Search engine marketing optimization is critical to obtain the best possible return on investment. There are many factors to consider when marketing via a search engines pay per click platform.
Many factors are within your control to test, analyze and optimize, while other factors are not. Whether your competitors bid on the same keywords, what price they are willing to pay, changes in customers search behavior, changes in industry terms or new features, and other factors may be out of your control. It is possible depending on how you set up your campaign that your daily spend can vary greatly. You may even lose all traffic and not obtain visitors on a particular given day due to factors beyond your control.
Not only do you need to test every possible variable such as the advertisements, time of day, geographic targeting, mobile devices, landing pages, keywords, and many more, but you need to constantly watch the campaigns closely to assure you are maximizing your return on investment.
Outsource or In House?
There are advantages and disadvantages to both. In my opinion you should do both. You should always have someone in house that understands your most crucial business practices. However when it comes to highly specialized fields you also needs experts. A combination of both is an option. I like to be honest with companies so I would not hire an outside firm and then learn what they do and let them go. I would ask them to work along side us and teach in house people also. This way your staff can learn at the same time. Most of these companies in the search optimization space charge monthly or hourly. There are others such as Rank Pay here that have different business models. While they only charge you if you rank well in search engines, the down side is that you do not know what they are doing. Therefore you cannot learn from what they do. However you are not putting any money at risk.