Business Owner’s Dilemma: Is your PPC Agency Wasting your Budget?

If you don’t know much about managing a PPC advertising campaign, how can manage the agency you hired?

This is a dilemma that many business owners face, as they worry about their investment but aren’t sure how they can keep tabs on their advertising agency.

If you’re concerned about your agency wasting your budget, this article is for you. We’ll provide some agency audit tips and let you know how to spot major red flags.

By the end, if things are really bad, you’ll know exactly when to fire your agency.

For many digital marketers who are new to PPC advertising, hiring an agency makes sense. But how do you know if you’re really getting value for money?

Should you harbor concerns about having the wrong agency, danger can be spotted in several ways.

Here are some red flags to look out for.

From the outset, you must decide what matters to you, whether it is a boost in traffic, more monthly leads or a lower cost per click (CPC).

Define your goals with specific targets before starting any new project with a PPC agency. This will be a good yardstick to gauge performance over time. If they aren’t clear on goal-setting, then stay well clear.

When a PPC campaign is well-managed, there will be evidence of regular changes across the board, from new campaigns to keyword management, including adjustments to match types, bids, and negative keywords lists.

A poor agency won’t be doing this. They might even set your account on autopilot, which is a complete waste of money. Automatic bidding tends to lead to overbidding, which will gobble up your budget and leave ads inactive.

This is a huge warning sign. Just because you’re handing the reins to an agency doesn’t mean they can shut you out. If they try to keep you from accessing your own account to have a look around, then you should fire your agency. They’re clearly hiding something, and it’s most likely costing you money.

In an ideal situation, your company pays Google Ads directly for the clicks. A good agency will provide a breakdown of the costs, whereas a poor one will send you one bill with vague or ambiguous pricing. This is usually because they are disguising huge markups on your CPC.

Obviously, you’ll want to know the return on investment (ROI) of all the money you are giving to your agency.

If you find a great agency, you can expect regular reports, monthly at least, if not weekly. They will break down the data and make some smart recommendations for future spending and strategy.

With PPCexpo, you can schedule your reports to be delivered at whichever frequency you desire.

So, they have set the goals, gave you access, provided regular reports and stayed active on the account.

That’s great, but how does the bottom line look? Even if your agency is making all the right moves, you still need results at the end. If it doesn’t look like value for money, it may be time to drop the ax.

Hiring an agency to manage your PPC advertising means you don’t have to be the expert, but you still need to check in and see how your investment is getting on.

Use the following methods as your agency audit guide.

By logging on to your Google Ads account, you can glean some quick insights from the activity to see if your money is going to good use. If it’s looking a little quiet, you might need to get some answers.

Before you unleash the thunder on your agency, consider the big picture:

• Is your business seasonal? Fewer changes may be needed depending on what time of year it is.
• Has the account been optimized for a long time? With older accounts, fewer tweaks will be needed.
• Is your account spending very low? It might be taking too long to build up enough data for your agency to make smart changes on.

If the campaign is overloaded with broad match keywords, it could be generating a lot of wasted spend. Unless your goal is to boost brand awareness across a range of audiences, it might be worth chatting with your agency about their campaign management.

To counter inefficient spending, your agency should be using negative keyword lists and exclusions to prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches.

When you are in your account, navigate to ‘Shared Library’ to view these lists. Have a peek at the change history report to see if the agency is staying on top of this while your campaigns are active.

By reviewing the Search Term Report, business owners can see what search terms people are using before they click on your ads.

This is one of the best agency monitoring tools, as it enables you to verify if your broad matches are attracting unqualified leads and irrelevant traffic. Just make sure you adjust the date window to review the data from when the agency started working for you.

The road to a higher ROI on your advertising spend is paved by clever strategy and consistent effort. PPC advertising is not a ‘set and forget’ task.

When you hire an agency to take care of it, your workload will be lighter, but you still need to keep an eye on your agency to ensure you’re getting the best bang for your buck. If they aren’t managing it correctly, your budget could quickly be drained by irrelevant traffic and high CPC rates.

It’s good to give the agency the benefit of the doubt, especially in the beginning when they experiment with different keywords and match types. But over time, your campaigns should become more optimized, and ultimately, they should start to deliver the goals and results you desire.

If not, then it may be time to play detective.