Use this list to help you narrow down the list of agency candidates you’re thinking of using, and save your valuable time.
#1 Is the Agency Certified?
If you’re going to be investing your hard-earned dollars into an agency to manage your paid search campaigns, then you want to be sure they are experienced and have a fully understanding of how pay per click actually works. A certification through Google Adwords or Bing Ads can show that they’ve taken the time to prove their experience and knowledge.
Make sure their certification badges are displayed on their website, and that when you click on them, they take you to a certified company profile hosted by Google or Bing.
#2 Do They Demand Long-Term Contracts?
Most agencies have good reason to get a few months’ commitment from you in order to ensure they cover the costs and resources required to get you up and running; however, they should be able to do this, and start showing you results, with a minimal, short-term contract. A company who requires a long-term contract is a company who is not confident that they can produce results and keep your business month to month.
#3 Transparency is Key
A major indicator of a reputable PPC agency is their willingness to share information and expertise. You should have a very clear understanding of their access to your accounts, what they are doing in those accounts, and how often they are working on them.
In the same vein, your PPC companies should also be completely open with you regarding their pricing strategy. Industry standard is either a monthly flat fee, or a percentage of monthly ad spend; and if it’s the latter, then the agency should still be concerned with your overall costs and managing to drive costs down, even if it means they’ll make less money.
#4 Who Controls Creative Assets?
When it comes to any PPC-related creative assets, such as landing pages or ad accounts, you should still have complete ownership and administrative control. This means not only do you have access at any time to log in and see what’s going on, but you also retain ownership over all historical data and information.
#5 Are They Creative and Proactive?
There are agencies that follow a regular monthly maintenance routine and there are agencies that initiate new strategies to drive areas of growth. Your PPC agency’s focus should not just be to drive clicks, but to convert those clicks at the highest possible ROI. They should be running tests on your landing pages and suggesting new opportunities to to improve your PPC results and stay ahead of the competition.
Driving clicks will cost you money, but driving conversions will make you money – and that should be your PPC agency’s focus.
#6 How Do They Report Results?
PPC agencies should be commiting to regular, periodic reporting that will explain every ad account, campaign, landing page, cost and measurable performance indicator that is important to your business. They should have analytics reporting in place that will help you to understand your ROI of each and every campaign that is run, and what keywords they were run off of.
More importantly, they should be helping you determine the actual proof of your PPC success, on top of the regular pay per click marketing metrics (such as the CTR or conversion rate); for example: have you built up your contact list? Have your sales increased? Are you profiting from investing in PPC?
But Above All…
Above all, the agency you choose should be one you actually like to work with. There’s not much fun in dealing with someone if you don’t actually enjoy talking to them, or trusting them to get the job done. And don’t forget about SEO! SEO and PPC need to work together for the highest performing campaigns, so it might make sense for you to consider outsourcing to one agency who can manage your overall inbound strategy.
We’ve put together an eBook of KPIs that might help you choose some measurable metrics to start tracking in your next PPC campaign. Click the image below to download the free guide.
