15 QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE HIRING AN SEM AGENCY. Overview. Choosing the Wrong SEM Agency can Destroy your Business!

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1 Overview Choosing the Wrong SEM Agency can Destroy your Business! Choosing a PPC agency to manage your accounts is a business critical task. Search marketing has the potential to drive a large portion of your business, and the different between a well-managed account and a badly managed one can mean millions of dollars (if not tens of millions of dollars) in gained or lost revenue. Finding the Right SEM Agency is Hard Unfortunately, it s hard to hire a company if you don t understand what to look for. Many people/companies claim they know how to do PPC well, but not many actually do. The PPC world is constantly innovating, and there are no real training/standards in this space. Salespeople will throw around complex terminology to make you feel like they know what they are talking about, but it doesn t mean they can affect your bottom line. This list of 15 questions is everything you need in order to qualify the agencies / SEM analysts you want to hire.

2 The 15 Questions to Find the Perfect Agency Partnership The below 15 questions will help you qualify PPC companies better, and grow your business. 1. Do You Understand My Business? 2. What metrics are you going to use which will indicate success or failure of my campaign? 3. How are you going to do reporting for me? 4. Can you set up Google Analytics and other tracking/advertising integrations with my PPC accounts? 5. Can you help me make sure my website is designed to convert the traffic you send? 6. What s the experience of the analyst who is going to handle my account? 7. How often will we be talking? 8. How long do you expect it to take until you see results? 9. What s your track record of success? 10. Do I own my PPC Accounts? 11. Is your contract month-to-month? 12. Once you are successful, why should I continue paying you on a monthly basis? 13. What s the most common mistakes that you see other PPC Analysts/Companies make? 14. Tell us a bit about your secret sauce, what sets you apart? 15. Do you have direct relationships with the search engines to expedite access to betas/resolve issues?

3 1. Do you understand my business? Almost every business is unique. Customers have unique pain points, businesses have specific demographics that they do extremely well with and the purchase paths will vary. In order for your PPC company to do well, make sure that they understand your customer, their needs, what the decision process looks like, how you fulfill your business and what sets you apart. Ask them to give it back to you, make sure they truly understand it. The first thing we do when starting to talk with you is to understand your business. Doing this well gives us the ability to drive your business successfully, both from the business metrics, as well as the sales messaging. Talk to us, and you ll see the questions we ask, and how it will get you growing your business! 2. What metrics are you going to use which will indicate bottom line revenue for my company? Talking to a PPC guy is almost as bad as talking to your technical guys. By the time they are done, you will learn about CTR, Quality Score, RLSA, CPC, Average position and much more. However, the first thing you want to do is really understand the business metrics that carry meaning that indicate whether you are profitable or not. Your PPC company should work with you on figuring out what metrics are important, and why. We have a proven process that methodically sets realistic business goals for your media buying. We translate that back into the metrics that count, and then report on them on a monthly basis. There will be no confusion as to how your media buying is impacting your business.

4 3. How are you going to do reporting for me? And how often? You should get a report at least once a month. Ideally once every two weeks. The reports should be customized so you can see the metrics that have meaning to you. In other words, simple not too many graphs; but also customized, to estimate your revenue numbers and match your goals. Global SEM Partners can provide you scheduled reports monthly, bi-monthly, weekly and ondemand. We use a custom API to Adwords, Analytics, Bing Ads and more to bring you the data you need to see and just the data you need, in a format that is very straightforward. 4. Can you set up Google Analytics and other tracking/advertising integrations with my PPC accounts? Media buying doesn t operate in a vacuum. In order to be successful, you need to have your tracking set up in Google analytics, to dive deeper into consumer behavior. You also should make sure that the company you use is experienced enough in integrating all of the platforms together (e.g. tracking form leads in Google Analytics. Integrating Google Plus, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Merchant Center, Google Adwords and Google Analytics together.) Global SEM Partners is on the cutting edge of all of the integrations. We love to help our clients do the integrations, as it helps you grow your business. Please ask us what we can do for you, and how it will impact YOUR business!

5 5. Can you help me make sure my website design is designed to convert the traffic you send? In order to assure success, your PPC company should be able to give you a gut check on how competitive/compelling your messaging and design on your landing pages is. Since they look at your competitor landing pages (you hope), they will have a good idea of what works and what doesn t. Global SEM Partners has been doing design and conversion optimization for years. Part of our initial conversations with you will include looking at your website, and ensuring that they should be able to reasonably convert well. We actually have a process called the 6 Ingredients of a Profitable Online Brand, that helps checklist a websites messaging, offer & usability vs the competition. We will also spot-check the messaging/copywriting to ensure that it aligns with your core values (USP) 6. What s the experience of the analyst who is going to handle my account? It is quite hard to ensure that your analyst who works with you is going to be able to drive success in your account. Make sure that they have the basic certifications, as well as see how much experience and what types of results they have driven. Global SEM Partners provides you with top talent you can t find elsewhere. In addition to a rigorous hiring process, we also train our team intensively. Every analyst on our team has built thousands of Campaigns, and can drive effective internet marketing strategy for you. 7. How often will we be talking? Depending on how much you are spending and how much search impacts your business, you should speak no less than once a month. Ideally bi-weekly. Your analyst is available anytime 9-5 via phone or . In the initial couple of months, we talk 2-4 times / month. Over time, it is up to you, how much communication you prefer.

6 8. How long do you expect it to take until you see results? If the company answers longer than days, you should find another company. Search works quite well, really quickly. If you are doing display, it could take up to 120 days. A quick caveat if your industry has a long purchase cycle, it will take a bit longer to see success. Global SEM Partners turns around campaigns dramatically for our clients. We often can show a 30-50% performance increase within the first the days. It s not unheard of for our clients to double their business within months of working with us. 9. What s your track record of success? Any decent agency will have case studies where they ve at least added 10-20% performance increases. They should be able to tell you how they ve done it, and what the other client saw. About 85% of our clients see the expected performance increases. 10. Do I own my PPC accounts? This is absolutely crucial! Some companies will try to hold you hostage to your PPC accounts. This means even if they perform badly, they can still hold it over you. Never let them do that. You own the account, they get to work on it. You fire them at will if you are unhappy with performance. We NEVER own our client s marketing accounts. We strongly believe it is in your best interest to own your accounts, and not to leave it hostage in the agencies hands.

7 11. Is your contract month-to-month? You should insist on only working with a company that will allow you to get out of a contract quickly. If the agency is good, they won t need a contract to lock you in. If the company isn t good, you should be scared of having to deal with negative results, and still be locked in to them. All of our contracts are month-to-month. 12. Once you are successful, why should I continue paying you on a monthly basis? As mentioned, you should come from the approach that you own the accounts, and the work. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask why you would consider paying them after 2-3 months, when the majority of the work is complete. There are changes happening virtually every week. Our clients are smart. They pay us every month because they value the work we do, the constant opportunities we bring to them, and the strategic direction and vision we offer. 13. What s the most common mistakes that you see other PPC Analysts/Companies make? This question will allow you to see how the PPC company thinks, and what types of things they catch. This is a long discussion. Most people in this space don t even have basic best practices down. Campaigns are often built incorrectly, new opportunities not taken advantage of and much more. Most importantly, most people in our space just don t get the business side.

8 14. Tell us a bit about your secret sauce, what sets you apart? Once again, this is a place for the agency to pitch you, and you can see how well their messaging aligns with your goals We have a set of best practices built from demanding results from our team. The best way to see a tip of that secret sauce is to get an audit on your account. As said above, a big part of our success is using our formula to predict whether a campaign can hit your business targets or not. Our process virtually guarantees success. 15. Do you have direct relationships with the search engines to expedite access to betas/resolve issues? The better PPC agencies have good relationships with Google, Microsoft and other engines/networks. This is invaluable in getting access to features not always available directly to advertisers, as well as resolving potential issues quicker. We have an extremely close relationship with Google & Microsoft. They love us because they see us help our clients grow and spend more. Through them, we get access to new betas for our clients and expedited resolutions of issues. We run webinars together with Google as well. Contact Us Struggling with how to get your PPC campaigns working better for you? Please contact us at: Global SEM Partners David Jaeger david@globalsempartners.com