PPC from WebDigital or how to make niche online marketing, with Ionut Munteanu

Cristina Blanaru Digital & Media, Marketing, Profiler

WebDigital is a Romanian company launched, 4 years ago, by Ionut Munteanu, Romanian online professional specialized in Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click Advertising, with extensive expertise in online strategy, online reputation management, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, online planning, CRM development, web development, client service, management and website architecture.

Cristina Blanaru: WebDigital is a niche online marketing agency. Why did you choose to open an agency to be active on this niche?

Ionut Munteanu: I’ve been working in online marketing since 2004 and since then I gathered a lot of expertise. After founding Pan Concept International (today Innobyte) in 2006 and becoming a Managing Partner I got a taste of what entrepreneurship is all about. The crisis came when I was engaged in Financial Marketing and lead generation for Banks. Then I was forced to quit the life of entrepreneurs and get a job.

As an Online Marketing Manager for Republika Interactive (between 2009-2011) I understood what it meant to be focused on a certain area of expertise. And after tasting a little bit of the American Corporations, while working for Adobe I decided to continue building up my own business, Webdigital, small agency specialized in performance marketing for small and medium companies using pay per click media.

CB: Why Pay Per Click Marketing? Is this a profitable niche?  IM:Pay Per Click Marketing is usually associated with performance marketing, and it represents advertising done using media where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on his ads. I’ve been working with Search Engine Marketing for a long time. Today, Webdigital has 3 Google AdWords Qualified Individuals which have handled over 500.000 Euros in the last years.There are only a few agencies that intersect with the PPC niche, so it is only normal to think other will end up in this niche.But in order for this niche to be profitable it depends on the size of the client’ invested budgets. I think, today we are in a time where our focus is on creating more demand and educating the market.

In terms of budgets invested in PPC campaigns, 65% of our clients have PPC monthly budgets under Euro 500, 25% spend for this between Euro 500-1,000 and only 10 percent are allocating monthly over Euro 1,000 (4% between Euro 1,000-3,000 and 6% give over Euro 3,000).

CB: Why would a company outsource its PPC activities and not keep them inhouse?

IM: Companies should outsource PPC marketing services. They could save money and time as they wouldn’t need to wait for 3 months for the new employee to fit in the team and for 6 months to put his strategic thinking and technical abilities to the test. The cost of hiring for non-core business positions can be much more than the agency’s fees. You can find a list of motives given and detailed by a good friend of mine here (use Google translate for this link)..

Specialized agencies like Webdigital, or like SEO Monitor for SEO, should be the 1st option, because companies and agencies need to focus their efforts on other tasks and overcrowding can affect the quality of the work and use PPC specialists for PPC duties

CB. What types of PPC campaigns is Webdigital running?

IM: Well, I can tell you about how things are in our agency in May, as we already published an info graphic related to that.

In May, we ran PPC Campaigns – Google AdWords (89%) and Facebook (11%) – , we managed 75% Google Search Campaigns (Keyword based advertising) and (25%) using Google Display Advertising and GDN Contextual Display (19%) and GDN Remarketing (63%). Only  during  the past month, we sent towards out clients websites 165,000 visitors, with a medium budget invested in campaigns of almost Euro 1000 / day (RON 4,135)

CB: What can the clients expect from a PPC campaign?

IM: Well, when it comes of the PPC campaigns it is always “maybe” or “depends”.  43% of our campaigns have a CTR (click-through-rate) of 10%-15% and 31% go beyond 15% CTR. In May, we received 4,590 conversions.

C.B.: Which are sectors that provide Webdigital the most clients?

IM: Webdigital handles and manages campaigns for clients from 17 different industries, but most of them come from DIY, constructions and interior design (13%), real estate (11%), rearing of children (11%), Law Firms and Stationery (each with 8%).

On the other hand, 90% of Webdigital campaigns are for e-commerce (46%) and services (44%)

C.B.: What can you say about Webdigital’s team?

I.M: We started step by step. In the first 3 years, Webdigital meant a 2 people team. Now we are five and you can meet us on our webpage.  The team started to shape together in the last 6 months.

Our mission is to provide the younger generation of specialists a learning hub for PPC Marketing, the most beautiful and complex type of Online Marketing.

We actively search for new people to join our team. This is why we launched a 2 months  internship program with 8 hours a day spent in the agency. We aim to provide our younger colleagues  with exciting experience, full of practical solutions applied to day to day situations