PPC Management Tools

A few questions for PPC managers. Thanks in advance for your help.

1) For those managing several clients, do you have a recommended software tool that you use to manage ppc networks (overture, google, etc.)

2) In addition to your management fee, do you also charge upfront for keyword research, copy, and placement? If so, how do you charge? Flat fee? Hourly?

3) Anyone recommending other networks aside from Overture and Google?

Great forum everyone. It's really been a huge help for me.

JW

1)We built some tools inhouse, others we purchased off the shelf. We are firm believers in using whatever tools are available to make the job more efficient. If (when) one is managing several clients, you can, and likely will, very quickly start using seveal thousand (or tens of thousand) key words. Then add your seasonal/monthly/weekly/daily changes to the special hiku of Title and Description. Spread this across several, or scores, of PPCs and your brain will very quickly melt down.

The short answer is use any and all tools available.

2)New clients usually are charged a management fee (a percentage of the monthly media buy budget). We often eat the up-front costs of KW research and copy writing - as long as the contract is for a set term, say 6 months or one year - as this gives us time to recoup the upfront costs. Thats how we typically do it in our office; other firms have vastly diferent pricing policies (and often very diferent product/managment services offered).

3) The products you are trying to sell will to some extent dictate which PPCs are used. PPCs will have diferent ROI per category/topic. As such, you the exact mix of PPCs used to advertise Client A, Product 1 will change from Client B, Product 1 (and Client A, Product 2 as well).

There is no one 'correct' answer in the PPC field.

I've only worked with a few briefly. But it is easy to understand, the more information the software delivers, the better it is.

The things I noticed is that whatever software you choose make sure it gives you complete data.

Impressions, click-throughs, and maybe most importantly, how many clicks BEYOND the landing pages.

Then you can more accurately analyze what part of the process can be adjusted for better ROI.

I've done some organic SEO work for people in the past, but am thinking about helping out more with PPC Campaigns that people run. Reading the threads, I appreciate the information that is provided, but could you recommend any particular software tools for managing PPC campaigns and/or tracking click thru's and ROI?

I read a recent article in searchenginewatch about the fact that more emphasis is being placed on the analytics behind the scene, which I agree with, especially for separating yourself from being an amatuer in the business. I don't have a lot of experience managing large PPC Campaigns - are the tools provided by Google and Overture as part of an account sufficient or should you build on those tools with complimentary products and services? Thanks in advance!