If you have little to no experience managing Pay Per Click campaigns, then it’s best to hire a PPC firm that can get your results. When you are starting, the task of hiring a PPC firm can be daunting.
Companies often shamelessly fake testimonials, drop jargon like cluster bombs and massively inflate their successes to score new clients.
For someone who has limited experience working with a paid traffic agency, hiring mistakes is inevitable if they do not ask the right questions. Remember, you will get tons of responses once you start contacting PPC firms, all claiming they are the “best.”
At that point, it’s important to remain calm and efficiently filter out the best PPC firms from a list of fakers. Don’t shy away from asking straightforward questions and prepare yourself for many email threads with a lot of PPC agencies.
To help you get a basic grasp of things, the following are 7 things great PPC agencies do that bad or mediocre firms do not.
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1. Offer Minimum Contract Periods
Many agencies like to force their clients into signing long-term contracts, often 6 months and more. This means that even if their performance drops, you are obligated to stay with them until the contract period expires.
However, great PPC agencies know that clients that are getting results are likely to stick around. This is why a good PPC company with faith in its abilities would have little or no contract period.
2. Focus on ROI Instead of Just Clicks
At the end of the day, you are paying for traffic that lands on your site’s money page. However, it doesn’t amount to anything if you fail to monetize them. What separates a great PPC company from a bad one is that they care about traffic quality.
You know the kind of traffic that does exactly what you want them to do. Click that “Buy” button, sign up for that newsletter, contact you for business inquiries, and more.
3. They Have Easily Accessible Physical Offices
An expert PPC marketer can probably do a decent job without owning office space. However, a physical location does inspire confidence. Office locations are great environments for strategizing and conducting face-to-face client meetings. This leads up to another important consideration.
It really matters if the PPC marketing firm is located near your business. A New York-based business would benefit from hiring a PPC company in New York instead of picking any random firm that has a fancy website but is actually located outside the country.
Being located in the same city also means they know the local market and they are always ready for a quick meeting.
4. They Have Valid Google AdWords Certification
Google has a special certification program for PPC advertisers. These certifications are proof that the marketer knows the basics about AdWords, placing ads, and building campaigns for clients. While there are certified PPC agencies that do a mediocre job, not having a Google certification definitely raises eyebrows.
5. They Usually Specialize in One Industry
Don’t get us wrong, there are many PPC firms that work with clients from different industries and do a great job. However, you would ideally want a firm that has experience generating positive results in your industry.
If the firm has no idea about your industry, there will be a learning curve of a few months, which would need to pay for. PPC firms that specialize in your industry can promise much faster results and thus a better ROI.
6. Have a Great Client to Manager Ratio
Account managers of PPC firms contact people clients reach out to for every query, request, or complaint. The problem is many PPC firms have an abysmal client-to-account manager ratio. Some firms assign more than 30 accounts to a single manager.
This means these account managers never have enough time to pay attention to individual clients. A good PPC firm knows the importance of client satisfaction and thus hires fresh account managers as their number of clients increases.
7. Willing to Share Their Track Records
All PPC firms make tall claims to attract new clients. There is no fault in that. However, it’s your job to figure out which companies live up to their hype and which ones are chronic bullshitters. The easiest way to do that is by asking for case studies of clients they have worked with previously.
A great PPC firm with a lot of experience should not only have many case studies, but they should also be open to sharing them with potential clients.
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