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Posted by anthonycoraggio
Paid search management is a great component of your marketing to outsource or delegate to a specialist. The field moves fast, so even without other responsibilities, keeping up with campaigns on a daily basis and all the developments in the technology and market environment is very demanding. When your time is already at a premium, finding a qualified agency can make a world of difference. Here are some questions to help you choose how to resource your online advertising needs.
The reason you're looking to run PPC campaigns in the first place is because you need to achieve certain business results—but is it actually the best way to get where you need to go right now? Particularly if you're driving a new initiative or running ads for the first time, it's important to take a step back and make sure you're not trying to buy a horse to win an air race, because someone will likely try to sell it to you anyway!
Some red flags to watch out for:
It's important to set expectations realistically. For example, if you're trying to make a big break into the auto insurance market with a couple grand per month, you're going to need some combination of very deep pockets and an outstanding value differentiator. On the other side of the coin, you can't usually lean a major growth initiative on a target segment drawing only a handful of searches every month.
This can actually be a great task for an agency or experienced freelance consultant to address, but if you're still at this stage make sure you're being honest with yourself and them. Be ready to pivot to another channel, and make sure there's a well reasoned backing for any promises of results you receive.
In my experience, finding the right cultural fit is one of the most important things to consider when hiring out. Even if a deal looks good on paper, if you're not on the same page and excited to work together, a cheaper fee or glossy list of credentials is going to lose its shine very quickly.
Both sides of the table tend to start rolling out the idealism and HBR buzzwords during a request for proposals, but it ultimately works out a lot better for everyone if you keep it strictly realistic. Is your company large and methodical, or a scrappy team testing new ideas and patching holes every other hour? These situations demand very different skills and approaches from an agency to be successful, and if expectations are skewed to start, someone will wind up unhappy.
Likewise, make sure to get a proper answer to this question from the agencies you're considering. Just like in any hiring process, behavioral interviewing is going to be your friend. Need rapid responses and creative energy? Have a blunt or demanding teammate they'll need to work with? Ask for examples of how they've succeeded in these kinds of situations in the past.
Are you looking for a bold experimenter or an obedient Igor?
Success in paid search is about much more than tweaking spreadsheets—you'll need to create a cohesive and functional user experience from end to end, and that means some serious work on landing pages, ads, conversion rate optimization, data analysis, and selling the ideas to make it all happen. Before starting a new project, ask these questions:
Don't forget to factor in your plans for SEO, either—paid search is playing on the same field, and you'll want to make sure the two are working together smoothly. If you're also looking for an SEO partner, consolidating the two to a single agency often leads to more and better collaboration.
Last, but certainly not least, don't forget to ask where you see yourself in a year or two, and make that a part of the conversation. Are you aiming to bring the work in-house eventually, or will this stay outsourced for the foreseeable future? A good agency will be ready with a plan to help on-board or even help train a future replacement, and definitely won't hold your account or data hostage.
Scale is an important part of the long term picture too. If you're growing quickly into a rich market and could reasonably expect to double, triple, or 10x the scale of your campaigns in the near future, make sure you share your intent and find a partner who will be prepared when the time comes.
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Things that are going up in value almost always appear to be overpriced.
Real estate, fine art and start up investments have something in common: the good ones always seem too expensive when we have a chance to buy them. (And so do the lame ones, actually).
That New York condo that's going for $8 million? You didn't buy it when it was only a tenth that, when it was on a block where no one wanted to live. Of course, if everyone saw what was about to happen, it wouldn't have been for sale at the price being offered.
And you could have bought stock in (name company here) for just a dollar or two, but back then, no one thought they had a chance... which is precisely why the stock was so cheap.
And the lousy investments also seem overpriced, because they are.
Investments don't always take cash. They often require our effort, our focus, or our commitment. And the good ones always seem like they take too much, until later, when we realize what a bargain that effort would have been.
The challenge isn't in finding an overlooked obvious bargain that people didn't notice. The challenge is in learning to tell the difference between the ones that feel overpriced and the ones that actually are.
The insight is that when dealing with the future, there's no right answer, no obvious choice—everything is overpriced. Until it's not.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Greece Walks Out After 45 Minutes, Talks Collapse; Default Math: Who Foots the Bill? How Much? Posted: 14 Jun 2015 09:22 PM PDT Congratulations to Greece for walking out of 11th hour Troika talks. Greece is going to default sooner or later and the sooner the better for everyone involved. The Financial Times reports Greek Default Fears Rise as 'Eleventh-Hour' Talks Collapse. Talks aimed at reaching an eleventh-hour deal between Greek ministers and their bailout creditors collapsed on Sunday evening after a new economic reform proposal submitted by Athens was deemed inadequate to continue negotiations.Gambling Away the Future I have no love of radical left governments, communists, etc. But I do commend anyone willing to tell the IMF to go to hell. I also commend anyone bright enough to avoid suicide, and that's what accepting the offer would mean. If Greece defaults, as it should, it will have the opportunity to cram the entire bailout straight down the throats of the nannycrats and the IMF. All it has to do is initiate genuine reforms, make an alliance with Russia, cut taxes instead of raising them, and thrive. Alas, the odds of genuine reform is slim, but at least it's possible. Raising taxes to run the required current account surplus to pay back creditors while Greece goes into a 10-year depression is not going to happen. At this point, any alleged gamble is better than a zero percent chance of success. Farce of the Day The Bild statement "Europe and Germany will not let themselves be blackmailed. And we will not let the exaggerated electoral pledges of a partly communist government be paid for by German workers and their families" is the farce of the day. I commented at four years ago that German taxpayers would foot the bill one way or another. Their choice, like it or not, is the same now as it was then: Write down Greek debt voluntarily, or Greece would default on it. This position is not taking sides, it is simply a mathematical certainty based on a simple truism, what cannot be paid back, won't be paid back. Nothing to Lose On June 11, in "Air of Unreality"; "Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?"; Who Has the Gun? I said Greece has nothing to lose by defaulting. I quoted Bob Dylan "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose." I emailed that post to Financial Times writer Wolfgang Münchau but he did not respond. I do not know if he read my email or not, but I do know he agrees. Today Münchau writes Greece has Nothing to Lose by Saying No to Creditors. So here we are. Alexis Tsipras has been told to take it or leave it. What should he do?Default Math If Greece defaults on its official-sector debt, Münchau calculates France and Germany stand to forfeit €160 billion. And what about Spain? Portugal? Münchau has numbers higher than my January 22, post Revised Greek Default Scenario: Liabilities Shifted to German and French Taxpayers; Bluff of the Day Revisited. At that time, I had French exposure at €55 billion and German exposure at €73 billion (a total of €128 billion). I also had Spain at €33 billion and Italy at €48 billion. Both of those numbers are likely way higher today. Even if my numbers are still accurate, where the hell is Spain going to come up with €33 billion? Where will Italy come up with €48 billion? The answer to both questions is simple: they won't. Loaded Gun So who has the loaded gun and who doesn't? If Greece is smart, it will not implement capital controls until the ECB shuts down the ELA, forcing the issue. Greece will then have the ECB and Germany to blame for the resultant controls. By the way, Münchau is a staunch supporter of the eurozone and I certainly am not. Yet, we both arrived at the same conclusion: Greece has nothing to lose by defaulting. The only people who have not figured this out are the nannycrats who believe they have a loaded gun pointed at Greece, when it's Greece that really has the gun. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
"Last Try" in Greece Before Capital Controls: Then What? Best Case Scenario for Greece Posted: 14 Jun 2015 10:45 AM PDT "Last Try" in Greece For years we have heard phrases like down to the last hour, one minute before midnight, now or never, etc. But on every previous occasion, the Troika negotiators pulled an agreement rabbit out of the hat. So, when we read Greece Locked in 'Last Try' Talks with Bailout Negotiators it's easy to be more than a bit skeptical of the serious "final" mature of it all. Talks between Athens and its international bailout creditors were expected to resume late on Sunday after Greek government officials were told to submit a final list of economic reforms in order to secure €7.2bn in desperately needed rescue aid.Primary Surplus Infeasible? The creditors targets for a primary surplus are not infeasible, but they would amount to "induced asphyxiation". And for what? Every bit of that surplus would go to pay creditors. If Greece could get a primary surplus, it's best strategy is simply to default, and use that surplus for internal use rather than to pay back absurd "bailout" loans that should never have been granted in the first place. Grexit might have cost perhaps €30 to €60 billion euros up front had the nannycrats just let Greece go when the problems first arose years ago. Two bailouts and growing Target2 imbalances ever since have turned this into a €330 billion problem, minimum. Capital Controls Coming? The Financial Times reports Greece Running Out of Options to Avoid Capital Controls. Just a few months ago, the possibility that capital controls would be imposed in Greece still seemed distant.Four to Six Weeks Away? Four weeks is a long time. Is it a minute before midnight or not? This is what happened in Cyprus, and it happened in a take-it-or-leave-it offer in a matter of hours, not weeks. Under pressure from its EU partners, Nicosia [capital of Cyprus] agreed to a deep restructuring of its banking sector and a "bail-in" of large depositors — forcing them to accept bank shares for some of their cash — in exchange for a €10bn loan.Bank Meltdown Nonsense. There was a bank meltdown and capital controls are proof of it. To bail out the banks and the bondholders, depositors suffered massively, all for a €10 billion loan that still has to be paid back. Capital Controls, Then What? Here's a link I picked up from ZeroHedge. Open Europe discusses The how, what, when and why of Greek capital controls. How would Greek capital controls be implemented and what form might they take? What's the Aim Capital Controls? The more interesting discussion is the "What's the Aim?" question. I generally agree with the Open Europe writer Raoul Ruparel on this one. Why would Greece go for capital controls?Aim of Dragging Out the Talks My disagreement is the last sentence. I find it hard to believe capital controls are not already seriously discussed - by four groups: Greece, Germany, IMF, ECB. Greece and the ECB are the important ones. If the ECB shuts off Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA), Greeks will not be able to withdraw cash. I propose it's likely that Greek Prime Minister Tspiras purposely dragged out the talks for the express reason of giving people time and reason to withdraw cash. While the negotiations were underway, all to no avail, Greeks pulled money. Unless there is a disorderly mad dash for the exit, the ECB may allow this to continue. We will find out soon enough tonight. But at some point (and I expect far sooner than four weeks from now), Greece will be forced to impose them as soon as ELA is shut down. Bottom line: If you still have money in Greek banks, you are begging for a haircut. By the way, capital controls are in violation of EU rules. Then again, what nannycrats cares about rules? Best Case Scenario for Greece? I outlined the "best case scenario" for Greece in "Air of Unreality"; "Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?"; Who Has the Gun? Best Case ScenarioDefault the Best Option Whether or not Greece chooses to quickly get to a primary account surplus position so that it can stay in the eurozone, it's best option is to default. And if it defaults, capital controls will come as soon as the ECB shuts off ELA (if not before). That discussion has to be going on at the ECB right now. Meanwhile every day that passes by without capital controls is another day Greek citizens have to get their money out of the banks. Why there has not been a mad dash for the exit instead of a slow bleed of cash remains a mystery. Finally, the real fear of the nannycrats has to be that the best case scenario for Greece does indeed happen, proving what any sensible person knew all along: Exit is possible, and there is life after the eurozone. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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