The world of PPC management is changing faster than in years past. New automation, economic changes and developments in reporting capabilities are changing the role of a PPC agency.
When I started in PPC in 2012, I spent a lot of my time making manual bid changes. A PPC agency’s work leaned more towards execution than strategy. Businesses today are looking for different support: strategic guidance, proactive recommendations, and cutting-edge tools/technology integration and guidance.
Failure to comply will result in poor customer retention. There are many other causes for customer churn, including:
Budgetary changes. Poor campaign performance (not meeting client goals/expectations). Mismatched communication styles. Change of contact with the client or agency team. Change in the CMO or the main decision makers. Changes in company objectives.
Businesses are rethinking how they work with agencies today.
Some are looking for new agency support for the above reasons, others are consolidating into single agencies for all their digital marketing needs, and a few are taking things in-house to save money.
How can you retain your customers and remain an invaluable part of their marketing mix?
Understand your customer’s needs and expectations
The first, and what would seem to be the most obvious, is to know your client’s goals. Theirs real goals
If you’re confident in the work and the results you’re driving, you should be able to talk to them and relate them to business goals. When I say their “real goals,” I mean go deeper than CPA or even ROAS goals.
A client may have a specific ROAS target they’re asking you for, but what does the CMO care? They probably think about things from a broader lens, like profits and income.
Getting deep enough into your client’s business to achieve goals like this can be challenging. Still, if you can close the loop with offline conversion tracking, you can start to really show your agency’s value and make firing a bad business decision for your client.
Having more information like this and feeding it back to Google will help you optimize your campaigns and more meaningfully impact your client’s business.
Where many agencies fall short is around goal setting. Having unclear or mismatched goals and expectations can be a problem. They think they’re hitting targets and delivering, but they may not understand what really matters to decision makers, whether it’s growth, increased profits, market share, etc.
Schedule deep dives regularly
The next thing you can do to retain clients and keep engagement high is to conduct audits of your own work at a specific and predictable cadence.
Auditing your own work is your opportunity to step back, think about the larger strategy, and present your findings to your client.
As the saying goes, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Auditing can allow you to think about the big picture and ensure that your strategy is tied to the client’s objective.
I recommend auditing the accounts quarterly. This type of quarterly business review (QBR) is also a great way to involve senior executives. They may not get a chance to see the value of your work as often because they don’t participate in weekly meetings. But a QBR is a good time to get some face time with them and make sure you meet their expectations.
Another side note: other agencies are likely doing these types of audits in the background. As a company works to ensure the best possible results, it will likely allow other people to review your ad accounts. It is important to your trust with the client that they feel that your audits address the same types of concerns raised by these other agencies.
Dig Deeper: PPC Management Checklist: Daily, Weekly and Monthly Reviews
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Educate your customers
One of the most important recommendations I can share as you work to build long and healthy relationships with your PPC clients is to educate them.
Create a culture of learning by sharing recommendations, optimization opportunities, and your overall process. There shouldn’t be a secret sauce you have to hide.
Be open and show them the “why” behind your recommendations so they can fully understand your experience. When you make it clear to the client what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you came up with the idea, they’ll understand the complexity of your work.
Keeping your process and strategy hidden can leave them uncertain, making them more likely to be impressed by someone who shows their work clearly. Lead regular training sessions with your team to help them truly understand PPC performance, rather than relying on reports.
Beyond sharing your strategy, do your best to share the latest trends and tactics. They will see you as a partner if you consistently share the context of industry updates.
Dig Deeper: 3 steps to effective PPC reporting and analysis
Consider the technology stack you provide to clients as part of your management and don’t be shy about showing it. Implementing advanced tools and technologies will help demonstrate to your customers that you are on the cutting edge.
Clients who see PPC as the main driver of their business are looking for the next big thing to try. Highlighting your use of new tools, automation, and AI-powered analytics tools will help customers feel confident they’re not being left behind.
Ask for feedback regularly
Finally, ask your customers how they are doing. Successful agencies encourage feedback often and in different ways. Some ways to consider are:
A permanent placeholder in meetings for feedback on any specific work. Annual or semi-annual customer surveys. Dissemination of account executive sponsors who are not involved in day-to-day operations.
Collecting that feedback is important, but acting on it shows you’re listening and willing to work to improve. Most customers are reasonable.
People have different work styles, and it may take time to get into the right rhythm, only for one individual to leave the organization and cause things to change.
Contact turnover is a major cause of poor customer retention, so make sure you collect feedback as often as possible without being annoying.
Looking for a lasting agency-client relationship in PPC
Client retention is a core goal for my teams every year at my agency. There are significant benefits to having long-standing customer relationships, including:
Increasing the probability of successfully executing a strategy. Savings in new customer acquisition costs. More predictable business forecasting.
That said, clients have every right to expect the most from their PPC agency. They want an agency that challenges them, understands their business and tries new things regularly. Work to embrace this and build long and profitable customer relationships where both parties win.
Dig Deeper: How to Improve PPC Campaign Performance: A Checklist
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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