How To Charge for PPC Management?

[Travis Van Slooten]

More and more businesses I talk to want to do PPC so I'm starting to offer this service to a select few of my clients. For those of you that offer PPC services, how do you charge? I'm assuming you pass the actual ad costs to the client but then do you charge a flat management fee or a percentage of ad spend? And if it's the latter, what are typical percentages for this stuff...10%, 20%?

Travis Van Slooten

 

[Eric Rohrback]

The way our PPC works is we have a management fee which is based on how much their ad spend is. The management fee increases as their ad spend gets higher. It's a range of say Under $1k up to $1k in ad spend you pay $200, $1k-$5k you pay $300 or do something similar to that and charge the management fee monthly. That's just kind of an example of one way to do it. The client needs to be responsible for the actual ad spend with Google via credit card. I'd say 10-20% is a reasonable management fee depending on ad spend.

Just remember, unless you do MDO or MDS under your MCC you will need a separate credit card for each account. Otherwise you run the risk of getting the account suspended. Another reason why you should leave actual payment of adspend to the client via their credit card.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks for this! It helps a lot.

Can you explain what "MDO" and "MDS" is? I do have a MCC account because I did do some very limited PPC management for a few clients in the past and to be honest, I've been doing manual payments and funding each account with my own credit card (the client would send me a check and then I would just fund the account with my credit card). So far I haven't gotten in trouble but you're saying I could? Why would Google care as long as they get their money??? Should I be getting their credit card information moving forward or do you think I can continue to fund accounts with my own credit card?

Travis Van Slooten

The way our PPC works is we have a management fee which is based on how much their ad spend is. The management fee increases as their ad spend gets higher. It's a range of say Under $1k up to $1k in ad spend you pay $200, $1k-$5k you pay $300 or do something similar to that and charge the management fee monthly. That's just kind of an example of one way to do it. The client needs to be responsible for the actual ad spend with Google via credit card. I'd say 10-20% is a reasonable management fee depending on ad spend.

Just remember, unless you do MDO or MDS under your MCC you will need a separate credit card for each account. Otherwise you run the risk of getting the account suspended. Another reason why you should leave actual payment of adspend to the client via their credit card.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Just wanted to let everyone know that you are in no danger of using your own credit card across the accounts in MCC. I just got off the phone with Google and they said that is totally fine. As I suspected, it seems they don't care how they get the money...as long as they get it

What I do with my clients is have them pay me upfront for the PPC budget for the month. Once I get the check, then I fund their account under my MCC account with my own credit card.

Travis Van Slooten

 

[Eric Rohrback]

MDO = manager defined order
MDS = manager defined spend

Those are separate payment methods through an MCC. I want to clarify that using your own credit card THROUGH AN MCC is acceptable, but setting up separate accounts with the same credit card will get you suspended. Is that clear?

MCC = many clients under a master account, so you can set up the payments to roll up like an invoice under your name. Using an MCC you can bill clients, have them pay you and Google will send you an invoice to pay off all your clients. This becomes a problem if a client is going to cancel (not a huge one though), because you need to cut them off from your main billing method and they'll need to start running their own credit card.

Your accounts will get suspended if you have credit card 1234 associated with Account X and Account Z, but you do not have an MCC set up to manage them both. To Google it would appear that you're trying to double serve ads.

Does that clear up my point about billing?

---------- Post Merged at 05:56 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 05:54 PM ----------

I want to add it's also much easier to have the client maintain their own billing. What happens if you don't get the check on time? The ads will stop running because you can't fund the account. So having clients provide their own billing method will ensure the ads continue to run, and if they don't because of billing then fingers won't be pointed at you.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood what you were saying. That makes sense as you've detailed it.

And I will definitely start running the billing directly through to the clients once I really get rolling with this. I'm fairly new to managing PPC for clients so for now I'm just billing the client and then paying it myself. This will be ending soon

Travis Van Slooten

 

[Eric Rohrback]

@Travis the main position I was hired for at my current agency is PPC management (though I've been doing Local optimization for a little longer), so if you have questions about account setup/structure, optimization tips, or whatever, I'd be glad to give my input.

Send me a message or post a question on the forum and I'll do my best to help you out. I've been working with clients on pretty small budgets, as well as clients on pretty massive ones (greater than $1million/year), so I've seen some pretty crazy things happen. I'm always glad to help with strategy.