Start with a diagnosis, not a service. Weak PPC is usually a symptom of a listing, price, or targeting problem, and each has a different owner. If the cause really is campaign structure, hire a flat-fee managed service where one operator carries few enough accounts to work inside your account weekly.
The short version
- The costliest mistake in advertising is buying help for the wrong symptom. Plenty of accounts with ugly ad numbers do not have an ads problem.
- Impressions, clicks, and orders break for different reasons. Name the failing stage before anybody touches a bid.
- Ads amplify a page, they do not repair one. Spending harder against a page that closes badly buys more of the same result.
- Ask how many accounts the person on your account carries. Ours carry about 1.4 brands each, and that ratio decides how often a human actually reads your search term report.
- Buy the diagnosis before the retainer. A written audit should cost you nothing, and here it does not.
Symptom, cause, owner
The pattern I see most often in accounts coming to us: the seller decides advertising is broken, signs a PPC specialist, and six weeks later has tidier campaigns and the same profit. Campaign structure was never the constraint. A few thousand dollars in fees and six weeks of selling season went into fixing something that was not the problem.
Advertising is the last mile. It decides who arrives at your page. Everything after the click belongs to the images, the copy, the reviews, and the offer. So before you shortlist a single provider, put your own account against this table and name the stage that is failing.
| Symptom | Most likely cause | Who fixes it | The wrong hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Few impressions on your main terms | Indexation and keyword coverage in copy and backend fields | Listing and keyword specialist | A bid management tool |
| Impressions high, click-through low | Primary image, price, review count | Creative and pricing owner | A PPC freelancer |
| Clicks fine, orders poor | Bullets, A+ content, variation setup, offer versus the top three results | Listing and creative team | More ad spend |
| Orders healthy, ACoS climbing | Campaign structure, negatives, placement multipliers, self-competition | A genuine PPC operator | Switching agencies |
| Ads efficient, total sales flat | Demand sitting in a channel you do not run | A brand manager | Anyone in ads |
| Spend rising, profit falling | No agreed stop rule on a weak product | Whoever owns the P&L | Another optimization pass |
When impressions are the problem
No bid wins a term you are not indexed for. That is a copy, backend keyword, and variation job, it usually takes under a week, and it is the cheapest fix on this page. Ask any candidate to check indexation on your top 30 commercial terms before they propose a budget.
When the click is the problem
A low click-through rate on a keyword you already rank for is a promise problem. The image, the price, and the review count carry it. Handing that to an ads team is like buying more fuel for a car with a flat tire. Photography and price testing come first, and both are cheaper than a month of wasted spend.
When the order is the problem
This is where money burns quietly. Every click costs the same whether or not it converts, so a weak page loses more of them. Fix the page, then scale the budget. Any provider proposing a spend increase before touching the page is selling you volume rather than profit.
When the campaigns really are the problem
Now you have a genuine ads job, and it looks specific: a structure a stranger could read in five minutes, negatives maintained weekly, placement multipliers set on purpose, and clean separation between terms you already own and terms you are buying into.
The three shapes of PPC help
- Software. A bid tool executes rules you write. Cheap, tireless, and completely without opinion on whether the product deserves the spend at all.
- A specialist. One person, deep in ads and blind to everything else. Right when supply, pricing, and listings are solid and ads are the real gap.
- A managed service. Ads sit beside listing, creative, and sourcing under one roof, so each fix goes to whoever owns it. It costs more per month and it is the only option that can act on every row of the table above.
The ratio that predicts whether your ads get worked on
Here is the number I would ask for if I were buying. At Flapen 50 operators look after about 70 brands, which works out at about 1.4 brands each. That is why a search term report gets read on a Tuesday rather than at the end of the quarter. Ask every candidate for their equivalent figure, and ask what else that person is responsible for, because a manager carrying twelve accounts plus sales calls is not going to be inside your campaigns weekly.
What most agencies will not tell you
Charging a percentage of ad spend is common and hard to defend. Your goal is the lowest cost of acquiring a customer. Their revenue climbs when your budget climbs. That conflict shows up precisely when the correct advice is to spend less, which happens more often than anyone admits.
The second thing: a large share of what is sold as a PPC service is a reporting service. A dashboard and a monthly call are not optimization. Ask what was changed inside the account last week, and ask to see it.
Related answers
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- Done-for-you Amazon management: the complete guide
Ads, listings, and creative sit in the same flat fee at Flapen.
