Should you hire international outsourced help from oversees for your Google Adwords pay-per-click campaign? Only if you can avoid these pitfalls.
One Insider’s Advice For Navigating Tricky Outsourcing Waters
With the advent of outsourcing websites like oDesk the question has quickly become, “Should I hire a contractor from oversees for less to do my online marketing (like Adwords pay-per-click)?”
What I am about to share is not theory or speculation. This is personal experience.
I have hired a dozen different contractors from 7 different countries, including eastern Europe (Croatia, Romania, Latvia), south America (Uruguay), and south Asia (Pakistan, India) and east Asia (Philippines).
What Was Good About Hiring Oversees Contractors
The obvious benefit was a lower billable rate. In the U.S., a solid outsourced pay-per-click expert ranges from $25-55/hour. A “good” oversees worker can be obtained for $12-20/hour.
Reality Check: According to surveys of CPAs and attorneys, the average hourly billable rate for an accountant/CPA is $200+, and an attorney ($300).
So, don’t look at an Adwords professional that can make you A LOT of money from your online advertising (pay for him or herself many times over) who charges $50/hour to be too expensive.
Just saying…
And for God’s sake, don’t think you can pay someone $3 to run your Adwords campaign any more than you can pay a good tax attorney minimum wage.
You get what you pay for.
Here’s the question of the day: If the quality of the worker from oversees is equal to what you can find in the U.S. then why pay more than you have to?
Yes, yes, hire American as much as possible. But, in my humble opinion (IMHO for you texters) if you have limited funds, going with someone oversees can make sense.
Comparing Apples and Apples?
Ahhhhh… but, that is the problem. On average, the quality isn’t equal.
The key phrase there is “on average.”
I worked for a year with an oversees contractor who did a fantastic job. But, he was the exception. On average, there were significant problems with outsourced help from oversees… even highly rated ones, and “Google Certified” individuals.
Here is what I found: oversees workers often can do the technical parts of Adwords reasonably well (which is why they can be Google certified… they know how the put the pieces together) but they are often terrible on the marketing side of it (what the pieces should be in the first place).
In other words, it is the difference between “art” and “science type tasks.”
1. Science. Cut and dried “science” type tasks (e.g. adding numbers, filling spreadsheets) are fine because there is a universally right answer. No judgment required. You can train anyone to do that type of task.
2. Art. Art type tasks that require certain contextual understanding (like how to persuasively sell to an American by connecting with them psychologically and culturally), cannot be done effectively by people from another culture.
I can prove this assertion over and over.
Think about it… and trade places for a moment. Could you put together a marketing campaign that resonated with people living in India?
I know I couldn’t. Their attitudes, values, and perceptions are different than mine as an American.
Translating For Cultural Understanding
Top U.S. advertising agencies have a whole catalog of bloopers where they have taken American messages to other countries… and flopped.
For example, Chicken-man Frank Perdue’s slogan, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” didn’t make a lot of sense to Spanish audiences.
It ended up being translated, “It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused.”
Uh-oh.
The way each culture thinks is just different. That is often why jokes from other countries don’t seem funny to us.
Make no mistake, when you advertise online, you must understand marketing and how to get into the mind of your searcher… to touch them and persuade them that your product or service can solve their problem (better than anyone else).
Hiring an outsourced worker from oversees can work for you… but only if you have them doing the right things.
There are several more problems with hiring an overseas worker to set up or run your Google advertising pay-per-click campaign.
You must work around or through these if you want this experiment to work.
What to do next?
1. Do me a favor… leave a quick comment if you found this article helpful, or if you have had experience (good or bad) hiring someone from overseas.
2. Pass this article on to others that might be helped by this advice.
3. Read about more problems with hiring an overseas worker so you won’t be tripped up by these challenges and instead be able to work through them.
Yes, you have nailed this.
AdWords is about Art and Science, and culture is critical.
The mechanical (science) bits of the work are boring and can be automated. The art side of things (ad copy and landing pages) are where the fun and creativity lie.
I personally only manage campaigns where I feel an empathy and enthusiasm for both the client and the market they serve.
If I can’t get excited about a clients dull landing pages, I have nothing to work with.
I’m in the UK, and a lot of my work comes from USA (my first client in 2005 was from Houston) so I’m an outsourced provider. But I only offer a premium service based on results.
I only work with clients where I can earn them a profit from AdWords, so all the budgeting problems go away, and I only get paid sales commission.
So although my service is premium, I’m effectively working for free.
This only works for carefully chosen clients though.
Basing your decision for the success of your AdWords advertising on the hourly rate of your contractor only makes sense for the mechanical parts – not the overall profitability.
Hi Patrick
A good point, brilliantly made. The issues you raise re adwords campaigns surrounding communication and culture, actually play out across skills, even highly technical ones (eg web development). Whilst the code may be universal, the language required to communicate with the coder is not, often leading to a great deal of frustration with the online outsourcing process.