A pay-per-click (PPC) agency is an invaluable asset to e-commerce businesses looking to optimize their online presence, maximize their ad budget and increase their bottom line.
As a data-driven advertising strategy, PPC also gives businesses essential insights into their target audience’s preferences and expectations, making it easy to tailor their services to meet those expectations. When done properly, PPC has proven to be the secret sauce of most e-commerce businesses’ success, as it is said to convert 50% better than organic search.
With the many benefits PPC offers to small business owners, only a few know how to run PPC ads that bring needed results. Plus, PPC can be very complex and time-consuming, making it almost impossible for small business owners to commit their time to it.
Are you looking to start an e-commerce PPC agency online? If yes, you’re in luck, as most businesses are searching for PPC experts to take the PPC advertising troubles off their shoulders. Here’s a detailed step-by-step guide to starting your own e-commerce PPC agency.
Steps to Starting an E-commerce PPC Agency
Table of Contents
1. Acquire the Relevant PPC Skills
Like every service-rendering business, you must acquire the necessary skills to succeed as a PPC expert. These skills include good knowledge of digital marketing and how pay-per-click advertising works, strong analytical skills, sound data manipulation, and mathematical skills. Alternatively, you can have one of the most important skills in business (the ability to assemble the right talents to do a job), and you’ll be able to run a PPC agency successfully.
Businesses want results quickly, so if they’re outsourcing their digital marketing tasks to you, you better be the expert that gives them the desired results. Being able to handle every PPC-related task for your clients will bring much-needed customer satisfaction and loyalty to your business.
2. Choose a Brand Name and Identity
You can’t successfully run an e-commerce PPC agency without a brand name and identity. Therefore, you have to choose a name that best presents you as the expert you are. Study your target audience and the services you’ll render them, then pick a name that resonates with them. Of course, it has to be a unique name that, when mentioned, will only remind your customers of your services.
As important as your brand name is, your brand identity gives it a deeper context. What will your brand be known for that your competitors are not offering? Your brand name, logo, mission, and vision statements should align with your brand’s simple, unique selling proposition.
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3. Determine What Services to Offer
It’s essential to determine the services you will offer from the beginning. Then expand as your brand grows and hires more experts. Most PPC agencies offer the following services:
- Search engine marketing
- Display advertising
- In-stream advertising
- Social media advertising
- Google shopping advertising
- Remarketing or Retargeting advertising, etc.
The broader your service catalog, the more customers you will get. This is also where you should define your service charges and how best to present them to your clients. You can offer consultancy services and get hourly or bid rates based on projects or milestones. Furthermore, determine whether you want your clients to pay a given monthly amount for a listed number of services or to collect payments on the go for every service rendered.
4. Create a PPC Business Plan
Setting up an e-commerce PPC agency without a proper business plan is like setting out to fail. A business plan is an ultimate guide to navigating every point in your business as you grow. Think of it as a GPS that shows you threats and opportunities to avoid or grab in your business.
In a business plan, you’ll determine the cost of setting up your business, the rates you’ll charge to stay solvent, and how long it would take you to break even. It’s also in the business plan, you’ll clearly outline your goals, missions, and vision to refer to them whenever you seem to be going off the track. Therefore, you must draft a business plan that portrays how you want your e-commerce PPC agency to be run.
Apart from helping you get a clearer view of how you want your e-commerce PPC agency to be run, a business plan will be useful when you need a loan to finance some aspects of your business. No bank or credit agency will offer you a loan if they don’t see a well-defined roadmap of how your business can repay the loan.
5. Launch Your Agency and Promote It
Once your brand name and identity are set, and you have a working business plan for your e-commerce PPC agency, it’s time to launch. However, before you launch, ensure your business has met the legal requirements of operating in the country where it’s to be domiciled.
Haven launched the business, and the next step is to go on a promotion campaign. This is where you show your target customers what your business will bring to them. Use PPC campaigns to promote your business to these prospects. Show up on their faces daily with quality ad copy, headlines, and irresistible offers, and make them understand you can do the same for their business.
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Ready to Start Your Own E-commerce PPC Agency?
The PPC industry is a highly competitive one. Many agencies are bidding for the same projects you’ll be bidding for. Therefore, before you start your own e-commerce PPC agency, ensure you’re ready to work to become an authority in the industry.
The truth is hard work and passion for giving the best result to your clients are what sets you apart in this industry. And luckily, only a few agencies out there possess those qualities. So, you only need to put in, say, 10,000 hours in your company, bring in additional skills and resources, and you’d already be in the top 2% of the industry.
Now that you feel ready to start, can you go on to share this article with others who might need it?
