Have my PPC management firm failed me?

Hi MrBritish,

Great 1st post.

No, you account is not actively managed.

You would have to stretch the meaning of the term "active" to call your account "actively managed".

A typical account under active management will at the very least show frequent bid adjustments, typically done via automated software or scripts. Those adjustments will be visible in your activity log reports, as AdWords logs all bid adjustments.

With smaller accounts the frequency of adjustments has to be lessened somewhat because a small ad spend will generate less data, and you need adequate data to base any kind of adjustments on.

Also, STR (Search Term Report) analysis should be performed on a weekly basis, or at least monthly for small accounts your size.

To be fair, not all activity gets logged. For example, adjustments to bidding algorithms are not logged, but actual bid adjustments are logged. Data for analysis can come from linked accounts like Google Analytic and that report generation and analysis activities would not appear in your account activity logs.

Since you are new here let be give you a little background so you can consider the source. I have been in marketing for more than 25 years, and have ran a PPC advertising agency for the Past 14 years. I have also been an active member of this forum for more than 10 years. So you could say that I have a lot of experience and have seen a lot of work done by other agencies.

You ask some valid questions that get right to the core issue that many people experience with large agencies. When you dig into how these large agencies work you will discover that a single account manager is typically in charge of 100, or more, advertising accounts. So do the math and you quickly see that at most they can provide barely more than 10 to 20 minutes per account each week, and only if they are working very diligently at trying to get to each account at least once a week.

Sadly, most of the large agencies do not have the resources to "actively" manage all of their accounts. They all rely heavily on automation, but automation also needs to be actively managed, because many things can go wrong and usually something does at some point.

Another issue you will find with most large agencies is that they all rely on a handful of automation tools that tend to manage all accounts across many agencies in the exact same way. In such cases you end up with a mediocre strategy that can easily be defeated by resourceful competitors that take advantage of this weakness.

Should you switch agencies?

I think you already know the answer to that question. Seems you've already picked out your new agency, so good luck with that.

Are you a small fish in a big pond?

Based on the size of your revenue I must assume that you are probably one of their smaller less significant clients based on your ad spend level. As such you are likely to get overlooked, a lot, in a larger agency.

Consider a smaller agency that might be less likely to overlook your campaigns.

If your new agency is also a "large" agency you may find yourself in more or less the same situation. An agency's size is not a reliable indicator of how well they perform for their clients. Agencies typically don't get big because of superior campaign management performance, they get big because of a superior sales team.

Try not to judge an agency based on size, nor on how impressive their sales people are, you will find that doesn't always work out. Those sales people are not going to be managing your account, in fact you are likely to have very little account management at a large agency, it will mostly be done by automation that is ran by account managers that are typically responsible for way too many accounts, and do little more than write ad copy for new accounts.

Obviously, I am painting a picture with broad strokes here, so it isn't true that all large agencies are ran as badly as what you experienced, but most are dealing with those issues that I mentioned above.

To get the most out of your agency experience you need to think of your agency relationship as a partnership. You both have responsibilities to the partnership and there are plenty of things you can do to insure that you are getting the most out of your PPC management agency partnership.

First and foremost, consider what you are paying them.

Is it less than the industry standard of 15%?

If so, there is no way an agency that under bills can consistently deliver the superior service you need to win in the marketplace. If they offer cut rate services it isn't going to be competitive. There is no way to get superior service at sub-par costs, so stop beating your head against a wall and look for a full service agency that actually delivers full service, if you find the right one it will be worth every penny and then some.

Advertising is a competition that you must win at over and over, you need a winning strategy and top notch account managers. Throwing the cheapest workers you can hire at that endeavor is not going to work out in a competitive market. It costs only slightly more to hire the best account managers and you get way more value for your money.

Take an active role in your partnership.

A busy account manager will always have more work to do than he has time to do it. This is the natural result of budget based management restrictions. Anything you can do to point out issues will help your account manager spot them quicker. Nobody cares more about your account performance than you do, you set the standard based on your own personal interest level.

You gotta have goals

Set smart goals that are time-bound, measurable, and reasonable. Make sure that your goals are relevant to your business objectives (revenue, growth, profits, etc) and not just an arbitrary metric like CPA, ROI, or ROAS. Metrics can be useful in analysis, but typically make poor choices for a business goal. A business goal has got to have real bankable value in your financial statements, not merely a ratio in a report.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease

Make your account manager aware of your goals, and the time frame for achieving them. Ask your account manager to suggest a strategy to achieve your goals. Have regularly scheduled discussions about the progress of your goal achievements. Keep the discussions centered on business objectives like sales growth, market share, and profits, don't let your account manager get you distracted by turing the discussion towards arbitrary metrics, metrics are metrics, not goals.
You've no doubt heard the expression: .

If you really want to get the best possible value from your agency partnership then request, schedule, and keep regular phone conferences (or Skype chats) to discuss your account strategy and results. This forces your account manager to prepare and pay closer attention to your account in particular since most partners do not take the time to keep regular strategy meetings.

You don't need to have long drawn out meeting, just ask about the top performers, issues that need to be overcome, and how are we doing generally in relation to goals. A weekly, monthly, or even quarterly meeting is likely to prevent your account from being overlooked or under-managed for any significant period.

HTH,

Don Burk

I've worked with a few agencies like this and none lived up to expectations. I would watch the numbers myself and then ask about certain things that I didn't think were correct. Soon I leaned adwords myself and get a better ROI doing the management myself. While I know I don't have the knowledge that these agencies have, I do feel that I 'care' more about the outcome. They just don't seem to care or have the time to take the extra steps to make sure the campaigns were as optimal as possible.

In my view, the tracking is part of the campaign. For someone to not notice is inexcusable. I they are “more concerned with bid cost than conversions”, sounds like all they do is adjust bid, probably automatically. This does nothing to improve a campaign, it's simply managing your costs. Management of a campaign should be more testing new ads and making sure proper keywords are used, not have blinders on and looking only at spend. I would fire these people immediately.


My answers to your questions:


1. No, not in my opinion if you do things properly.

2. Could be. A change should be made if there's a reason to do it. There will be much more done in the background than changes you see in your account or the changelog. I don't know what you sell and therefore your search volume. But if it's relatively low and you get only a few clicks a week, it will take longer to get enough statistically significant data. This could take months in some cases.

3. What kind of changes have they done? Just bid management as I suspect or testing different ads to get higher click rates? You can log into your account and look at those logs yourself and see what was done. Ask them how many clicks they need before making a decision on which ad is outperforming another. Ask what makes a great ad that gets high click rates and high conversion rates.

4. You just made your point: something wrong in the tracking which went on for six months. To me, it further solidifies my point that they are not testing ads because if they were, the conversions should be part of this and they would have noticed long ago.

I think you can have the same problems whether it's a small or big agency. You were sold something but that was not what you needed. Many agencies are bid managers and I'd stay away from them as they say they will keep your budget under control and that sounds good to many because most advertisers don't know any better. What an advertiser needs from their account manager is improve the campaign so what is that person, whether from a small or large agency, and for whatever reason you want someone to manage it, be doing to achieve that goal?