Recently, a German ad agency approached me and asked whether I’d do PPC work for them.
They wanted to offer Google Ads services to their international clients and were looking for an English speaker to do the PPC work.
I told them I could spare 10 hours a week and would charge €70/hour – which is my usual rate, minus a finder’s fee.
They were fine with that. And, after a couple of zoom calls, they made me a formal offer…
€35/hour.
Now, this isn’t one of those rants where I get on my high horse and say, “How dare they!
It’s only business. It turns out they don’t value good PPC management. No reason to take that personally.
I turned them down and that was the end of it.
But there are some things you can learn from this experience…
#1: If a prospect doesn’t value what you do, don’t try to change their mind. Even if you succeed, you’ll almost always end up regretting it. Just go find a better prospect.
#2: There are times you can buy cheap and there are false economies. If their #1 hiring criteria for a PPC manager is “€35/hour or less,” they’re going to end up with unhappy clients who’ll fire them
#3: John Carlton – one of the world’s most respected direct response copywriters – talks about “heartbreak copy.”
Heartbreak copy isn’t bad copy. It’s copy that’s just good enough. Good enough to trick you into thinking it’s good copy.
It brings in enough sales to make a profit. So you persevere with it, never realising just how much money you could be making if you had genuinely good sales copy.
Similarly, €35/hour might get you “heartbreak PPC.” It might get them someone who is good enough to not screw up their clients’ accounts.
But “not screwing up” is a long way from taking an account and scaling it as far as it can go.
To do that, you need a lot more than just basic competence.
You need to marry PPC experience with marketing strategy, data analysis, copywriting, and conversion rate optimisation.
Because it’s the combination of those skills that’ll give you a marketing edge over your competition.
What kind of edge?
The sort that can increase your PPC profits by 673% in just 7 months.
To find out more, check out my (updated) book on multiplying your PPC results:
https://www.ppcmultipliermethod.com/
All the best,
Steve Gibson
