This sales guide will teach you, step-by-step, how to get PPC clients for your marketing agency from prospecting to close.

You’ll not only learn how to make the sale, but more importantly, who to sell to!Our goal is to equip you with the exact strategies we’ve used to land dozens of high-paying and enjoyable clients for our own advertising agency.

So get ready to scale your agency, here’s how to actually sell PPC services

Define Your Ideal Client

This is the part that most marketers seem to neglect.

Who is it you want to work with?

All your efforts towards prospecting and sales will be scattered unless you can answer this single question.

Get very clear on the person who you are targeting…

What industry are they in?
- Check out our list of solid SEO niches to get a sense of what to look for… don’t worry these still apply to PPC as well.
What size company are they?
What is the ‘job position’ of the decision maker?
What do they value and what challenges do they face?

These are just a few questions to start with, but the more you know about the person you’re selling to the better off you’ll be.

The best way to gather this information is going straight to the source! The more direct conversations you have with potential clients the more you’ll truly know about them… everything else is just theory.

What Are You Offering?

Now that you have a thorough understanding of your audience, it’s time to define your offer.

The more your offer addresses the needs, challenges, and objections of your ideal customers, the more efficient your sales process will be.

On top of this, you must know your offer like the back of your hand!

Understanding your offer isn’t always a linear path; you will fumble through this process until you find something that works.

BUT, this doesn’t mean you should be going into sales conversations ill prepared.

What’s So Great About You?

It’s becoming increasingly difficult in the world of advertising to differentiate yourself from the competition. In fact, your competition isn’t just other PPC agencies anymore, it’s now the very same platforms you’re using to run your pay per click campaigns on; namely Google and Facebook.

As advertising platforms get smarter, the process becomes increasingly automated. This trend is clearly seen with the addition of Google Ads for Home Services as well as Google Ads Express which aim to cut out the middleman (you) and allow businesses to advertise with little to no management.

This is no reason for alarm!!

These systems are still far from being perfect and it will be a long time before machines can fully replace the touch of a human. But, this is a point you should always keep looming in the back of your mind.

So, if the product is dispensable, then where is the value?

I would argue the only true value lies in human relations. People buy from people…

Ultimately, some personal aspect (i.e values, purpose, story) should be baked into your offer to truly set yourself apart from the competition.

However, there are some more “practical” things you can do to differentiate your agency.

PPC Pricing Models & Packages

Pricing your ppc services is perhaps the single easiest and effective way to accommodate the needs of your client.

No one pricing model is the best.

As with all things marketing, it comes down to the question of what your audience responds best to.

Flat Management Fee

By far, the simplest way to price pay per click services is to offer a flat fee for management. The client handles ad spend (paid directly to Google or FB) and pays you a flat fee for building, managing, and optimizing their ppc campaigns. What you price for management really depends on what you and the client agree upon.

The range for flat management fees across agencies is too large to put a general number on, but you’ll see a lot of agencies pricing their services somewhere between $500-$2500 for most small to mid-sized, local businesses.

Ad Budget Percentage

With this model, your management fee is entirely based upon a predetermined percentage of the client’s budgeted ad spend. Keep in mind that this percentage is based on the budget rather than the actually monthly spend. Granted, you could choose to base it off actual spend, but we have found this creates way more problems than it’s worth.

It’s common to see ppc agencies charging anywhere between 10-25% for management. The trouble here is when you are working with clients with small budgets, such as $1000/month. In this scenario, your management is far too low to justify the amount of work that goes into producing solid ppc results.

Performance/Value Based

This is a model used by a lot of the well known, home service lead generation companies such as HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack.

Pay per lead is generally easier to sell because the client is guaranteed a result. However, there are a lot of unseen complications with this model. Firstly, aligning expectations of what qualifies for a lead for the client can oftentimes lead you into some murky waters. Secondly, the price it costs you to produce a lead using pay per click will likely shift from month to month so your flat lead price could end up putting you in the red!

There are an abundance of reasons why we suggest not working with this model, but for the sake of time, we will not be discussing them further.

Hybrid

It is a hybrid approach that pulls aspects from all the major ppc pricing models.

I encourage you to get creative because as mentioned before, no pricing model fits all.

This is something that we personally do! Our agency has created a pricing model that starts as a flat fee with low ad-spend clients and then switches to percentage based fees at a certain budget threshold.

You can learn more about how we price ppc service here.

How to find PPC Clients

At this point, you’ve actually done most of the heavy lifting involved with selling ppc clients.

Next step is to find your ideal customer and present your offer to them. This should be a lot easier since you now have a clear picture of who that person is.

We don’t have space to go into depth about the various prospecting methods to find ppc clients, but we can give two major keys that will help you accelerate the process!

Improve What Already Exists

Have you ever tried to sell someone on web development services who didn’t already have an active website? How did that go for you?

Even if you did manage to land the client I’m sure it was an uphill battle.

It’s human nature to not want to change. Every time a person is asked to make a behavioral change, you are asking them to go against their nature and this causes friction.

Friction kills sales!

The lowest hanging fruit customer in any industry of sales are the people who are already engaged in the behavior, but are unsatisfied.

Start with the people who are already running ppc campaigns.

Not only are these people already bought into the value of pay per click, but they also have an account setup with a credit card attached to it.

Focus your attention on these people as they tend to be the easiest to sell and best to work with.

OPM… Nah More Like OPC

You may have already heard the phrase, Other People’s Money (OPM). However, my guess is you haven’t heard the more valuable phrase, Other People’s Customers (OPC).

When given the choice between money and customers, I’ll take customers every time!

As mentioned before, true, unshakeable value exists in relationships. Everything else, such as: money, products, services, and processes, will eventually become obsolete.

Buyers, are buyers, are buyers, and will always be… buyers!

People who have purchased services/products will continue to buy into others.

Find the software, memberships, products, and services your ideal customers have purchased and begin building a relationship with those companies.

Do these companies also have communities built around them? If so, join them and partake.

This is the fastest way you’ll get more ppc clients.

Master the Sales Pitch

You know your ideal client, you found where they exist, and you’ve put your offer in front of them.

Naturally, this will lead to sales conversations. This could be done over the phone, in person, or on a screen share.

Despite what medium you are using to communicate, the general structure of a ppc sales pitch is going to remain the same.

Some sales people swear they are natural improvisors. They say, “I prefer to have an organic conversation, I’m better when I have no structure.” This person may be you.

I challenge you to question that belief. Yes, you may have a natural talent, but you will lose the sale to another talented person who is prepared.

Below I’ve listed 6 major components vitally important to know before going into any ppc sales pitch.

Common interests with the potential client
Your elevator pitch (no more than 2 minutes)
3-5 of your strongest selling points
Common objections and your responses
What is the next step the prospect needs to take in order to start
What happens immediately after the prospect pays for your services

The more conversations you have the more intuitive this process will get. Even the best salesmen know to keep the script/structure in front of them.

That’s why we highly recommend creating a ppc pitch deck using a presentation software to not only help the prospect, but also to help yourself. A pitch deck will allow you to focus more so on higher-level aspects of sales such as tonality & body language rather than just the content of the pitch itself.

Why Questions Matter!

Possibly the most important part when learning how to pitch ppc are the questions you ask of the prospect.

We suggest putting together a ppc questionnaire for clients and keep this in front of you whenever you’re on a discovery call.

Questions matter for several different reasons…

They allow you to qualify prospects for your services
They reveal needs/pain points of the prospect which you can integrate later on in your close
They frame you as the buyer rather than someone who needs the sale
They show the prospect you actually care about their business and helping them

Ask these test questions as early as possible in the conversation and go as deep as needed in order to quickly qualify good clients from the bad ones.

Note: If a prospect is unwilling to answer your questions or is frustrated at how much you are asking, first reflect on how you are asking questions. Does the tonality behind your questions demonstrate, oh by the way or, no big deal, just curious type of mentality or are they downward inflecting (authoritative). People can find authoritative tonalities to be too intrusive early on in a relationship so this could be screwing you up.

However, if you conclude it is not you who is causing frustration, this is a red flag that the prospect could be not ideal to work with.

Overcome Common Objections

You’re going to hear the same objections over and over and over again.

Eventually, you’ll get to a point when a prospect rarely catches you off guard. When they do, make sure to write it down!

Yet, we can save you the trouble and tell you exactly what the majority of prospects object to and how to overcome them.

My website is already ranking in Google, why would I need Pay Per Click Services?

RESPONSE: Type in your services to Google search and tell me how many companies you see before getting to your website. What do you see at the top of the page? A few years ago the ads didn’t even display at the top of the page, but rather on the side. Now they are at the top. A couple years ago there were only 3 spots for ads, now there are up to 5. A couple years ago there were no ads in the map area, now they do. Google is slowly decreasing the amount of traffic you get every single year and prioritizing ads because that’s what makes them money.

I already had an agency run ads for me and I didn’t get good results.

RESPONSE: This is a good point in time to ask probing questions to clarify what exactly they didn’t like about the previous campaign.

Some businesses don’t know exactly why they were unhappy with a campaign. It is your job to figure out if it was actually due to bad campaign performance or if the expectations of the client are off.

PPC is too expensive.

RESPONSE: The question isn’t how much you’re spending… it’s how much you’re getting in return. The average business owner focuses on getting their cost per acquisition as low as possible. The rich business owner focuses on increasing lifetime value of a customer so that cost per acquisition becomes trivial. In fact, wealthy owners know that if they can afford to spend more to get a customer, they will dominate a market because the competition eventually will become unwilling and incapable of keeping up.

Send a Solid Proposal

Speed is so important when it comes to sales. You’ve got you’re prospect all warmed up on a phone call and you tell them you’ll send over a proposal.

Two hours go by and you email the ppc proposal & agreement document… silence.

What happened, they said they were ready to go and excited!?

Time is what happened.

You need to move fast when a prospect’s emotions are spiked. Everything erodes with time and this is just as true with emotions as anything else.

Have a well formatted proposal template ready to go before you even make the call.

Before you hang up, all your docs should be in their inbox ready to be signed. The quicker you are with this the less clients you’ll lose due to bad timing.

Onboard Clients Like a Pro

You just got a new ppc client, congrats!

It’s time to get everything setup. There are a few different tasks for your client to perform.

It’s possible they aren’t technically inclined, so it’s important to clearly define what and how to get you the deliverables you need.

Fumbling through this process can cause what is known as, buyer’s remorse, affecting the client’s perceived value of your services and, in the worst cases, resulting in refunds. 🙁

We suggest avoiding this situation altogether by preemptively creating a ppc on-boarding questionnaire and instruction manual.

Referrals Are Your Best Friend

This is obvious, but the best way to scale your pay per click agency is by producing exceptional results.

Business owners know other owners and if they are ecstatic about the results you produce, they will happily recommend you.

Here are some major components to producing exceptional results:

Your client’s expectations are perfectly aligned with what is possible
Your client’s business processes is well defined and smooth running
You go above and beyond to track not only leads, but also ROI
You consistently keep the client updated with progress and results by leveraging reviews and data dashboards
And lastly, you know how to effectively setup, run, and optimize ppc campaigns

We created a course on how to setup and run ppc campaigns for clients (specifically Google Ads) so that you can amaze clients and get consistent referrals.

Want to Leverage Our Expertise?

Not everyone has the time, expertise, or even desire to learn the ins and outs of running an effective ppc campaign.

There’s a TON of money on the table and no reason you can’t take advantage of it.

Over the past 20+ years we’ve worked on 100s of Google Ads accounts in dozens of industries.

We live, breathe, and sleep PPC management.

Don’t take our word for it, check out what other marketing agencies are saying about Clicks Geek…

How to Get PPC Clients – Guide to Finding & Selling PPC Clients

Define Your Ideal Client

What Are You Offering?