Want to cut spend? How about increasing it instead?
23rd July 2009 Posted in Search
When companies are having to tighten their belts more than ever before, justifying moving a campaign from in-house management to an agency can be difficult.
Unsurprisingly, one of the first questions that we often encounter when people call us is ‘how much do you charge?’. However I’m often more intrigued by the question that tends to follow soon after (sometimes vocalised, or sometimes silently in the mind of the caller) - ‘can you cut our spend by enough to cover your fees?’.
The logic is obvious. If a company can relieve itself of the need to spend hours every week managing its own PPC campaigns, for a net cost of zero, this sounds like a pretty attractive option.
But to my mind, this is missing the point. A wiser question would be ‘how much do you think you can increase the profits we generate from our campaign?’. Sure, one part of the equation for increased profits might be to cut down on wasted spend. But what about if we increased spend by £x and brought in new business worth 50x £x? Wouldn’t this make you happier still?
Some companies’ in-house campaigns we look at are being run very effectively, and offer limited scope for improvement. But some aren’t, and it’s important to keep an open mind about what might be achieved. As an agency, it is normally near-impossible to put numbers on the scope for improvement. But you can trust that we’re in it for the long term, and we try to be as frank as possible about what we think can be achieved. If we use phrases like ‘considerable scope for improvement’ (we try to be polite), don’t get too hung up on cost-cutting.
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