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How long to give new agency?
Had an ads account running profitably for a couple months. Hired new agency to help scale / increase profitability. New agency had no onboarding call with me (frustrating and odd) and ads have been unprofitable for last couple months. How long in totality should you give a new agency before moving a different direction?
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1 Reply
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No onboarding call sounds like a red flag to me. If it’s been unprofitable for a few months with no concrete update with solutions and/or action plan, I think they’re just milking you, sorry.
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I wish we had such clients 🙂 No onboarding calls – red flag. It’s impossible to set up ads without a proper briefing process. Moreover, the first month is the most important and you need to have at least biweekly meetings.
I don’t think that there is a gold standard, but your new agency should at least bring you 85-100% of previous agency results in the first month. If there are no significant improvements in 2-3 months then look for a new one with a different approach.
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Usually… I say 3 months… from someone that runs campaigns… month 1 to gather data and minimize unwanted searches, month 2 to better analyze data …. Month 3 is when you start seeing ‘better’ results then from there it’s not set and forget but ‘easier’ …. But I have seen agencies where they stack on too many clients that it becomes overwhelming for the ads manager to adequately manage etc. Also not clear whether what you’re offering is seasonal or external factors like competition.
An onboarding call is quite important or at least access to your account manager to discuss and give feedback
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Should have left after no onboarding call unless you’re paying under $500/month, then well.. that’s on you
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If your ads have become less profitable since you hired them and they’re not communicating with you, that isn’t a great sign. We have a kickoff call with our new clients and then monthly meetings (and mid-month reports if they want them) to discuss their performance.
Not sure if you’re aware of this, but you can go into your account and review every change that’s been made since you started. That will tell you how often they’re actually making optimizations, and if you’re unsure about some of the changes you see you can post them in this sub.
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Depends on what you agreed on and what they are actually delivering.
If it’s a mature account and it needs to be turned around whilst also decreasing the cpa by 50% – that’s gonna take quite some time and might never be achievable.
If the objective was to get scale – ie more spend, maybe they are doing what they were supposed to do as when you scale efficiency plummets and current results might indicate scalability issues.
Could potentially be more helpful if you outline what you are trying to achieve, on which platforms, what the account looked like before spend and cpa wise and what it looks like now.
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I would not hesitate to fire them now.
It’s probably worth paying someone more to actually treat you like a client (onboarding/calls) and provide results.
There are plenty of companies that would happily have you as a customer, and they actually know what they’re doing.
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If there is no on boarding call and you went from profitable to unprofitable for last couple months… I would cut them. Losing a bit of money for one month to test stuff could happen but 2+ months is not a good sign. They should be increase ad spend and scaling up what was already working, which I bet had room to scale.
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No onboarding call is tough, take your money and run. Bro I used to run an agency and I can tell you that most of the other business owners don’t care about results they just want their retainer, if you want I can point you to good agencies depending on your niche.
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Do you not have a weekly call with the account manager to review performance?
Even with our smallest PPC clients where I work we put significant time into onboarding, weekly client calls, internal team calls etc.
Out of interest did you look into their client retention rate when you signed with them? If they have very few clients who extend with them that might explain what is happening here.
Promise the world, put in very few hours and part ways at the end of the contract having taken a big chunk of money from you. By then they will have bagged a client somewhere else.
Do you have access to the Google Ads account? Perhaps check the change history, see what kind of effort they are putting in.
I once audited an account for a potential client and the agency they had were logging in each morning, applying a few auto recommendations and then leaving it the rest of the day.
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Get on a call with them and have a meeting to see what they’ve been doing. It might help you a little to find out why they are making mistakes or what their approach was so you can look at that more closely in future relationships with an agency.
Not having an Onboarding call or seemingly regular communication means their customer service side is bad.
And ads that we’re doing well for you before is now doing badly..: it takes 2-3 months to dial things in at least. Just start with a new agency and eat the loss because they are losing you money.
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Why is that onboarding call so important? I mean, the call itself, not the rest of the process – coz i assume they got some of the details they needed from you somehow (email maybe) and they also sent you some sort of game plan before you got started. So why is not having an onboarding call such a big deal? Were you looking to spend time on the phone or in a meeting? Or were you looking to get some specific goals (which they failed to achieve)?
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