Finding & Hiring The Right PPC/Paid Media Agency

The following factors and actions can help you decide whether a PPC agency is the best choice for your company:

Analyze their portfolio

There are a few things to search for regarding the agency’s portfolio and what to keep an eye out for.

Getting recommendations from trustworthy people is the best way to determine whether the agency is reliable. In addition, those who are confident enough to share their stories with you can give you some real insight into real problems.

In their portfolio, you should look for projects they have worked on that are similar to yours.

Working for a SaaS company, an eCommerce site, or an offline company is unique and calls for unique skills. Ask the people you’ll be working with if they have any expertise in the field of your business model, target audience, and size of the company.

Of course, we can’t expect experts to divulge all of their knowledge, but it’s always a plus if they have something to boast about. The results are excellent, but you can also see how they work.

Lastly, this should be a positive sign if they have testimonials in their portfolio! It’s always a plus when someone gives you their positive opinion and signs it with their name. 

Don’t follow the certificates

This refers to credentials from advertising platforms like the Google Partner or Facebook Blueprint programs and any other documents that should “prove” your expertise.

Certificates don’t demonstrate real-world experience, and there are a few reasons for this:

• It’s simple – It’s not particularly impressive because obtaining most official certificates from advertising platforms such as Google Ads search Certifications is easy.
• You don’t get many benefits from it – It’s not like companies with certifications work closely with Google and get special treatment or discounts. The best part is that occasionally, you can get quick access to beta features that aren’t generally accessible.
• Evaluation is tricky – who created the certificates, what requirements did they have, and who certified them? Again, there is nothing wrong with papers like these, but they shouldn’t be the main criteria and a priority.
• The same goes for awards. There is nothing wrong with awards because they are usually based on analyzed case studies, but the results and the clients are always more valuable than any committee.

Ensure they understand your business

This applies to more than just your business model. Your market environment and niche are essential. Someone in the agency needs to be familiar with your target audience, the media they consume, the best way to reach them, their vocabulary, the most recent events, their style of communication, etc.

People who are genuinely passionate about their field of work will typically produce better outcomes.

Training your partners to help them understand your business is typically a good idea. But it’s ideal if they are already knowledgeable of it.

If they don’t but still claim to be experts, that should raise a warning sign.

Run a test campaign

Running a test campaign will lengthen the recruitment process, but it will increase the likelihood that your choice will be better. Even though a straightforward test won’t reveal everything, it will give you a good understanding of what to anticipate.

This doesn’t only mean results; it also means communication skills, how they present their findings, the kinds of questions they pose, and their capacity to work with incomplete information.

You can tell it’s a good fit if they can deliver early results and if they have a sense of your company even before full-time cooperation and knowledge sharing begins. If they can do that, you won’t require much more to ensure that it’s truly effective.

Find out who’s going to work for you

Make sure to clarify in the final contract who will serve as your primary point of contact and who will carry out the actual work. One of the worst moves that marketing agencies make is assigning juniors with minimal experience to complete the work after sending the management and top personnel to win the client.

If it works, it’s sometimes acceptable, but it’s always a good idea to anticipate how the collaboration will proceed. 

You can also search through the open positions that your agency has. If they advertise that they only work with the best candidates and notice that their recruitment requirements are lower than average, you know something is wrong.

Prepare for a safe exit

Although it may seem inappropriate to think about ending the partnership before it has even begun, it is best to keep it safe. So plan ahead because you probably won’t work with this agency again until the end of time.

Ascertain that your party owns the accounts for the advertising platforms, all the data, and any intellectual property created during the collaboration. Check to see that nothing will be stopped once your partnership ends. It’s crucial to comprehend every term. You don’t want a murky clause to come back years later and hurt you.

Pick a billing model that works for you

Creating a budget is the first step. Although some agencies will ask you about it, it’s not so crucial for you to do so right away. 

They may ask you about your goals, and your professional will tell you what you need to spend to achieve them. In any case, you’ll want to prepare some estimates.

Pay-per-click advertising, performance marketing, and growth hacking are all used to boost sales or other intermediate objectives. Although it may be tempting to base the agency fee on the outcomes, this rarely works out as well as it should.

Some popular billing models you can go for are: 

Cost Per Hour

You pay for the number of hours that specialists put in, for the media, for extra equipment and activities, and occasionally for extra costs and provisions.

This approach has the advantage that you can see the total estimate and schedule and know precisely what you’re paying for.

However, because the amount of work varies monthly, it is difficult to budget expenses in advance, and there is no financial incentive to produce better results.

Fixed Price

Frequently based on hours as well, but you pay the same amount each month.

This offers greater predictability but less flexibility and no financial incentive to deepen the partnership and go above and beyond.

Budget-provision

You contribute a portion of the media budget, typically between 5% and 30% depending on the scope and other elements.

You can quickly estimate the cost and encourage your partner to raise the scale through financial incentives.

This doesn’t involve any actual work, and it doesn’t encourage the partner to make savings.

Success Fee

You pay a percentage or set fee based on value, such as the number of customers, revenues, profits, leads, marketing objectives, etc.

Using this strategy, you only pay for the outcomes, encouraging your partner to raise the scale.

However, this method makes costs challenging to estimate and predict, and external variables highly influence the price.

Hybrid Models

There are hybrid billing models, such as fixed + success fee, but it would be pointless to list them all here.

What is the best billing model, then? I firmly believe that straightforward solutions are the best from both angles.

Pay attention to communication

If you’ve already selected a firm and begun working together, maintaining open lines of communication is essential. Here, your client relationship is not over. You cannot simply sign the agreement and wait for the outcomes. You must collaborate.

Ensure that your team has everything they require to complete their work, but also keep an eye on whether the communication is still at a high level or whether it has declined now that they are not required to advocate for you.

Do they send all of the reports you requested? Do they take the initiative and generate fresh concepts? Do you receive status calls every week or every two weeks? Do they reply to your emails promptly?

A prompt response is a very straightforward but excellent sign of your agency’s motivation.

Trust your agency

It would help if you had effective but unobtrusive communication with your chosen agency. You made the right decision and don’t need to completely control everything if you followed the recruitment process correctly.

Make testing safe, encourage bold thinking, and acknowledge that there will be mistakes and that experiments won’t always be successful. If not, it will be much more challenging to produce excellent results.

Regularly giving each other feedback on how to strengthen your teamwork and marketing efforts is typically a good idea. Feedback, however, naturally works both ways. As the host, it is your responsibility to set the mood and expectations, but you should also be open to suggestions from your partners.