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PPCPath: Bridging The Gap For Small Business

Google AdWords is the worlds largest and most customizable advertising platform. To date, more than one million businesses around the world take part in the AdWords infrastructure to serve relevant ads to their ideal audience all over the internet. AdWords is a deceptively complex system to master, and AdWords management agencies help advertisers maximize the efficiency and profitability of their campaigns by optimizing AdWords accounts for their clients on a daily basis. Merely advertising on Google has become increasingly competitive and increasingly expensive, and many small businesses simply don’t have the budget to both pay Google for ad clicks and pay a management agency their monthly maintenance fees. This puts a huge amount of small businesses in a sticky situation. They know that they either don’t have the time or the expertise (or both) to manage their advertising dollars effectively, and as much as they wish they did – they can’t afford to hire an agency. This compromised state makes it difficult for many SMB’s to get the most out of their PPC initiatives. PPCPath is one of the only companies out there today providing a comprehensive solution to this exact conundrum. While there is no dearth of optimization tools and platforms available to agencies and individual advertisers, most of these tools focus primarily on helping account managers optimize accounts more efficiently and don’t offer much in the way of actual management. A small business owner with only a fledgling working knowledge of the AdWords system will find little use in most of the popular tools available today.

After creating your free PPCPath account, you’ll be directed to a dashboard that offers one of the most visually appealing and easy to understand overviews of your account performance. Beneath your dashboard you have PPCPaths’ Best Practices Modules. Each module is graded on a score of 1 – 10, reflecting the relationship between that particular area of your account and AdWords’ general best practices. Opening up any module accordion will give you a visual performance graph along with actionable insights as to where your account could use improvement. PPCPath will also give you actual suggestions that will help your account run more efficiently. Here’s an example of the expanded Ads Module and a sampling of the great advice you’ll receive: Beneath your Best Practice Modules, PPCPath provides an outstanding glossary of common PPC jargon just in case theres an abbreviation or term you’re unfamiliar with. With an upgraded account (at very affordable rates), you’ll be able to create to-do lists that will help you keep to a consistent optimization schedule as well as see the trending data that will allow you to determine the results of your efforts. But here is where PPCPath becomes truly unique – and a truly effective alternative for many SMB’s to traditional agency management. PPCPath allows you to create what they call “Projects”. Projects allows you to select exactly what you need to be done in your account (wether it be adding 10 new ads or completely restructuring your account), and contract a freelance certified AdWords expert right from within the slick PPCPath interface. Once you select your project, you’ll see a detailed summary of the work you can expect your personal AdWords expert to do for you along with projected turnaround time.

In the next step, you’ll be able to specify any particular goals and special consideration you want your “optimizer” to account for. You’ll then be able to choose two freelancers from a list of certified professionals PPCPath has negotiated contracts with. They’re all great choices, and each optimizer has a laundry list of credentials that will actually make this step somewhat difficult. Just go with your gut because they really are all very qualified. The rates are extraordinarily reasonable (just $75 for a Google certified expert to research your industry and develop 10 new creative ad copies for you to test), and once you confirm the project and checkout your project will begin. Here’s an example of the neat work summary page you get once your project is complete: As far as I’m aware, PPCPath has developed the first all inclusive solution to a major problem in the industry today. Advertisers can now not only optimize their accounts themselves based on the suggestions in their dashboard and best practice modules, but they can also contract out specific projects to trusted experts at affordable hourly rates. This can also be a great opportunity for seasoned account managers who encounter specific hurdles in their or their clients’ accounts and want a second set of eyes to assess and potentially solve the problem. Upgrading to the Plus account for $25 per month allows you to connect unlimited campaigns under one account, create to-do lists and access trends so you can track your progress over time. The Pro plan at a mere $60 per month allows you to connect an unlimited number of accounts into the PPCPath dashboard. It’s a really great tool that offers many a small business AdWords advertiser a system that finally allows them to take advantage of industry leading expertise at transparent and affordable rates. And when they’re not contracting out specific projects, they have access to a simplified, well organized dashboard that also generates some excellent advice to increase campaign performance. Take their free account for a spin today … you really only have what to gain.