Do any of you deal with Google Adwords(PPC)?

In what sense? To draw traffic or to make money off ads?

Can you tell me how long a campaign takes to set up and monitor?

Let's just say your client was a plumber or a roofer in New Orleans.

Before i explain, this is all assuming your website is worth Paying for leads to get to it and you answer your phone when it rings... if those are not up to par this will be a waste.

it all depends on your goal. Are you using this to be profitable? If he can provide $300 of revenue for every $100 of cost (and prove it) then you should sign up and tell your friends.

Using your example of a plumber or roofer, There is also a cost to not showing up. Let's say your a roofer in New Orleans. I'm a home owner in New Orleans and am looking for a roof replacement. I type in "roof replacement New Orleans" and pick one of the 10 choices Google gives me and make a decision of where to spend my 10-20k for the replacement.

If you opted not to show up as an option because you rely on word of mouth or are reluctant to be up to speed (either by adwords or organically) then you had 0% chance to earn my business because when I typed in "what you do" on google -- Google didn't let me know you even existed.

That 1 instance of opportunity cost maybe equivalent to a year of this guys services.

If you just want to show up for a certain keyword, you can do it on your own. If you want someone to do it right and monitor everything (which keywords are performing well, which ones are getting longer page visits and which ones to ditch)..etc it can take some hours. I work for a company who uses call tracking/recording lines to monitor the calls that comes from the Adwords as well as donwhat he would do.

For example I have an attorney that was getting a ton of calls for a certain keyword but on the keyword the calls were asking for a different attorney altogether. (Based on the recorded calls) So on the surface it looks like a good lead (people click on you, view pages and call.. but in reality it was a bad keyword because it was not a call to garner a new client)

someone who knows what they are doing and has the tools to prove it is probably worth a few hundred bucks a month plus the cost of clicks .. if you are doing an aggressive campaign to grow your business.

The nice thing is after a few months you'll be able to gauge if the extra revenue is a net gain or not if you track it correctly

Agreed on most of this. Landing page is very important along with good content. You can definitely DIY smaller campaigns. But a lot of owners I work with pull 12-14 hr days 5/6 days a week and their idea of "fun" after work would not be working on this lol.