Have You Been Let Down By Your PPC Agency? Here’s Why

I get many emails and calls from businesses that have been let down by their PPC and Google Ads agencies. And that is true also for those who have worked with PPC freelancers too. Their results have been poorer than expected.

 

And some have worked with many agencies and freelancers over the years and their results have been consistently poor.

 

These are examples of emails I’ve received from some of these businesses that have contacted me looking for help from a specialist to manage their campaigns

 

Hi Mike, we are an online garden centre and we launched at the end of August 2020. We ran a Google ads account ourselves from launch – Feb but we then hired a specialist Google ads company who we are still working with now. We aren’t happy with the results we are getting, at all. Could you please send me your prices over via email for PPC please.

 

And here is another one:

Hi Mike, Our Google AdWords account used to be run by xxx agency who we dropped a few months ago due to poor results. Our ads are hardly showing at all and we are desperate to drive more customers to our site and need a review of our campaigns and help getting our ads showing.

 

The consequences of getting PPC wrong can be great as the examples above show. Because PPC can be expensive, it’s easy to spend a lot of money even over a small period and still not get back enough return from it. This is especially the case if ads have not been setup correctly.

 

This is why this is common:

 

Many agencies and freelancers do not have PPC experience.

 

The truth is many SEO and digital marketing agencies have only added PPC marketing because they’ve been approached by existing clients asking if they provide it.

 

Many of them will try to outsource the work to a freelancer and that often doesn’t work well. That’s especially the case if they have not worked with the freelancer before and do not know how good they actually are.

 

To prevent this, always check what experience the PPC agency has. Have they worked with other businesses in your industry and do they have case studies, reviews or testimonials? Find out what results they’ve achieved.

 

They are not spending enough time managing the ads

 

Check that your PPC Agency is spending time managing your campaigns. The Change History report in your account will give you a list of work that they are doing and that will give you an idea of how much time they are spending on your campaigns.

 

 

One of the good things about running Google Ads campaigns is that if they are setup very well, then not a lot of time will be required managing them each month. The search targeting will be accurate and less searches will need to be blocked as negative keywords.

 

However, all campaigns still require ongoing management. In fact, most campaigns need at least one hour of management each week and some very small ones may need even less.

 

So, it’s important to know how much time they are spending on your ads and more importantly if they are doing the work that was agreed to.

 

 

They are not communicative

 

This is a common problem that many advertisers experience with their Google Ads agencies. The communication is usually great at the beginning with a lot of back and forth emails and calls. And responses are usually quick in the first weeks with updates on how the campaigns are performing.

 

But as time progresses, the communication from the agency about the campaign starts to taper off. And the agency starts taking longer to respond to emails.

 

Usually this leads to a drop in performance because the agency will be spending less time managing the campaigns too. So, performance suffers and the profitability of the campaigns drops. And they’ll often give all kinds of reasons for this drop in performance and not address the real reason for the drop in performance.

 

Many advertisers contact me with this problem and usually the best thing is for them to take back control of their accounts and manage the ads themselves or hire someone else.

 

Not understanding your business and industry

 

One reason why your ads are underperforming is that your agency has not taken time to understand your business, industry, products or services. And one of the reasons is that they’ll not have carried out thorough research into your products, services, competitors and the keywords to bid on.

 

And so they’re not able to advise on the best strategies to target your audiences and increase sales, leads or profitability.

 

It’s important that you make sure you provide them as much info as possible about your business, including any research you’ve done and surveys you’ve carried out. And check that they understand why your customers purchase your products or services. This will help them to do correct keyword research and write effective ads too.

 

Not being able to achieve the goals

 

Campaigns fail for many reasons and sometimes the fault is not with your agency. It can be difficult at times to know the reason, but the problem sometimes is with the advertiser not giving the ads enough time to run and test the ads. Some campaigns take a long time to be profitable and it takes patience to get them to work, especially for some B2B industries like Internet of things (IoT) businesses.

 

But often, the reason is because the campaigns are not being managed effectively and the agency or freelancer you’ve hired has failed to make it work.

 

So, it may be worth trying out another agency or freelancer to see if you can get better results. And it’s important to make sure you don’t sign long contracts like 12 months. If you have to sign a contract, make sure it is no longer than six months and ideally three.

 

Conclusion

 

So, these are the main reasons why your PPC Agency or freelancer will have let you down and your ads will have failed. Unfortunately, this is all too common and I’ve received many enquiries from advertisers that are struggling to see the results. It can be difficult especially when the relationship has broken down and that may be time to look for a new supplier.

 

Get in Touch

 

Been let down by your PPC Agency or freelancer? I’d be happy to review your campaigns and let you know how I can help. I’m a Google Ads specialist and freelance PPC consultant with over 13 years experience. Contact me below to discuss your requirements.