Monitoring your PPC Agency
Think of your PPC agency as a remote worker for your company, in the sense that you should know what they are doing, what you are paying them for. This guide will go through some key indicators that should help you in identifying the work the agency is doing for you. PPC is more results-driven than SEO, with a lot of data available from a pay per click campaign, understanding how your campaign is performing is more a case of analysing results.
Depending on if you use a PPC agency, this will be easy to understand, and changes will be able to be explained, so it is clear to see what is happening with your ads and exactly what your agency is doing.
Communication
One of the best ways to know what is happening with your paid advertising campaigns is to build a relationship with your PPC agency and be able to talk to your agency with confidence. Not all agencies are like Herdl, though, so here are some other ways to stay on top of them.
Reports
Just because an agency is running your ads account, doesn’t mean you cannot view the account or suggest changes. It may not be the best idea to change your ads without talking to your agency though. Your agency should send you a monthly report, to show you all the details you need to worry about.
An agency that provides monthly reports should also be able to discuss anything that has happened to your account, leaving you with confidence that the agency is managing the account well.
Performing Match-Type Reviews
Match types come in different variants, Exact, Phrase, Broad Match Modified and Broad Match. The later is the most dangerous for poorly managed PPC ad accounts because the keywords triggering the ad to display may not even be relevant to the search intent, thus the name broad match. If you sell dog food and add dog and food as broad match keywords, your ads could appear for anything with the words in, for example, DOG groomer or fish FOOD is the search term, and your ad for dog food is displayed. The company running the ads will need to pay each time the ad is clicked on.
A way to combat this is by adding negative keywords, so certain words do not appear, for example, groomer and fish would be on the negative keyword list and prevent the ad from being displayed.
This is something that your agency should be doing, but if you have any questions, you are now armed with a little more information on PPC.
Negative Keyword List
If your ads are appearing for completely unrelated searches and getting clicked on, then it is simply wasting money. A great way to combat this is through negative keyword lists, where certain searched words will not trigger your ad to be displayed. You can view your ads negative word list, and if it is not regularly updated, then it is a significant warning sign that your agency is not doing what they should be.
Data-Driven Improvements
A good PPC agency will always be looking to improve the ad campaigns that they manage. One way this can be done is through a champion vs challenger experiment, where the ads are modified, and the most successful ad ‘wins’ an extra period to see which is the most popular out of one or two other slightly different ads. If you do not see regular updates on your ads, this could be due to the agency not completing these tests, or at least not in an efficient fashion. However, these types of test do require a certain number of clicks, and if your ads do not get these clicks in a short time frame, then the improvements will not be able to be made in a short time frame either.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the ratio given from the number of users who have clicked on an ad to the number of users who have completed a purchase of products or services.
This can be affected by a lot of factors, such as attracting relevant quality traffic, convincing copy in the ad, landing page relevancy and more. There is a lot that can increase or decrease the conversion rate. A good agency should at least be tracking it properly with reasons as to why there is an increase or decrease. Of course, there may be some factors that are not affected by the ad, for example, there may be an issue with the actual product or service.
Other Thoughts
One of the best ways to know what your PPC agency is doing, is through good communication, don’t be afraid to ask questions about your paid ads campaign even if it means asking for a more simple explanation of something the agency has reported to you.
The point of this article is to help give businesses a clearer idea of what performance indicators are and how to tell what your PPC agency is, or should be doing. This is not a definitive list, and your agency may well be doing things that have not been mentioned.
An agency should always be open and able to talk to you about what is happening, after all, with PPC you are trusting your business’ money with another business. Trust is paramount.
If you would like to know more about how we could be the perfect agency for your PPC needs, make the leap and get in touch with Herdl!