamentals, which is just a high level basic AdWords, PPC advertising exam, as well as one specialized one.
In addition to being a certified individual, companies can earn what is called a partnership, or a Google partner status. Here at DaBrian Marketing Group, we have earned, and maintained that status with Google. So the first step is having at least 1 employee that is certified. We have 2 that are currently certified on staff, and you can see that includes the search and display advertising, as well as some of the other ones that we’ve looked at. Next is, maintaining best practices. So, pay per click as an industry is constantly changing, there’s constantly new updates, and the best practices on how you use these new features, constantly changes along with them. So you have to maintain these accounts, your client accounts, and make sure that you’re keeping up to date with best practice. So here you can see that there’s a minimum requirement, and then the average Google partner’s, requirement, and then where DaBrian Marketing Group currently sits, as far as maintaining best practices.
Next up is experience. You have to show that at least 60 out of the last 90 days that you’ve logged in, and you’re active on these accounts. As you can see, we’re well up and above that in staying active every day on our client accounts, as well as managing a minimum ad spend. There’s a minimum spend of 10K, over 90 days, and currently, we’re just shy of 20K. So, the partnership status shows not only that they have knowledgeable staff who can take and pass those tests and exams, but also the experience in managing a sizable amount of budget over the last 3 months, as well as staying up to date with best practices, and really minimizing that wasted spend, that no company wants to pay out money to see no return for.
So definitely you want to connect with a certified partner, whether it’s Bing Ads, and or Google Partners, or at least AdWords certified. So, the question now is, is your current agency certified? You can go to Google.com/partners and do a search for that agency, or whomever you’re working with, or if you’re looking for an agency. This is a good place to start, and search around, find a local agency, that fits your needs. Some will require a minimum ad spend, and tit shows the different certifications that they have. If mobile advertising is important to you, you definitely want to find an agency that has the mobile advertising certification. Or e-commerce, you definitely want to look for shopping, and such. So hopefully you have a better understanding of what PPC certified means, and how individuals, as well as companies can go about getting these certifications, and working with them, to really minimize that wasted ad spend. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment, or give us a call. The office number is 610-743-5602. Thanks. Have a great day.