A good advertising consultant is one of the most sought after freelancers for Amazon – understandably so, since the difference between a good and a mediocre advertising consultant can be felt in terms of thousands of dollars of ad spend.
I have spent a lot of my work time over the last years creating, building and optimizing PPC campaigns. While I wouldn’t call myself the biggest expert out there, I have seen what good advertising managers do which the not-so-good don’t.
Also, many businesses nowadays rely on automatic or semi-automatic advertising management software to do the heavy lifting – keyword research, ad group management, keyword transfer, bidding adjustments, and so on.
So what’s the point of hiring an advertising consultant versus subscribing to such software?
And how do you ensure that you hire someone competent that’s worth more than just standard bidding software?
In this article, I will answer both of these questions for you.
Hope it helps!
Why choose a PPC consultant instead of getting software
Understanding the intent behind keyword targets
As you can imagine, a PPC expert will have a human edge over a purely AI-driven software.
The most important point is the comprehension of what customers will be searching for when searching for a keyword.
Let’s use a simple example:
Imagine you’re selling teapots made of steel.
You’ll find many keywords related to teapots that you’d want to bid on – “steel teapot” is a natural choice, but maybe also “unbreakable teapot”, “sturdy teapot” or even more indirect ones like “stove friendly teapot”
There will also be keywords that will not be suitable, such as “glass teapot”. Most likely, you can throw as much money as you want at this keyword, it’s unlikely to ever be profitable due to low relevance.
An AI-based software is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between all of those terms, and most of them rely on a very basic system to test the relevance of each target – get enough clicks, check the conversion rate and ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and either adjust the bid or move it to negative keywords if it’s not bringing any results at all.
Why understanding intent matters
Okay, an AI system can’t tell relevance directly, but if it can test it mathematically, doesn’t that solve the problem?
Not really – the problem with this approach is that it can be extremely expensive:
imagine you test just 100 keywords that you extracted from a typical keyword search tool.
If half of them are relevant for your product (already a lot for some niches), then 50 of them are going to be irrelevant and return close to no sales.
Now, with a standard PPC software, the average number of clicks before making a bid adjustment is 15 clicks (note that I said adjustment, not even taking the keyword out of the target list).
With an average CPC (cost per click) of, let’s take a low value, 1 dollar per click, you’re going to spend at the very least 15 dollars per keyword before it has its bid lowered – and often, it takes up to 30 clicks before the software moves the keyword to a negative keyword target (aka removing it from your target list).
That’s around 30 dollars spent per keyword, times 50 keywords – for just one product, on average.
I’ll let you do the maths.
An advertising consultant should ensure that any keyword you target has the maximum possible relevance before targeting it, so you don’t break the bank targeting keywords that if a human eye were to consider, would tell that isn’t suitable for your advertised product.
Identifying further keyword opportunities
Having a human advertising expert by your side can help you identify specific keyword groups or meanings where your product can perform really well.
For instance, let’s assume that your customers feel that, after reviewing your listing and your competitor’s, you have the strongest teapot on the market.
A good PPC manager should pick up on this competitive advantage and capitalize on it.
They could notice that one target like “teapot strong” or “unbreakable teapot” is performing particularly well.
They would then ask themselves:
“What other targets are most likely to hold a similar meaning to the customers?”
A lot of keyword and target optimization is about understanding the meaning behind the customer’s query. Often, customers will use different words for the same value point or feature. In this case, it could be “strong”, “sturdy”, “steel”, “hard material”, “unbreakable”, “thick walls”, and many more.
By doing so, you can have every single relevant keyword targeted and ensure that your ads appear on every single search where your product can be relevant – something that a simple machine cannot do, or only at a high cost and long time, as we saw previously.
Considering your competition
A suitable Amazon PPC manager should also ideally have a good idea of your product’s strengths and weaknesses versus your competitors to ensure that your product has the maximum chance of converting into a sale when your customer compares it with your competitors’ offer.
For instance, you might be offering a 1L steel teapot, but the results for “1L teapot” might show some extremely competitive listings that are most likely going to outperform your own.
However, you might have an edge in the eyes of the customer when it comes to “steel teapot”.
In this case, a good Amazon advertising consultant should recognize that there is little value in investing loads of budget into the “1L” keyword tree as it’s likely to perform badly, and instead would focus on investing your precious budget into the “steel” one, which has a higher likelihood of good returns.
Of course, one common argument against this is that you can never know for sure how your ads will perform for a given keyword until they have been properly tested with many clicks.
This is true – and also a reason why getting an Amazon PPC consultant that can balance both human analysis and statistical testing is critical.
They should ideally perform manual analyses of products and targets to establish a first “filter” of relevance/potential, then carefully test the targets through data-based bidding.
The first “human” filter should help in eliminating or reducing the spend on a lot of targets that are highly likely to be irrelevant, while the second “statistical” filter should be optimized to return the most accurate data about each target at the lowest cost possible.
Finding suitable competitor listing targets
Your Amazon PPC consultant should also look beyond just what’s on the search results pages and identify which competitor listings would drive your revenues should you have ads running on them.
This is one aspect for which having a human analyst is very important – a simple machine cannot analyse a listing, understand its offer and value, and estimate how a customer with a specific idea in mind might judge it versus your own offer.
There are some aspects that a software can look at – for instance, reviews, ratings and price. Maybe even price per unit, kilogram or litre.
But a software cannot tell how appealing the product looks, how sturdy it might be, how it might feel to hold it, how appealing the colour is or the value of some extra features – for example, an extra accessory, to name only a few.
Our brains are quite complex and we can process dozens of pieces of information from a single glance at a picture – something that AI software still cannot do, but an adept advertising manager should be proficient at.
Once more, one can argue that there is no way to definitely know if a competitor’s listing will or will not be perceived as more appealing by the majority of customers, and so we would need to test each one out.
Again, while this is true, a seasoned manager should have the flair to tell which opportunities are more promising than others.
Looking at the two results below for “onion chopper” – almost the same price, reviews and rating.
which of these two listings do you think performs better?
If you’re like most people – you’ll say the one on the right. Why? Simply because it seems to offer a lot more than the one on the left.
Both are ranking organically for the search term “onion chopper”, and the difference that seems obvious to you will not be to a purely automatic system.
(FYI: The one on the right sells 10x more.)
This is why it’s crucial to have a PPC expert that can consider such things when looking for targets and adjusting bids – you will have much more chances of success if you target the one on the left than on the right, even though when looking purely at reviews, rating and price, there should be little difference in terms of value or competitiveness.
What you should ask for when looking to hire an Amazon PPC or Advertising Consultant
I hope I’ve explained well why it’s crucial to have a PPC expert by your side when looking to promote your business if you’re not able to do it yourself.
While bidding software can be useful, especially when managing huge portfolios, it will not provide the quality that a proper PPC consultant can offer.
Still, there are plenty of inexperienced PPC consultants out there – so here’s the checklist of what you should look out for or ask when looking to hire an Amazon advertising manager:
- How do they get keyword information? What keyword research software do they use?
Any competent Amazon advertising expert should have at least one kind of keyword research/analysis software as the basic tool for evaluation. If the offer involves keyword reports, ask for a sample to see what’s included. It should at least include the keywords and the search volume. The provenance of the report should also be visible in the options or report name.
I strongly advise against hiring any PPC manager who does not at least have a subscription to a premium keyword research tool – if they are not even able or willing to pay for a proper tool, they are unlikely to be worth your time.
- How do they evaluate the potential of a keyword target?
Refer to the rest of the article to see how well they understand keyword analysis. In a nutshell, you will want them to evaluate each keyword individually to ensure that they are most likely to be relevant to your product, either through evaluating the search results and seeing how many of your direct competitors are ranking for these keywords or some other means.
I suggest you avoid any ad manager who just sets a standard bid across the board and lets an algorithm do the rest.
- How do they evaluate the potential of a listing target?
As mentioned above, you will want a PPC expert who takes the time to evaluate your competitors in a structured method – not just price, reviews and ratings, but also features, unique selling propositions and value points vs your own product’s.
Avoid those who plainly take your top keywords and set a standard bid on any listing that ranks for them, or who just setup a category target with no filters.
- What’s their bidding strategy or system?
There are different ways to approach bidding strategy – in general, you would want them to explain different strategies based on your business strategy.
For instance, the bidding strategy will be different depending on whether you are looking to maximize your profits or if you want to gain maximum exposure to gain traction.
A good PPC manager will straight away explain the different options available to you based on your own goals. A poor ad manager will propose no defined strategy, and will simply state that they will try to keep your ACoS low and make you money (whatever that means).
A good PPC manager understands the concept of investment – you might lose money in the short-term, but the increased sales velocity can benefit you over the long-term, ultimately leading to much more revenue and/or profits over time than if you simply had gone for always keeping your costs low.
I recommend you hire an Amazon advertising manager who shows that they know the difference and are familiar with different business strategies and their meaning when it comes to bidding strategies.
- How do they manage bid adjustments and keyword transfer?
As explained thoroughly above, you will want to have an Amazon PPC freelancer who does a fair share of the bid adjustments and keyword transfers manually. Still, having a good balance between manual work and software adjustments can be the most time-efficient way to manage your advertising portfolio.
For instance, a seasoned PPC manager might do an extensive keyword research manually and make some initial changes themselves based on their analysis of your product vs your market but once a good targeting system is in place, leave an automatic bidding software do the small, finer adjustments over time to maximize the decided strategy’s effectiveness.
While having an Amazon advertising freelancer do all the work manually is best for absolute quality, I would only recommend this if you have a small portfolio (<10 products). Full manual processing can become expensive for larger portfolio – especially if you’re paying by the hour. It can also mean that some critical changes might not be made in time as your expert can only process one item at a time, whereas an automatic bidding system can carry out changes almost instantaneously once triggered.
Setting your budget
Once you’re clear about what you need, you can decide how much you are ready to pay for it.
Having a clear idea of what you can afford and what the standard market price is for the work ahead is crucial to make sure that you’re not going to overpay or worse, have to sacrifice your budget for another area.
Let’s talk about the first point – being clear about what you can afford.
Any business, whether online or not, requires careful capital management to ensure it functions well. Basically, it means being efficient with your money.
You should already have a ledger or an accounting file that tracks your budgeting per area, such as raw material purchase, shipping costs, tool subscriptions, advertising and so on.
If you’re not keeping track of all of your finances properly yourself, I strongly recommend that you get yourself a bookkeeper to do so – not only is it extremely useful to ensure that you keep proper track of your finances and budgeting, but it is also extremely helpful to make sure that your business is compliant with local income/tax laws and regulations.
Where to find Amazon Advertising consultants
If you look online for Amazon advertising consultants, you will be given a wide range of agencies that will be happy to do the work for you.
Personally, I advise against hiring directly from such websites, for the following reasons:
- You can never trust the offers and reviews (all content and reviews are made by website owners)
- Agencies often ask for premium prices or act as middlemen, increasing the base amount you have to pay
- Refunds can be tedious or downright impossible, depending on the agency and country
Instead, I recommend hiring a freelancer directly yourself – this has the following advantages:
- You can hire from an independent freelancer platform, which prioritizes customer satisfaction above all else (for future purchases)
- You have a much higher chance of reading real customer reviews, meaning more chance to hire the right person for the job
- You benefit from much better security, from work contracts to smooth refunds
- You avoid the unknown premium margins and have a larger chance to pay less for the same amount of work
Below are the direct links to find the list of freelancers for my top preferred platforms:
Amazon PPC Consultants on Fiverr
Amazon PPC Consultants on Upwork
If you want to know more about platforms that offer freelancing services, here’s my article reviewing 3 popular freelancing websites for Amazon freelancers/consultants/experts etc:
Spotting the real experts
So you’re now browsing one of the freelancer platforms – and you’re faced with dozens of similar results.
How do you find the right one for you?
Well, here’s the good news – the platform is designed to maximize the chances of you hiring someone and being satisfied enough to come back and hire again.
Thanks to this, most of the first results you will see should already be a good match for you.
However, here are a few things to keep in mind while you’re browsing:
- First – make sure that what you searched for matches what you want.
This can be so obvious that it is often overlooked – you search for something and have a certain idea of what you mean behind it, yet the search engine – or the consultants – might have a different idea of what this means!
Double-check the descriptions of the top results to confirm that the results show what you’re actually looking for.
- Make a list of potential candidates.
Firstly, even though I’ve just made a case for “best results come first”, don’t just go for the first result you see. You will want to have at least 5 different tabs open with the most suitable candidates.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of hiring the first one that looks good – but don’t rush!
Remember, if you’re looking to give away a reasonable amount of money, then it’s worth spending an extra hour ensuring you get the best fit.
- Focus on consultants whose skill spectrum is as narrow as possible (while still fully covering your desired work).
What do I mean by this?
You might spot a consultant who does it all – from listing optimization to PPC management, knows inventory management, expert at supply chain management, etc.
Consultants who seem to be able to do everything might seem appealing, but just like in any industry, being a generalist who can do everything very often means that they are not quite as good as a specialist.
A consultant who specializes in just what you require is as such more likely to have more experience and expertise for the task at hand.
- When looking at reviews, don’t just rely on review score/rating.
Firstly, check how many reviews the consultant has accumulated – a few reviews can always be fake ones from friends and family looking to help them out. A couple dozen gets harder to fake.
To help further on spotting the fake reviews – check the distribution of reviews.
For instance, if they have a rating of 4.5 stars with 90% being 5/5 and 10% being 1-2 stars, this should alert you – reviews for good consultants are usually distributed in an exponential-like pattern, with most reviews being 5-4 stars, very few 2-3 stars and a couple 1 stars for horrible clients who don’t know what they want.
Having only 5 stars is also shady – you cannot please 100% of people, no matter your skill. Someone with loads of 100% 5 stars reviews is either a unicorn or a liar!
Still on the reviews – take a look through the reviews to see what previous customers said, especially on the “cons” or “dislikes” part.
Try to find out if there are inconsistencies between the reviews, for instance some reviews saying “great attention to detail” while others say “could have gone into more detail”. Such comments can point out to inconsistencies in work quality, which you will want to avoid.
Basically, look for a consultant whose alleged “cons” or “weak points” are alright with you.
For instance, if you’re happy to wait longer for quality work, hiring a proper expert whose negative point is said to be that “they are slow” is actually a good sign for you.
- Check their writing style and grammar.
An expert is often well-educated and has good knowledge of the language. While English might not be their mother tongue (my case as well!), there should be no obvious mistake that hints that they haven’t been properly educated (such as basic spelling or grammar mistakes, like “I am ppc consltant expert for you”)
Of course, you can be great at say, bid management and have terrible English – however, you’re more likely to hire a quality consultant if their description shows a good level in your target language.
Furthermore, this will make communication between you easier, which is critical to ensure that you get what you’re asking for.
The above points will not guarantee that you’ll find a proper expert if you follow them all diligently – however, they should increase the likelihood that you’ll find one.
If your gut tells you that someone isn’t competent and yet they pass the above tests, don’t just shush it – use your own flair as well to tell who might be good or not.
Conducting a proper first call
Once you have selected your top choice, it’s time to establish first contact.
The call will mostly be about confirming what you found out in the previous section i.e. that the consultant is competent and will deliver what you pay them for.
I strongly advise to insist on a video call – reason being that it’s a lot harder to fake being an expert on a live video than it is on a webpage.
If they try to dodge a video call, that could be a bad sign, unless they have a valid excuse.
While most of the call should be a simple discussion of what you need vs what they can provide, here are a few other things to ask on that first call to confirm their expertise:
- How did they get into this job?
This is both a good icebreaker and a good way to spot if the consultant has indeed the experience they claim to have. Usually, a competent (and truthful) freelancer will have no problem telling their story from the beginning with enthusiasm and with minimal hesitation or visible discomfort.
- What do most of their clients ask for?
This question is aimed again at confirming that they have had a fair bit of clients. A lot of hesitation or an inability to provide a clear answer can be a sign that they’re overplaying the number of clients they have had.
- Within their job, is there any part that they really feel they excel at or particularly like?
Watch out for freelancers who say that they are experts on everything when it comes to their job – unless they say that with visible excitement, in which case that’s a great sign.
This question is aimed more at seeing if they are truthful – someone who wants to just impress you is more likely to brag that they can give you everything at the same top-notch level of quality.
A good answer could be something like: “Well, I am an expert on every topic when it comes to X, but I suppose I have particular experience with Y, and I enjoy doing Z the most”.
The next one isn’t a question – but check out their background in the video. Does it seem like they are in a professional office, or in a small, noisy shared bedroom?
Of course, with many freelancers working remotely, many will be working from home. However, successful freelancers should have the funds to afford a good workplace (which also contributes to increased productivity!).
If they seem to work from their bedside, maybe they haven’t the skills required to afford a decent workspace – or if they do, then they may not take their job seriously enough to work in a professional way.
On the other hand, watch out for signs that they are trying too hard to impress you – full business suit, throwing business jargon around even when it’s hardly relevant, talking too much about their achievements and glorious past clients, and so on.
Finally – don’t forget to tell them clearly what you’re expecting from them, and for how much!
Don’t be shy about your demands – you’re paying money for this, and if the demands are too high for the amount you’re willing to offer, it’s the consultant’s own responsibility to negotiate.
However, keep your head cool and request another call if you feel that you’re being asked for too much or being offered too little for your money.
Remember to have your budget sheet open during the video call so you can review it anytime you need.
Better to take it slow than to quickly agree to something that you’ll later regret!
Monitoring and tracking performance
So you have finally gone through the list of consultants, found your top choice and after a video call, decided on the tasks to do and the cost – congratulations!
However, we’re not just done yet 😊
We have to make sure that your freelancer is going to deliver on time – which means task tracking and monitoring.
The best system I have personally found is to use a team task management software, such as Asana or Monday.
I personally use Asana for both my own full-time job and my personal work (like writing this article!).
Having such a task-tracking software with clear responsibilities and deadlines helps tremendously to keep the workload as clear as possible.
Way too often have I dealt with external freelancers who only communicated through email – and let me tell you, you quickly lose sight of what’s going on!
“What’s happening with this task? What was the deadline again? Are they working on it? What’s the last thing they said about this other thing? Did I tell them that I need it done?”
You get the idea.
If you decide to use this kind of software – just Google for tutorials. There are plenty out there that will explain all you need to know better than I ever could.
And yes, many of them are free.
I also recommend having a weekly status quo meeting with your newly hired consultant.
Even with a clear task-tracking system, it helps to fully understand the details and intentions. Sometimes, you can’t put everything in a description box, particularly if the task is a bit creative, like creating or optimizing visual content.
There! Hopefully this is helpful in getting you to hire the right Amazon consultant for you.
Remember that this is not a step-by-step guide – please use it as general advice from someone who has/is working with Amazon freelancers.
There are naturally more aspects to hiring a consultant that I cannot mention – namely contract laws, taxes and so on – since these are dependant on local laws, which is not my area of expertise.
Still, the most important part of hiring a good consultant is – well, hiring a good consultant. I hope the above has helped you with this.
On that note, let’s keep selling!
