Today at work was a little different than most of the other days. I was actually doing the set up for something I genuinely wanted to work on.
I have sat back in the shadows for months watching agencies run our PPC campaign and I knew it was time for a change when I was the one recommending all the changes for our campaign based on the best practice in the industry.
I was extremely interested in how it all worked. I would check the statistics daily. The first thing I do every single day when I sit down at work is open Google Analytics and Google Adwords and analyse all the statistics. It has become an obsession and I’m not sure why but I love it.
The whole thing it like its own puzzle, what actions affect what, the consequences of changing different aspects of the campaign and constantly looking ways to improve. It was a change every day, different data, different things to look at.
I’ve started to become a regular at office works with all the ebooks I have been binding. I have 9 books on different topics of each aspect of SEO and PPC that I have printed off from some amazing resources.
Its funny when you are enjoying what you do, you don’t mind doing the mundane tasks that a well-trained monkey could do all in the name of progress. You need to look at the bigger picture and realise that you need to learn the ins and outs of every aspect of something so analytical so you understand the full process and how to make the most of it.
What I realised is that most agencies don’t want to do the monkey work. The would rather set up a generic campaign and do little to no optimization. I am not throwing all agencies in this category because there are some fantastic agencies out there I’m sure I am just yet to personally experience one.
One thing to remember is that no matter how good the agencies is you go with your campaign will only ever be as good as the account manager they put on it. Think about that. You could go with one of the best agencies out there and get the ‘dud’ employee managing your account or by pure chance you might go with a small agency and end up with one of the most motivated people in the industry that are willing to go that extra mile.
I am 99% sure that I can optimize our campaign to see the highest levels of PPC conversions since they started advertising on through Google in September 2013. I can’t wait to share the results with you all early next year.
So what is the bigger picture here for me? I want to create my own 1 man agency. An agency that is willing to do the ground work to actually figure out the smallest details of where your campaign is struggling. I want to work with companies that feel like they adwords accounts have been run on autopilot for way to long and are looking to make some genuine impacts in their campaigns.
That is the PPC side of things. The SEO side is a different story. Despite some positive results already from the website I have been working on, before I offer these services I want to do it from scratch to prove I can do what I need to do for the clients.
That is where Enter Comps comes in, my next website launching in November. I need to create content that will get buzz, and build up relationships and build backlinks. SEO is so much more work than what it seems upfront and if you want it done right it can cost thousands.
It is all well and good to consume as much content as you can but you need to reach a point where you are learning off taking action and that’s what the next few months will be for me.
Once I have all the systems in place, the social proof and resources I need I will open my doors to a very select few amount of clients. It the relationship doesn’t feel right I will turn them down. I want a word of mouth based business with the knowledge of knowing what I can offer and if it is not a good fit having the discipline to let the client know I don’t think it will be a good fit.
November is the month both my PPC experiments begin, as well as my SEO experiments begin and for the first time in a while I can’t wait to get stuck into them.
Watch this space
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