7 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR PPC AGENCY

Transcription

1 7 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR PPC AGENCY How Retailers Can Effectively Evaluate Agency Partners We Turn Browsers Into Buyers

2 7 Questions to Ask Your PPC Agency Innovation around programs like Google Shopping, retargeting, CPC-based product ad channels, and display advertising has given new life to the role of PPC channels in a retailer s Sales & Marketing portfolio. If you re currently outsourcing SEM management, there are specific service aspects a PPC agency needs to be able to address in order to ensure the profitability of your Retail Search channels. This white paper is designed to assist you in your evaluation of PPC and Digital Marketing agencies by arming you with 7 questions. These inquiries cut to the core of the real value an agency will add to your PPC programs and, hopefully, provide reassurance that your new partnership will maximize your business s potential for success with PPC advertising. At the end of the day, your PPC agency should constantly be justifying your investment both ad budget and the monthly service fee by maximizing the profitability of the campaigns and hitting the agreed-upon KPIs.

3 3 Value Proposition 7. What separates you from other PPC agencies? For retailers, partnering with an agency that specializes in retail is essential. Oftentimes, an agency will work with multiple industries like hospitality and consumer goods in addition to retail. Lead generation, branding, and direct-response (ie. orders) are all initiatives that require fundamentally different strategies, and so when your agency partner or prospect doesn t specialize in retail, you don t benefit from the expertise, systems, and processes that would otherwise be developed at an agency with a focused target market. Retail-focused PPC agencies understand: Retail Search Trends: How are people searching for your products and how can we leverage new Search behaviors to maximize campaign profitability? Vertical-Specific Experience: What does the competitive landscape look like? What has historically worked well with Vitamin Supplement / Apparel / Outdoor / Furniture/ etc. accounts? Retail Search Channels: Where are consumers searching for products? More importantly, where are high-intent consumer queries occurring? Which channels have proven to be most profitable? Product Inventory: How are you leveraging my product data to get more visibility on Search channels? How are you improving my product data on an ongoing basis?

4 4 Experience 6. How long have you been around? Did you work with Google Shopping before it went paid? With a proven track record of high volume traffic generation and rapid customer acquisition capabilities, Google Shopping has proven to be the premier pay-per-click channel for retailers. Your agency needs to have extensive experience with the ins-and-out of this program. This expertise will come with some often-overlooked benefits like dedicated agency reps at Google, a built-out product feed engineering team, early access to new programs, and, ideally, an official Google Shopping partnership. On a management level, any experienced agency that specializes in Google Shopping will be able to feature experience in: Quickly resolving a wide variety of feed issues Constructing the Shopping campaign architecture from the ground-up Implementing multi-dimensional bid modifiers to balance traffic volume with profitability Appending product data titles, descriptions, and attributes to include core search terms Installing remarketing tags to collect site visitor data and create an audience pool to retarget

5 5 5. How experienced will my account management team be? The accumulated experience of an individual Account Manager and the quantity of managers assigned to your account is not as important as the quality of systems and processes within the agency. The role of technology in the management strategy, the average number of accounts assigned to an individual AM, and the structure of the account management team are all reflections of this. For your purposes, the structure of the account management team is what can be most easily investigated. A solid team structure will mitigate the risks associated with having an inexperienced account manager and ensure that there are always fresh eyes on the account. A standard team structure features a day-to-day point of contact (your dedicated Account Manager), a relatively behind-the-scenes Account Strategist, as well as a Director or VP of

6 6 Accounts. Ideally, you have direct access to all three of these people. Additionally, a powerful PPC agency will leverage technology in conjunction with the actual management team. Automated solutions simply can t replicate the sophistication of a team of PPC experts who employ hands-on management. Here are some questions you can employ to determine the quality of your dedicated management team: How many people will be on the account? How often are my manager(s) logging into and making changes within the account? How long have my manager(s) been working in PPC, digital marketing, and more specifically ecommerce marketing? What s the process for auditing my account on an ongoing basis and how often is this occurring? Who oversees my account manager? Do I have direct access to this person as well?

7 7 Product Feed Management 4. What ongoing customization or testing will be applied to my feed? For Google Shopping and other PPC-based programs like comparison shopping engines and social commerce platforms, the product feed is arguably the most important factor in determining the success of the channel. Traditional feed agencies do not specialize in product feed management this is a feature reserved for agencies with a background in Retail Search channels. In terms of the actual customizations being made, there are essentially 2 buckets: Compliance Constant changes need to be made to the feed to ensure that it doesn t get flagged or suspended. Google is known to go on suspension sprees as they audit the inbound data from their retail advertisers, so it s critical to be able to act quickly and purposefully if this issue arises.for highvolume retail advertisers, an entire feed suspension can result in tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed out revenue. Enhancements Consistently planting top-converting search terms within the product feed is the essence of true feed optimization. In short, you can think about a Google Merchant Center feed, for example, as your SEO for Google Shopping.

8 8 By providing robust product data to Google, your products are able to rank higher for longtail, bottom-of-the-funnel consumer queries that indicate a high intent to buy. This is because as the foundation of your PLAs, the product feed will be able to indicate a higher search relevancy than your competitors with less-robust product feeds. The results are lower CPCs and higher conversion rates. At the end of the day, feed management is perhaps the most tedious aspect of Retail Search advertising, and so it s a nice luxury to be able to completely offload this to a capable agency that understands just how critical it is to performance on a PPC product advertising channel. Performance 3. How long until I can expect to see your management have its full impact on performance? While the agency world is very relationship-based, at the end of the day, the results should be the client s biggest consideration in continuing the partnership. However, be wary of agencies that promise quick results or which bend to demands for rapid performance growth. Typically, it will take about 90 days to implement the processes and strategies that will ensure the long-term success of your account. Any performance timeline that is less than that may not be realistic and may be using strategies which jeopardize long term success for short term gains. This is because the most powerful manipulations to a PPC account are based off of historical performance data, and so this data needs to be analyzed before it can inform any meaningful changes.

9 9 Specifically for feed-based PPC programs like Google Shopping, it s possible to see a short-term boost in performance from the initial feed work. Any agency with valuable experience with structured-data channels like Shopping will put in a lot of early work in your feed to increase its comprehensiveness. Involving the re-allocation of available product data and appending product titles and descriptions, this early-stage process ensures that your product listing ads will surface for the queries that are most relevant to your inventory. It should be noted that it s absolutely critical that you and your PPC agency have ongoing communication about your campaign goals. Changing priorities and initiatives as well as a fluctuating budget should be clearly communicated with your agency team and temper how you gauge their results. It certainly helps to have a dedicated, highly accessible management team for this very reason. 2. Can you provide projections? Performance projections are a very reasonable request, particularly if you re a Marketing Manager that needs to share projected metrics with a Director of VP on an ongoing basis. Your agency should be able to share projections for your store based on the planned campaign types andoptimization strategy, but direct numbers may be more difficult to project. Instead, ask your PPC agency for an overall percent of growth or efficiency for your account over the next 6 months. The reality is that projections are meaningless without being supported with legitimate reasons behind them.

10 10 If your agency is promising a certain amount of growth, it s important that they re able to communicate and help you understand the specific implementations that will contribute to that growth figure. In other words, what s the strategy behind these projections and which specific levers will be pulled in order to reach that percent of growth? This question is also why PPC agencies will typically begin any engagement with an audit of the account. An audit helps both the agency and the prospect/client understand the potential for growth within the account, and based off this assessment, a ball-park projection can typically be provided. 1. How do you deal with clients in similar verticals? Do you manage any of our competitors? This is a very common question that arises early-on in the evaluation process and deservedly so. For example, there is an inherent conflict of interest if an agency is trying to maximize Google Shopping visibility for two different Outdoor retailers that have a lot of overlap in their product catalogs. However, experienced PPC agencies will have systems in place to safeguard any potential conflict. Typically, this involves assigning different Account Managers for clients in the same vertical and not sharing performance data. The reality is that just about every experienced PPC agency has multiple clients within a vertical, and in many cases, this can benefit the client. There are applied learnings that are specific to a vertical that an agency can employ to better inform implementation strategy.

11 11 For example, a Vitamin & Supplements retailer may have their feed flagged for certain ingredients, and so this can help inform modifications to other Vitamin & Supplement clients to prevent a feed suspension. An agency will usually not share any information about their clients who could potentially be competitors. While initially this may be frustrating, it s actually the mark of an agency who values their client relationships and respects their right to privacy. Odds are that you wouldn t want your agency sharing your information with your competitors. Ultimately, no two sites or businesses are built the same nor do they convert the same. Just as each business needs to differentiate themselves from their competitors, each account needs a customized implantation strategy and optimization approach.

12 12 What now? Ready to fire off your questions? Review your AdWords Strategy with a Retail Search Expert CPC Strategy s Retail Search Audit is a complimentary 60-minute analysis and assessment of a retail advertiser s existing AdWords account, product pages, product feed attributes, and business KPIs. The Audit is conducted by a professional Retail Search Strategist over a screenshare and conference call. Schedule My Meeting