Running an effective PPC campaign for your client is one thing, but building a successful relationship with them can be a different starting point.
Problems are likely to arise when there’s no relationship between you and your client, from a misunderstanding of expected results to frustrations with increasing CPCs to confusion about how budgets are being spent.
Unfortunately, friction like these can hinder both parties’ ability to help PPC campaigns succeed, adding more challenges to your already demanding position.
It’s important to build more than just a transactional relationship with your client because it will facilitate a more collaborative approach to approaching PPC strategy.
You want to be in a position where:
You have everything you need to do the best work possible. The client trusts you to get on with your work. You are comfortable having difficult discussions when the need arises.
With all that in mind, here are six things you can do to build better relationships with your PPC clients.
1. Have a thorough onboarding process
The onboarding process is more than just settling accounts. It’s about getting familiar with the business and the role of PPC campaigns in helping you achieve your goals.
While you don’t need to know all the details of the business, some of the topics you may want to consider discussing with the client include:
How does PPC fit into your broader marketing strategy? What other marketing activities are taking place in the company? How do you see PPC complementing these activities? What challenges is your industry facing right now? How is your product/service overcoming these challenges? Who do they see as their main competitors? Is it a friendly competition or have they had problems with them in the past? What are the company’s goals for the next 12 months?
All this information can be useful when creating and optimizing campaigns. Having these discussions demonstrates your genuine interest in your client’s business.
A transparent onboarding process builds trust, especially when working with new clients or those who have been burned by a bad agency experience.
2. Understand your wishes and needs of the association
Many clients may want a comprehensive report at the end of each month, while others may be overwhelmed by metrics and statistics and prefer a few bullet points.
Some may want to approve all ad copy before it goes live; others would prefer to be left out of these decisions. Some may even want to brainstorm campaigns or just be happy to be told what you’ve decided to do.
Find out exactly what your client wants from you in terms of communication, approvals and reporting. This way, you can efficiently meet their wants and needs. It could also save you time putting together detailed documents and emails, which they won’t even read.
Some questions you may want to ask include:
How often would you like me to visit you? Would you prefer it to be done by email or by phone? Do you have an approval process for things like ad copy, or do you just go with what I think is most appropriate? How much detail would you like to enter during monthly reports? Is there a particular metric you’ll be interested in seeing?
When building this framework, think about how familiar they are with PPC. Depending on your understanding and experience with PPC, context and terminology may need to be adjusted.
Dig Deeper: 3 steps to effective PPC reporting and analysis
3. Be consistent with your communication
Once you understand the level of communication and detail the client expects, you need to be consistent.
Providing consistency can help customers feel more comfortable knowing what to expect and when to receive it. It can also help you get into a routine and better organize your workload.
This could include:
Schedule a monthly call with them. Add a reminder to your calendar to submit some top-notch stats from the previous week.
It’s not unusual to get ad hoc requests or to not answer a question for a few days. But if you find that this happens regularly, it may be worth revisiting the “wants and needs” discussion with the client.
As important as it is to keep your customers happy, you also deserve consistency from them.
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4. Be transparent
It’s much easier to talk about the performance of a campaign when everything is going well than when conversions are declining. However, talking about the negatives is equally important to building a sufficient relationship with your client.
Being open and honest about things not going the way you expected or admitting a mistake you made can help build trust with your client. This shows that you are being transparent and have nothing to hide.
Proactively address the issue before the customer notices it. Show them that you are actively solving and staying in control of the situation.
In these situations where you need to address performance drops or a mistake you’ve made, try to offer solutions and next steps to the customer.
For example, if you accidentally set a campaign budget to $150 per day instead of $100 per day, suggest how much you’ll need to reduce spending in the following month to make up for the overspending.
This also helps reassure them that you know what you’re doing and that you’re proactively addressing the issue.
Dig Deeper: What to do when performance tanks in PPC
5. Be proactive
Clients want to feel confident that they have the right person for the job working hard to help them achieve their business goals. One way to do this is by proactively presenting them with what you think should happen next.
It’s easy to focus solely on executing your current strategy. However, a stronger approach involves:
Looking at what you can do to grow your current account with new campaigns. Exploring what new features could be used. Discovering opportunities to expand to new platforms.
Show the client that you are up to date with PPC developments and that you are generating more opportunities for them to expand their current performance in the future.
Even if you make suggestions that your client chooses not to go with, you’ve shown that you know what you’re doing i they want to help them achieve more.
6. It goes beyond the click
You could be running the most perfect campaign in the world, but if the post-click experience is poor, you’ll struggle to see tangible results.
While what happens once someone lands on your website is most likely out of your reach, you can provide insight into how they can improve the rest of the conversion process.
A better post-click experience could help your campaigns convert more, so everyone wins.
Some elements of the post-click experience you may want to explore and discuss with your customer:
What is the landing page experience like? Does it have the content that someone would need about the product/service? How does your landing page experience compare to your competitors? How does your product/service offering compare to the rest of the market? How easy is it to complete a conversion action? Are there obstacles that might make it difficult or unattractive for someone to convert?
This willingness to look at more than just your piece of the puzzle shows your client that:
You see yourself as an extension of their internal team. You have a vested interest in helping them succeed, both in terms of their PPC campaigns and overall online performance.
Dig deeper: 5 tips for creating a high-converting PPC landing page
A strong agency-client relationship is based on trust
Clients are looking for more than just transactional exchanges when working with freelancers or agencies. They want to feel informed and confident when handing over the PPC reins to someone outside their business.
By taking the time to understand your clients’ needs, maintaining open and consistent communication, and showing a vested interest in their success, you can develop strong, productive relationships that extend beyond individual campaigns.
Approaching your customers as true partners rather than just accounts to manage can lead to big long-term wins as you face challenges and celebrate victories together.
Deeper: How to Retain Customers in PPC
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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