7 Tips to Hiring a Pay-Per-Click Management Service

4/12/2016 (PRESS RELEASE JET) -- How to hire a Pay-Per-Click management agency, consultant, or freelancer can be a challenging question to answer, and it can make or break your company’s sales. It is extremely important to know exactly what to look for before hiring someone to manage your online marketing. From the outside, many advertising professionals look the same.  Falcon Digital Marketing has built a list of the top 7 things you should do when evaluating a PPC management service:

1. Get Regular, Accurate Reports – You should get monthly or weekly reports on the advertising data you need. Period. They should also come in towards the beginning of the month, not weeks into it. Regular, timely reports are critical when keeping up with the account. This way you see a summary of what is being done, and what is planned for upcoming months.Also, make sure that the reports can cover the data you want, not what they want to put in it. If your goal is ROI, that needs to be on their standard report. If the report you receive focuses on Click-Through-Rates, Quality Score, Impression Share, and other PPC jargon, your PPC manager is not optimizing your account properly for your goals. Ask yourself why would they not include the most important data on the report? Are they even aware of your goals? Make sure you get reports, and make sure you like what you see on them. The PPC technical terms can be difficult to understand, but it is easy to evaluate your ROI from PPC advertising.
2. Evaluate Their PPC Strategy - Everyone says they are results or data driven, but you must define the results you want, as the business owner. Ask yourself, are they going for clicks when you need leads? Are they going for volume when you need a strict ROI? Did they even ask you what your goals for advertising are? Beyond just Google Search ads, can they even do Facebook ads, Bing/Yahoo ads, Banners Ads, Remarketing ads, LinkedIn ads, or other advanced targeting? If all your PPC management company does is Search ads, you could be missing some great opportunities through other PPC advertising avenues. The strategy they come up with is critical, make sure you are critical of it.
3. Setup Proper Goal Tracking – Pay-Per-Click ads can easily track sales, website form submissions, phone calls, emails, whitepaper downloads, signups, and much more. Make sure to ask about what is being tracked from your advertising. Is the tracking working? Do they say it’s not possible to track, when it is possible? Whatever your goal is, make sure they are tracking it, even if it is tracking which keywords are generating phone calls.
4. Have Contact With Your Account Manager – Can you talk to the person actually running your pay-per-click ads? Does this person change frequently because of high turnover at the company? How many accounts do they manage in addition to yours? Are they Adwords/Analytics/Bing Ads Certified? While an agency as a whole may look great, make sure to check on which individual is running YOUR account. You may not be getting what you’re paying for.
5. Get Regular Account Updates and Maintenance – You’ll want to check up on your PPC consultants to make sure they are regularly working on the account. Check the change history in Google Adwords and Bing Ads. Ask if they are testing any new ads or targeting methods. Are results improving month over month or quarter over quarter? Make sure your account manager is active, and knows exactly what is going on with the account you pay them to manage. While daily changes aren’t always needed, there should be at least a few changes monthly.
6. You Must Get Full Account Access – Always get access and logins to your website, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and any other account someone else is managing for you. There is no excuse for them locking you out of your own account and hiding their work from you. You wouldn’t hire an accountant that did not give you access to your own bank accounts and hid their work from you. It’s the same with Pay-Per-Click management services. You have a right to know exactly what they are doing with your money.
7. Demand Billing Transparency – Make sure you get a detailed breakdown of where your money is actually going. If you pay them a flat rate, is your money actually going to advertising? Check your Google Adwords account to see if they actually spent your money there, or just kept it for themselves. Also, do they stick to your set monthly budget, or frequently try to get you to spend more? Make sure you understand your bill, and that they will take the time to explain it to you.

With any industry, there are always going to be good and bad companies out there. Make sure you do your research and go through these key points with evaluating who to hire to run your internet advertising. If you are considering switching providers, find another provider that will give you a free audit and evaluation before you have to hire them.