-
What to look for for a good PPC agency?
We’ve all heard the horror stories of hiring crap agencies.
For those who have hired an agency and worked out well what were the green flags to look out for? before hiring them.
Ps. don’t bombard my inbox i’m just looking for my own research into what to look for i’m not hiring anyone currently.
-
1 Reply
-
I had been inhouse for almost 10 years, so I went through quite a lot of agencies hired and fired.
A good agency won’t try to sell you a dream and instead would reason you with realistic expectations instead. They also don’t try to confuse you by abusing complicated terms, then speak of the algo at every opportunity and make the job any more mystical than needed.
You can ask a third person as well. Not necessarily from your own company, but another specialist you can trust to get a more neutral opinion.
It might be a few hundred dollars of their time, but you’re going to spend dozens of thousands of dollars with the hire, so why not?
-
FWIW I worked agency side for a decade, client side for half a decade, and then started my own agency. Ran through lots of agency sourcing / pitches on both sides of the table.
Good agencies:
– Never make promises about performance. They’ll give you ranges and expectations, but run from anyone who guarantees anything. You will see this in pitch/proposal.
– Good agencies will staff the team with a mix of experienced people and juniors. Be cautious of people who do all of one or the other (i.e. all juniors means you will likely see subpar performance. All seniors might suggest they don’t have a healthy development pipeline and you are SOL if someone leaves). Ask for specific staffing charts in your RFP.
– Good agencies have slow(er) turnover. Turnover is always a thing in the agency world, but there are agencies that burn through 30% of their staff every year. You don’t want to hire them. Ask for turnover rate or a fee-break if turnover happens on your account under a specific time period.
– Good agencies communicate on YOUR level. If you are a PPC expert, they speak as an expert. If you literally don’t know what 80% of the acronyms are, they speak to you in a way that communicates what needs to be said for the decision without getting overly technical. This will become apparent in the pitch. Ideally have some of your broader team (finance, sales, etc.) in the conversation to ask a few questions and see how they respond.
– Good agencies don’t have long-term contracts; or if they do, they have easy outs for clients (i.e. 1 yr contract with a 30 day notice). Locking clients into long term contracts without an easy way to get out is often a sign of an agency that knows they won’t have a positive client 4+ months in. This will be in the paperwork.
– “Good” is relative to the client needs. If you spend less than $100k/m, your ‘good’ agency is almost certainly NOT one of the big boys – even if they have all the talented people in the press releases and have every software you could think of. Because you’re a tiny client to them and will get the same level of support and approach. Finding an agency that fits your size is more often than not a better client experience AND a better use of agency fees. Ask the agency who their 3 biggest clients are, and ask the agency where you would fall in their current client mix (even if it’s percentiles – 25%, 50%, 75%, top client). This will help you inform where you will likely stand for their financials.
– Good agencies speak to everyone on the client side. They understand how to present financial projections to a CFO then turn around and present lost opportunity to a marketing manager and then know how to synthesize everything to 3 bullets for the CEO to check and move on. Ask for an example QBR or other more in-depth report.
– Good agencies keep their teams on a small number of accounts. This often requires higher levels of minimum fees or other fee structures that help support the approach, but the staff is MUCH more effective working on 5 accounts than 30 and those fees almost certainly offset it. Ask how many accounts the average person works on, and then ask how many your specific team works on. Agencies prepare for the first question; they often stumble when you ask the second.
– Good agencies let the team present. If they are ‘just a guy’ then obviously you are hiring the founder. But if they are presenting a team, you want to hear from the entire team – they are who you will work with day-in and day-out. Be wary of agencies where someone speaks for 100% of the time and the rest of the team just sit around and nod heads. You’ll see this in the pitch.
– Good agencies think big picture. When you have them do an account audit, or you ask a broader question to them, see how they approach things. Are they just suggesting to pull a lever or change a setting, or are they giving you broader perspective or multiple steps ahead? Some agencies will say “you’re ad copy is bad, you need to change that” and others will say “your ad copy is bad, you need to change that, but honestly your CTR and conversion rate aren’t horrible and there’s much bigger structural issues in the account. I suggest we do [x] and [y] first, and then lets get to the ad copy once we’ve fixed those things. Those will likely have a bigger lift”. Go with the second.
– Good agencies have proof they are good agencies. Case studies, client referrals, whatever you want. Ask for them.There’s more when you get into actually working with them, but on the initial contract / pitch / conversations the above will likely help weed out ones that aren’t going to be successful long-term.
-
Small Google Ads agency owner here. The green flags are:
No ROAS/results promises.
They seek to understand your business and your KPIs before suggesting/planning what to do on your account.
They know what they are talking about. They are comfortable answering all questions related to PPC.
They are honest when they audit your accounts. If there are no major issues, they won’t make up ones to convince you your previous agency is bad and they are your saviour.
-
With my experience with PPC agencies, the biggest green flag is if they are looking holistically at business strategy and fitting their PPC ad buying into that overall strategy. A good PPC agency can prove they are positively affecting contribution margin/pipeline/MER/Cost per Closed Won. Not just ROAS and CPCs.
Here is a great article (not sponsored) and questions to ask a PPC agency you are about to hire (or just to ask internally if you work for a PPC agency): [5 Signs That Your PPC Agency Is Dropping The Ball.](https://www.halfpastnine.io/research/ppc-agency-audit)
-
The more they talk about things like —
Status as a google partner
Betas
Ad Strength / Quality Score –
Optimization score
Means the more likely it is that they do things the “Google Way” which in recent times prioritizes getting clicks rather than output metrics that will grow your business. Not necessarily wrong or huge red flags but evidence they align close to google and don’t really have sophisticated clients.
-
As a company that runs agency searches for a wide variety of clients, I’d say we are experts at evaluating good marketing agencies.
The things we look for when vetting agencies are:
* Channel expertise (proven by case studies)
* Category/industry expertise (proven by case studies)
* Team structure/who is actually doing the work
* Budget (you won’t be able to afford everyone)
* Culture, team size and communication alignment with clientIt varies client by client, but the goal is to find the “right fit” as the “perfect fit” doesn’t exist. We want to find agencies for clients that already have the expertise and work style that meets their criteria.
Log in to reply.