Recently, I attended a panel at HeroConf discussing what would make advertisers working with PPC agencies happy with the relationship. I’ve compiled a list of what stood out to me, along with some ideas of how to ensure your agency can meet similar expectations.
This applies to anyone working with a client or stakeholder, not just agencies or consultants.
Agency Tip #1: Recruit Superstar PPC Talent
I’m not saying that you need to hire Perry Marshall replications for every one of your staff members. However, in order for your agency to grow and thrive, it is important to hire game-changing PPC talent. Erin Sagin, Customer Success Manager at WordStream, spent a large portion of her year in 2014 recruiting and hiring killer talent. Erin provided the below tips to drastically improve your PPC talent:
Define a Required Skill-Set
What attributes does your ideal candidate for paid search have? They should have excellent industry knowledge, be able to work well with clients, and have the right personality for your agency. If you work exclusively with legal firms, it’s important that candidates have legal experience and know the industry jargon. If you have a youthful agency culture, you’ll want candidates who fit that demographic. Ask yourself these questions to help you define the characteristics you’re looking for in a candidate.
Erin explains that they have taken care to be very specific about what they want in their job postings, in order to avoid wasting time talking to candidates who are not a good fit.
Look for people with the specific skills you need who are realistic about their salary expectations.
Don’t Obsess Over Experience
Although someone who is relatively new to the paid search game may not know what PPC stands for, this should not be a reason to rule them out as a candidate. Erin explains that there are certain traits, such as being analytical or technical, which are more important than already knowing about PPC. She says that it is easier to teach someone about PPC than it is to teach them how to be analytical or good at communicating with clients.
According to Randi Lucius, senior paid search specialist at WordStream, it is easier to teach someone how to use pay-per-click advertising than how to use Microsoft Excel properly. Lucius has over six years of experience managing multiple accounts totaling over $220,000 per month. Excel is the biggest program WordStream uses, outside of the AdWords and Bing platforms.
Erin and Randi both think that culture fit is very important when hiring employees. Randi recommends asking if the potential employee will fit in with the company, get along well with the other employees, and work hard.
Utilize References in the Decision-Making Process
You might think that this tip is something that every recruiting manager already knows, but you would be surprised at how many of them offer a job without checking references first. This is a huge mistake! We know that you’re probably very busy, but it’s important that you take a few minutes to make these phone calls. As Erin explains, “Calling references can help you make a final decision about a candidate.”
Agency Tip #2: Identify and Attain Quality Clients
Although you may have the skill for Pay-Per-Click (PPC), you need to find clients that are the right fit in order to keep yourself busy. Agencies often make the mistake of accepting any customer that comes their way, even if they are difficult to work with or clearly not a good match for the services being provided.
According to Elliott Reid, WordStream’s Agency Sales Team Manager, a challenge agencies face is making time to bring on new clients. He says that it can be a catch 22 because as an agency grows, it puts all its time and resources into growing the business, but every new client just means more work, taking the focus away from generating new business. He notes that agencies are not good at generating business for themselves.
Make Business Development a Focus
Don’t let this important task slip through the cracks by forgetting to make it a priority. Set aside a mandatory amount of time each week, day, or month to hunting for new clients.
Get Noticed
On Facebook, like and follow your client’s business pages, as well as pay-per-click and other marketing industry leaders. And on Google+, join important circles like Women in PPC, State of Search, #mchat, and more. Did you know that people spend more time on social networks over any other internet activity, including email? Well, your prospective clients are 100% going to socially stalk you before agreeing to sign a commitment. This means you need to leverage your social profiles to prove that you’re the Tom Brady of paid search. Dedicate time to building up your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ profiles. Get involved with your industry’s Twitter community by joining industry chats like #ppcchat, following, favoriting, and retweeting content from big names in the PPC world (like @LarryKim, @GinnyMarvin, and @Matt_Umbro). On Facebook, like and follow your client’s business pages, as well as pay-per-click and other marketing industry leaders. And on Google+, join important circles like Women in PPC, State of Search, #mchat, and more
Elliott suggests that writing for your company’s blog or starting your own business blog can help to establish you as an industry expert and increase your professional credibility. He argues that this will ultimately be of benefit to you and your career.
Get to Know Their Business
This is an important step because if you can’t speak about your prospective or current client’s business in an intelligent way, then all trust will be gone. They will never expect you to know as much as they do, but having some basic knowledge will help build a positive business relationship. Elliott says, “Understand where you’ll be able to provide value. It’s all about them, what they’re looking for, understanding their industry so you can speak intelligently to them.”
Provide VALUE
You need to be able to explain how your agency can provide value to a prospective client’s business. This means having conversations with them to understand their PPC goals, and then being able to speak to these goals during the selling process.
Elliott says that the key to success is to focus on providing value to every customer and not make unrealistic promises. Figure out exactly what the customer wants and how you can help them achieve this. Making promises that are realistic is essential to keeping customers satisfied.
What are some ways to know if a potential new client is a bad fit? Erin’s post covers some red flags to look out for. Knowing when to say no to a new client can save you a lot of trouble down the road.
Agency Tip #3: Keep Your Clients Happy
It’s time to celebrate your successes, but don’t get too comfortable – there’s still more work to be done. Winning a deal is only a small part of what you need to do to make your agency successful. You also need to focus on your clients and make sure your churn rate is low. Don’t assume that your long-standing clients will never leave – they might be unhappy with your agency and not tell you. Make sure you’re always focused on improving client retention.
Be Transparent and Communicate Effectively
You should keep your clients informed about where their money is being spent so that they don’t get angry and cause problems.
Agency Tip #4: Make Your Agency Stand Out
PPC expertise makes agencies stand out
The PPC expert is expected to be up-to-date with the latest PPC trends and know which new strategies to try. This analogy has been used before to describe the PPC expert as a ‘PPC doctor’, which means that they will need to keep their skills relevant as artificial intelligence takes over more aspects of the job.
Clients usually look for agencies that have the expert knowledge and information on how to fix their problems. You can think of it as being a doctor where you need to be up to date on the latest treatments and how they might interact with other things that your patient/client might be experiencing.
Be willing to try something before it can be automated
If your client wants to try something new, it may not have any good tools to scale it quickly. This means the project could be more time-consuming than usual. But if it will give your client an advantage, it’s worth doing the manual work. The client should understand that they’ll have to pay more for this level of service. If the agency isn’t paid enough, they might not work very hard to keep the client.
Work with the latest technology
If you want to be able to take advantage of the latest features on PPC platforms and make a profit doing it, you need to have good technology at your agency. Scripts can be very helpful for prototyping solutions. If you haven’t tried using scripts yet, I would strongly suggest that you do. If you need some inspiration, both Daniel Gilbert and I have written a lot about this subject.
The 90-day plan for agency success
An agency should focus on exceeding expectations at the beginning of a new agency-client relationship. This is critical in order to establish a strong working relationship.
Know why the client sought help from an agency
agencies need to understand the reasons why their clients decided to hire them, and use that information to deliver strong results during the first quarter. It’s important to remember that the client chose to come to the agency because they were unhappy with something that was happening before. It could be that they weren’t meeting their KPIs, or felt that their last agency wasn’t providing enough value, or that they were experiencing a lot of growth and needed additional help to keep up with the demands of a growing business. Whatever the reason may be, it’s crucial to be aware of it and make it a priority to address that concern first and foremost.
If you’re not careful, it’s easy to think that the reason a client hired you is because of one of the amazing capabilities that you sold them on. However, while that might have been a factor in their decision, it might not be the thing that will make them happiest in the end.
Numbers aren’t everything
While it may be surprising to PPC pros when they deliver on KPIs but their client is still unhappy, results are just part of what makes a client happy. Clients also need to feel good about the relationship in order to be satisfied.
Starbucks has changed their loyalty program, and instead of 125 stars to earn a free drink, it now takes 150 stars. But coffee-lovers can now also earn more frequent but smaller rewards like an extra shot of espresso, a flavor shot, or other drink customizations at lower levels of stars. The idea is that people are happier with more frequent rewards, even if they are smaller and ultimately more expensive. From a logical point, it makes no sense, yet we have to remember that we’re dealing with humans and logic isn’t everything. As an agency, never forget that keeping your client happy with in-person meetings and frequent but short check-ins may be just as critical to a healthy relationship as delivering the numbers they want.
Conclusion
There are many things to consider when advertisers are looking for help with their PPC accounts, such as building bigger in-house teams or hiring one of thousands of agencies. It is important to know what goes on in the minds of advertisers who hire an agency, in order to be more successful in landing new clients and keeping existing ones happy.
Related posts:
