How To Choose The Right PPC Advertising Agency - 4 Questions To Ask

So you are looking to outsource your PPC to an agency - but who can you trust to get this crucial part of your marketing campaign right?

What should you be looking for in an agency to ensure you get what you need - new customers and higher sales revenues for your business?

Here are the top four things to be certain of before diving in and making that all important decision:

1) What experience does the agency have in PPC management?

You need to look at the PPC experience that the agency has. Does the content on their website give a clear explanation of what Pay per click advertising actually is? Do they explain the benefits of having Pay per click advertising for your business?

Additionally, do they explain exactly how their business can help your advertising campaigns? You should also check whether it specifies on their website that they have a dedicated Pay per click management team. This is key, as it will give you the support you need to get the most out of your advertising campaigns.

Another thing you can look for is if they are a Google Engage agency. Being a Google engage agency means that that agency has a direct line to Google and can get up to the minute support and advice directly from Google when they need it.

2) What level of research will be done to kick the campaign off?

There are at least four stages of PPC research:

Keyword research:

This is crucial to the success of any PPC campaign and a good level of keyword research is required at the start of every PPC campaign. Without good keyword research your campaign is destined to fail. A good PPC agency will make good use of all 4 keyword match types including exact match, phrase match, broad match, and broad modified keywords.

Competitor analysis:

With any PPC campaign you should know where you stand amongst your competitors in the market place. The more competitive your market the higher your cost per click is going to be. Competitor analysis follows closely on from keyword analysis. The two together form the foundation of a good PPC campaign.

Website review:

Your overall quality score awarded by Google on your campaign will be determined by a number of factors. One of these factors is the quality of the landing page you send people to from your adverts. You should always be looking to send people to the exact page on your site, which is most relevant to what you are advertising. For example if it is a specific product or service you are promoting don’t send people to your home page, send them to the internal page of your website that promotes that product or service. A good PPC company will always do this, and if they are really looking at advancing your quality score they should be making recommendations to you about what you can do with your webpages to help advance your PPC campaign.

Ad copy

How your adverts are written is of utmost importance. Research should be done on your target market, their problems and their fears. Adverts should be split into ad groups to target different keywords for different products, so that you adverts can speak directly to the people you are trying to attract. A good PPC agency will ask you many questions about your target market and your business USP’s (unique selling propositions) in order to write good, compelling, converting adverts for your campaign.

3) What strategies do they have to consistently improve your Pay-per-click success?

For example, will they do the following:

Split Testing Ads

There are 4 main components, which make up a Google advert. The headline, the copy, the call to action and the URL. In order to improve an ad campaign all of these factors need to be taken into account.

The only real way to know what is working and what isn’t is to test adverts and measure the results. Once you have enough data on the campaign you should be looking to tweak one of these areas at a time and again measure the success, or failure, of that modification. This is known as split testing. Split testing will dramatically improve your ad campaign and save you a lot of money in the long run. The theory is simple, you have to try a few things to see what works best and once you find the winner you keep using it!

Monitoring Quality Score

The higher your quality score, the less you will pay for your ad campaigns. Your quality score should therefore be monitored throughout the campaign and improved based on the various split testing that is being done.

Improving Click Through Rates

Your Click Through Rate (CTR) refers to the percentage of people who click through to your website having seen your ad in the search engine results.

So for example if an advert was displayed 1,000 times and receives 10 clicks there is a click through rate of 1 percent. A high number of people clicking on your advert will mean a higher number of visitors to your website. This means more clicks (naturally), but also improves your quality scores - and therefore reduces your costs per click (CPC).

4) How will the results of the campaign be measured?

Be sure to ask any prospective agency about their reporting procedures. How often will they be reporting progress? This should be at least once a month. 

Also what metrics will they be reporting on? As an absolute minimum these should include the number of impressions, clicks and conversions, the click through rate, average cost per click and budget use.

You should also be looking to get information on your analytics - for example how many new visitors have come to your website that month? Through what keywords and what methods? How long are they staying on the site for? How many pages are they viewing?Which pages are they viewing? The list goes on. 

You will always be able to tell if a PPC agency really cares about the result if they put a great deal of emphasis on reporting and communicating with you, in a way that you can understand, what is going on with the campaign. Personalised account managers who call you once a month to personally walk you through your report is a definite advantage!

If you have a PPC account already, then you can request a FREE Google Adwords review - one of the JDR team will review your current PPC marketing, show you where it is losing or wasting money and explain how we can help you. Call us on 01332 343281 or click on the link below to get started...

Article by Laura Morris-Richardson