PPC agency

How to keep your PPC agency in check – and work with them to get the results you want

Pay (or cost) per-click advertising drives traffic to websites and means advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad. Learn more about what is PPC.

The advantages of working with a PPC agency are numerous, including quicker, more effective results and the ability to benefit from the agency’s professional skills, expertise and experience, not to mention their in-depth knowledge of all of Google’s latest features. The agency will also have learned from other industries and clients what works and what doesn’t saving you time and the expensive learning curve.

However, you know your product and customers better than anyone else so make sure you educate your agency. So, having invested in a specialist PPC agency to work on your campaigns, and told them your aims, don’t be a back-seat driver, and don’t feel in the dark when it comes to understanding what your agency is doing. Why not check out our PPC packages to compare against your agency.

Here are 5 tips for keeping your PPC agency in check:

  1. Review the search terms entered into Google which caused your ad to be shown and resulted in a click (and expense for you)

Clicks on targeted ads are far likelier to result in a sale for you after landing on your website. Targeting keywords too broadly could be a wasted expense if your ads showing up where they can’t generate positive results. Ask your agency to show you the top search terms generating clicks. This comes from Google Analytics’ search queries report.

  1. Study the changes being made on your account

The Google Ads change history report shows who made what changes, and how often. These include things like bid adjustments, new keywords, ad groups and adding to negative keyword lists. If you spot something you haven’t discussed or see no changes are done in a month then challenge your PPC agency.

  1. Check that the negative keyword list is being built on

While any campaign is active, keep an eye on your negative keyword list, which can be viewed via the shared library on your account. These make sure that, for example, if you want to advertise your hotel in Southampton, but not ‘hotel jobs Southampton’, this is prevented by having the term ‘jobs’ as a negative keyword.

  1. Get the agency to show you the websites where your ads are being displayed

You need to reach the sites your target audience frequents, so let your agency know if ads are showing up anywhere they shouldn’t be, effectively wasting the budget. For example, if your target market is older people, you won’t want to see your ad on a site aimed at parents with babies. Google Analytics’ campaign reports show this so be sure your Google Ads account is linked to Google Analytics.

  1. Don’t get bamboozled by the jargon

Google love to create new abbreviations and jargon but it’s the agencies job to translate that into plain old English so you can understand. Don’t get lost in the jargon and if you are not sure what something stands for or why its relevant then ask.

To conclude, having an agency work on your PPC campaign can accelerate your results significantly but make sure you take into account the agency fee when looking at your total cost of PPC advertising as you need to recover that in your financial return.

If you would like to chat more on how we as a PPC agency can help improve your PPC performance or would like to start a campaign then please contact us.