PPC can be a complicated and competitive game. Amongst all the facts, figures and abbreviations it can be hard to tell whether your existing PPC agency is really doing a good job for you, or if they are hiding behind the graphs and letting their automated tools do all the work and reporting for them. Take a look at these tips from Avenue Digital, which will help to determine whether your current agency is finding the best possible performance efficiency for your business or whether it might be time to move on and find an agency that can serve you better!
A GOOD PPC PARTNER UNDERSTANDS YOUR BUSINESS GOALS.
Goals and KPIs are central to every business’ progress and therefore, a good PPC agency will align their PPC targets with your business goals. PPC is a means to increasing revenue growth and so the goals of PPC must collaborate with the overarching goals of the business - your agency should understand these overarching business objectives in order to produce an efficient and dynamic PPC campaign.
Furthermore, a valuable PPC agency should look at the larger picture, beyond just clicks and impressions. They should set up and track multiple goals either in Adwords, Analytics or Facebook – depending on the activity. Not only should conversions be tracked, but also inbound phone calls and form completions etc. This allows the PPC agency to correctly attribute leads to PPC activity, thus allowing clients to identify an exact ROI from their PPC investment. Additionally, site engagement can be tracked to gauge how many people are actually interacting with your site, this includes scroll depth, time on site and pages viewed.
Abbreviations are also commonplace in the PPC world. Whilst they are important and a big part of PPC, a good PPC partner will explain what they are and how they are contributing to your business goals. This means not just mentioning that ‘ROAS is up by 400%’, but explaining that Return on Ad Spend has increased by 400%, meaning that overall the ads are attracting a high level of conversions, all increasing revenue for your business.
Our PPC manager Louis Ayre says: “Performance focused PPC management requires meticulous attention to detail and a tried and tested best practice - this provides the foundation within an account for future growth driving strategies. Many of the accounts we audit are failing to get these basic principles right.”
A GOOD PPC AGENCY IS TRANSPARENT
Understandably, PPC results contain a lot of figures and abbreviations – they can illustrate the real progress and efficiency of a campaign. However, it is vitally important that these graphs, facts and figures are brought to life through explanation and clear communication. A good PPC partner will not hide behind complicated reporting, but will use them as well as commentary to thoroughly report on activity and efficiency of the campaign. Transparency is key.
They should also be initiating regular discussions or meetings to go through the strategy and update their client on what was learned from testing phases and how PPC is contributing to overall success.
DEDICATES TIME TO TESTING
A key indicator to show if you have a worthy PPC partner is if they dedicate time to testing. Testing is a valuable process because it allows the agency to understand and learn what the best strategy moving forward will be and helps to power better results. This includes purposeful testing of Bids, keywords, Ads and offers in order to find the best performance efficiency.
NOT JUST USING AUTOMATED TOOLS
Automated tools are key to the PPC agency’s work, however, your PPC provider shouldn’t rely on them alone to do their job. They should communicate and discuss with you the tools they are using and the value that they will add to your campaign.
TARGETING EVERY STAGE OF DECISION MAKING FUNNEL
A good PPC partner will pay attention to all stages of the decision making funnel (stimulus phase, research phase, consideration phase), and will understand which platforms and opportunities are optimal for each stage. They should understand the different opportunities and how to engage potential customers from initial early brand awareness right through to the consideration phase.
If you think it might be time to find another PPC agency, don't hesitate to get in touch with Avenue Digital or arrange a free PPC Audit.
Written by Alice Pelham