Is it is good idea to hire someone outside the U.S. to setup or manage your Adwords campaign? Only if you factor in these important issues first.
Is it is good idea to hire someone outside the U.S. to setup or manage your Adwords campaign? Only if you factor in these important issues first.
Imagine this situation: you want to advertise your company on Google and have quickly realized doing it yourself requires too much time and expertise to do it right.
Then you hear about all these “Google Certified” workers in counties like India or Bangladesh.
What A Great Solution… Or Is It?
You start licking your chops thinking about paying someone $100 a month to run it for you.
Hold on…
As I discussed in an earlier article (cautions on hiring foreigners to manage your Adwords campaign)….
…You might be getting into more than you bargained for.
As one who has hired dozens of international “independent contractors” for various tasks in his business, let me give you some honest advice.
Obviously, I believe it can work. I have and continue to do it.
But, I have learned a few things that you need to be aware of if you want to proceed.
Significant Barriers Not Fully Considered
There were several barriers that I didn’t give enough weight to when I started. They can quickly derail this outsourcing idea… or leave a bad taste in your mouth… unless you go in with your eyes open.
1. Cultural Ignorance. Even for people who speak English reasonably well but who grew up in another culture, there are things they can’t possibly understand about things that we in the US all take for granted.
For example, I had one “Google Certified” contractor from India who was asked to create a pay-per-click campaign for a pest control client. He did an ok job setting up the campaign, but his understanding of the keywords and how to advertise these services were almost comical.
One of his ads for termite service was “we will kill those termites crawling across your floor” like they were spiders or roaches. He didn’t understand that termites eat out the unseen parts of your home.
2. Command of the language. I have had oversees outsourcers use language in a way that sounded foreign. No pun intended. Sometimes, they sounded like Andy Kaufmann’s character from Taxi.
For example, one ad might say “Let us paint your house and we will paint it for you!” Huh? It is like taking a foreign phrase and running it through the Google translator, having it sound bizarre.
Frankly, I would have the same problem if I tried to help Indian businesses advertise to their prospects. So, it isn’t a knock against “foreign workers” as much as it is acknowledging the barriers of using cross cultural workers in the marketing realm.
My rule of thumb for hiring an oversees contractor for Adwords expertise is to have them work under the supervision of an American pay-per-click (PPC) team member.
My PPC team is headed up by a born and breed American, who understands marketing, how Americans think, what is important to us, etc.
In fact, I hire American for other copywriting and advertising type positions.
Not only have we seen excellent results, I also have a lot fewer headaches.
Honest Advise For Business Owners
If you are in need of expert pay-per-click help for your Google Adwords campaign, do yourself a favor and pay a few more dollars and go American. You can find them on oDesk and Elance too.
For most US based businesses, the easiest, fastest way to get the best Google Adwords results is to hire American
If you really want to use an oversees contractor for your pay-per-click campaign, just be prepared to be very involved in the campaigns… and hire and let go quite a few workers. You will find some gems in the mountain of rocks.
What You Can Do Next
1. If you need U.S. based assistance with your Adwords advertising, consider 2nd Mile Marketing. We really are good at what we do, delivering an outstanding ROI.
2. If you simply want to do Adwords yourself, download our free report, “14 Vital Tips To Improve Your AdWords Campaign.” It is full of great ideas that can significantly improve your campaign.
3. Leave a quick comment if you found this article helpful, or pass it on to others who might benefit from this advice.
I can understand where Patrick is coming from but I strongly disagree with him when he clubs all overseas PPC experts as people who would ruin your PPC campaign.
However, the fact that he is indicating that all Indians, Pakistan and Philippines are the same – they have little or no ability in communicate in English, do not understand the American culture at all and in fact, who are cheap ($3 an hour) and will mess up the content of the content of the advertisements.
Patrick if you pay peanuts then you will get monkeys and you should be ready for that specially if you pay $3 an hour you will get monkeys and not PPC experts.
Further it is wrong to say that if you hire PPC experts from abroad it would be a disaster. I’m sorry if Patrick had such an experience in the past but I can say from my personal experience I know a lot of PPC experts and customers who have had positive experience when they hired overseas PPC experts.
My advice would be to do due diligence when hiring overseas PPC professionals. For any social media campaign to be successful the business owner’s participation is needed because he knows the business best and they have to advise outside social media to ensure that the social media marketing campaign is going in the right direction.
Pali,
You are certainly correct that there are some good PPC contractors oversees. I have worked with some who were very good (BTW- I have paid at least $15/hour, not $3).
They often know all sorts of things about Adwords that come from working in lots of accounts. I still consult with one from Croatia who is a genius on these things.
But, I will stick to my guns in saying that managing an Adwords campaign includes not only the technical side of getting the most out of an Adwords account structure, but also marketing, and a psychological understanding of the target audience. Even my best overseas Adwords team members repeatedly turned to me for advice and correction on the nuances of why people buy a certain product or service and how to word an ad to connect with them on psychological levels.
The best PPC results come from having an integrated Adwords and landing page strategy. That comes down to psychology and persuasion triggers that resonate with the searcher.
Most business owners who employ an overseas worker for Adwords are pretty clueless on the psychological triggers aspect, let alone Adwords. When they hire someone, they think it is a packaged deal and it will all get handled. It doesn’t. What they often get are mediocre results.
The most optimized Adwords campaign that misses the mark on connecting with their target searcher is only going to be have mediocre results.