Are You the Ideal Search Client?

Companies regularly evaluate their paid search agencies; but what would happen if you reversed those roles?  If agencies evaluated their clients, who would rise to the top?

As an agency, we learn from and appreciate each and every one of our clients. However, there is a special group of clients who enable us to reach our full potential.  These clients give us the space to do what we do best, while providing us with all of the information to truly understand their business.  Some great things can happen when you stop being managers of your agency and focus on being partners with your agency.

Here are a few best practices you can follow to help with the manager-to-partner transition:

Communication

Communication is a two way street.  The lines of communication should always be open – what’s going on in the business, what other marketing channels are experiencing, what changes are taking place on the website, etc.  Your agency shouldn’t just know about what you are selling, they should know exactly who you are selling to, what you know about this target market and how you are reaching out to this market outside of paid search.  Keep in mind that paid search advertising catches people after there is interest; other channels must be utilized in order to create that interest.

Education

It is your agency’s responsibility to be an expert in the field of paid search.  It is also in your benefit to have a basic understanding of key search fundamentals, such as:  keyword match types, Quality Score, basic account structure, trademark policies by search engine, campaign settings and ad copy testing.  Many agencies are more than happy to provide training sessions.  A great place to start is Google’s Advertising Fundamentals Exam Learning Center.

Trust

Trust that your agency has the expertise to make the right decision for your business and investment.  Unless there is absolutely no way around it, try to avoid telling them exactly how to split up your budget between campaigns.  Give the agency your performance target and let them allocate the budget based on their analysis of the data. With the freedom to experiment and test new ideas, a mature program can experience continuous growth and new customer acquisition.

Goals

You must give your agency prioritized targets to manage to – typically ROI, ROAS, CPO or CPA.  Keep in mind that multiple goals can conflict with each other so it is essential to understand which goal is the most important.  As a search agency, we’ve seen that clients often set the bar as high as possible and provide us with a very aggressive target. If you have the means to be more flexible, allow your agency to test the performance at a few different targets.

For example, by lowering the ROI target, a whole new group of keywords is given the opportunity to generate traffic, increasing revenue.  Another option is to set your targets at the campaign or category level.  An effective way to acquire new customers is to set a lower ROI target for non-branded keywords, versus that which you have set for branded terms.

An analogy that will help summarize the topic presented here: your paid search program is a car.  Your agency is the driver behind the wheel.  You are the traffic light.  Are you green, yellow or red?