Managing your PPC activity requires a lot of time and specialist knowledge. If you don’t have the capabilities to do this within your organization, you’ll have to reach out to an agency. There are many different agencies available, ranging from full-service digital and above the line marketing to niche-specific ones. So how do you choose the right PPC management agency?

It’s often not a choice that should be taken lightly. It depends somewhat on your business, and there are many factors that contribute towards an effective agency. You need to find an organization that works well with your existing setup and understands your needs. In this article we’ve created a list of questions to ask and some key points to look for. We’ll also demonstrate why TEA Software (Threat and Engagement Analytics) can provide a full PPC management service for your business.

Choosing the Right PPC Management Agency: Questions to Ask

Before you recruit an agency to manage your PPC campaign, there are a few vital questions you must ask. These relate not only to the agency, but also to your business. Ultimately, you need to determine how good a fit the two parties are.

• Can they help our business?
  This question has many different parts to it. Initially you need to determine exactly what it is you hope to get out of the working relationship. Yes, you want someone to manage or help manage your pay-per-click marketing activity, but to what extent? For example, will they need to do all of your keyword and customer insight research? You should also set some goals. Is your main concern just traffic, or do you want to see a rise in conversion as well? These are all factors that will determine to what extent a PPC management agency can help your business.
• Can we work comfortably with them?
  Having a good working relationship is important, whether it’s internally or externally. Your business ethos and culture contribute massively to the effectiveness of any venture, and this is also true when working with agencies. Can you see your teams and theirs getting on? This will affect workflow and communication massively. You need to have a connection on a professional level, but a personal connection is also important. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about the work culture and ethos of the agency when you’re first approaching them.
• Do they have a proven track record?
  If you’re going to entrust your money and time to an external source, you first want to make sure they’re worth it. Many agencies are great at self-promotion; it’s part of the job after all. However, you need to see a portfolio of work that demonstrates proven results. Testimonials from previous clients are a great source of information, but try and look beyond their website for these. Ask for specific numbers when it comes to their previous clients. For example, how much have they increased conversion rates or sales? They don’t have to be detailed, but some top-level figures show what they’re capable of. A good indicator of their credentials is whether they have any specific or ongoing affiliations with other companies. This shows a level of trust that someone else has put in the agency.
• Will you own your accounts and activity?
  The question of ownership is one that is often overlooked when it comes to signing up with an agency. It may not seem like a big issue when you’re working together, but when you decide to bring your PPC activity in-house, or switch agencies, it can quickly become messy. Ideally you want to work with an agency who will give you ownership of the assets and accounts. This includes things like landing pages and Google AdWords accounts. If you don’t have ownership of these and decide to move on to pastures new, you’ll have to start from scratch with your activity. This can be costly in terms of both money and time.

Choosing the Right PPC Management Agency: What to Look For

Once you’ve asked the key questions, you’ll want to determine how long and committed a contract is. Ideally you’ll want an initial trial period with an agency to see how the working relationship develops. During this time you should look for some key indicators of their performance. We’ve listed the main ones below:

• Proven results
  We mentioned above how you need to examine an agency’s credentials and track record before signing up with them. This is true of your initial period of working with them too. If you have goals in mind, you should start to see progress towards these. As the client, you’re entirely within your rights to ask for and see the results at any time. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of how the new PPC activity is performing. If it’s not delivering the expected results ask why. You need to have the confidence that progress is being made.
• The right kind of traffic
  So far a lot of what we’ve mention applies to all agencies, not just a PPC management agency. However, one of the key things to look for in terms of PPC is the traffic that’s coming to your site. Increasing click through rates and visitors sounds great, but only if it’s from sources you want. One of the biggest problems in PPC marketing is clickfraud. This is where competitors or botnets artificially drive traffic through your ads. This means you end up spending money on each click, but doesn’t bring any positive results. Hopefully, the agency you choose to work with will have methods to stop this activity and get refunds on any money spent on illegitimate clicks. They’ll be able to target specific customers and increase your conversion rate, not just your traffic volume.
• In-depth analytics
  This is something that is very much linked to the point above. There is sometimes a tendency for agencies to only deliver very top-level analytics to their clients. The reasons for this are varied, but it could be a lack of time, or as a means to cover up bad results. As well as details of the quality of your traffic, with PPC it’s vital to have an understanding of how customers are reaching your site, and what they’re doing when they get there. You need reliable data on customer trends, segments, and engagement. This means that you can account for every cent that goes towards your PPC spend.
• Transparency
  Finally, you want to choose an agency that will be honest with you. They will need to be accountable for your PPC bids and activity and should give you the confidence to trust them. Openness and transparency about what they’re doing, what’s working, and what’s not is important for building this trust.

TEA Software: The Right PPC Management Agency

From what we’ve detailed so far, it should be clear that hiring a PPC agency is a task that requires a great deal of thought and research. In order to speed up this process and demonstrate why TEA Software is the right choice for your PPC management, we’ve outlined some of key credentials:

• We can help your business
  Our expert team have many years of eCommerce experience under their belts. With this experience, we’ve worked to create software that can genuinely help with your PPC marketing. We’re so confident that it will help that we offer a 30-day money back guarantee. If you don’t see results within the first 30 days, you’ll get a full refund. Our automated AI bidding software can outmanoeuvre Google’s own auto-adjustment feature. Ours uses real time data to adjust, whereas Google delays theirs by up to 18 hours.
• We can work with you
  Not only have we created TEA, we’ve also refined the best practice guidelines for how to use it. We know our software inside and out, and can use this to benefit your business. We want to be your partner, not just your vendor. Our staff members are friendly and resourceful, and we know the importance of striking up a good relationship from the offset.
• We have a proven track record
  Our software is powerful, so much so that we believe we can out-compete our competitors when it comes to PPC marketing. We will review the performance of your campaigns on a daily basis to eliminate any underperforming keywords, carrying out extensive testing to determine what works best. We’ve worked with many clients, and the effectiveness of our software is such that Shopping Cart Elite use our software to power the analytics of their eCommerce platform.

A PPC Management Agency Like No Other

By choosing TEA Software to power your PPC marketing activity, you’re guaranteed results. Our in-depth analysis can give you all you need to know about your traffic, your customers, and how your campaigns are performing. We can work with you to run the most cost-effective and successful pay-per-click activity possible for your company. Contact us today today to find out more information about how we can work together.