Have you ever found yourself in a situation where not everyone was on the same page?
It happens often in the workplace and is usually caused by different expectations between stakeholders.
Here are some ways to set and manage expectations for PPC clients and agency teams.
Describe expectations during the sales process
Setting expectations at the beginning of a project or client engagement is crucial to success.
For advertising agencies, the time to set expectations is before the advertiser becomes a customer, during the sales process.
Giving the client a sense of how your team works will help you decide if the relationship is a good fit.
For example, does your agency have an account or media manager who oversees the client relationship, or do individual practice leads manage the relationship? Or is it a hybrid? Who is the main point of contact?
Be clear about how your team is doing in general while you’re still trading.
Learn more: How to build and maintain client trust in your agency
Agree on the parameters of the statement of work
It is essential to set the participation parameters in the statement of work.
The clearer you are about the parameters of the relationship and how it will work, the better you can manage expectations once you’ve done the work.
Agree on what work will be done
What services will you offer the customer? Here are some common agency services:
Paid Search Paid Social SEO Programmatic and Display Advertising Traditional Media (Print, Out of Home, etc.) Web or Landing Page Development Analytics Strategy Development Revenue Operations/CRM Work Organic Social Management Creative Design
This is only a partial list!
Agencies can offer a wide variety of advertising and marketing services.
Some agencies offer strategy and execution of the above services, and some offer only consulting, with the client responsible for implementation. Explain what work you want to do.
If you’re not clear in your statement of work about what work you’re doing, clients will ask you to do work you’re not staffed for.
Make it obvious what’s available and what’s not. Be detailed.
It is impossible to list all possible scenarios in a statement of work, which is why it is crucial to be clear about the services that the agency will manage.
Tell the customer what work is in scope and be clear that anything else is out of scope.
For example, how many search engines will you manage for paid or organic search? How many social engines will you advertise on? Which is? Are analytics services included? If not, who is responsible for this troubleshooting? What about CRM?
For B2B advertisers, closing the loop between initial website leads and back-funnel CRM actions is an important piece of the puzzle. Are you prepared to provide these services, or will the client be responsible for this work?
The same goes for landing page optimization and development.
Failing to create optimized landing pages can be a performance blocker that can ultimately doom your customer relationship. Be clear about who owns this responsibility.
By stating who is responsible for CRO and landing page optimization, you can help avoid disappointment later on.
Meeting and report of cadences
Another aspect of customer service to deal with during the sales process is deliveries and cadences.
How often will you meet with the client? Will the meetings be held online or face-to-face? Who from the agency will attend?
Meetings can become a huge time-suck, but they’re also necessary. Consider how to make them efficient for both the agency and the client.
Reporting is another product that needs to be addressed in the statement of work.
What types of reports will be provided and how often? Will you be using Looker dashboards, PowerPoint reports, QBR, or all three? How will you handle ad hoc reporting?
Dig deeper: 3 steps to effective PPC reporting and analytics
Response time and communications with the client
You’ll also want to agree on customer communications.
How will day-to-day communication be managed? Will you be using email, instant messaging (IM) platforms like Slack or Teams, project management boards like Asana or Trello, or a combination of all of these?
What response times should I expect?
One of the downsides of using instant messaging for customer communications is that everyone starts expecting instant responses. This is not feasible or productive for anyone.
Agree with your customers that routine communications will be answered within 24 hours.
For urgent messages, perhaps a response time of 6 hours is reasonable. Accept it ahead of time; that way, no one will be disappointed.
Also consider how easy it will be to search for relevant communications later.
I find it much harder to find messages and topics in Slack than email, even though Slack is easier to organize into channels. Each has pros and cons! Think carefully before engaging with the customer.
Accounts staff
Every statement of work must include a personnel plan. You don’t need to put names, but list the roles and the percentage of time each role will be allocated to the engagement.
For example, staffing in a large paid search account might look like this:
Director – 5% Manager – 50% Analyst – 25%
Being clear about roles and percentage allocation helps clients understand who their key contacts are and how much time they will spend working on the account.
Learn More: Onboarding and Unsubscribing Clients: PPC Agency Guide
Dealing with unexpected problems
Unforeseen challenges can arise in an account. Maybe the client’s conversion tracking is broken, or they need help creating a landing page when normally this is something they would handle themselves.
Explain in the SOW how you will handle issues that would normally be out of scope.
Will you charge an hourly rate? Will a change order or new SOW be required?
Good agencies often step in and will help without compensation. This is part of being a good business partner.
Still, it’s important to set expectations about out-of-scope work to ensure the engagement remains profitable.
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Managing expectations during engagement
Once the contract is signed, work begins!
Now is the time to manage expectations.
It is important in initial calls or meetings to establish your rules of engagement.
Reinforce how you communicate, meeting cadences, response times and other key service level agreements (SLAs). Getting the client’s agreement and acceptance from both parties is critical.
An effective way to get everyone on board is to whiteboard the rules during the launch, either virtually or in person. Then take the time to discuss the rules and listen to all perspectives.
Be willing to add elements that you may not have initially thought of or adjust to meet everyone’s needs. Just make sure you can still deliver within the timeframe you agree.
Once you’ve aligned on the rules, distribute them to all stakeholders.
An agency I worked for printed and laminated rules of engagement for each client. They shared a copy with everyone working on the account, both internally and on the client side.
While this may seem curious in 2024, it is effective: a physical reminder that stakeholders can keep on their desks and easily review at any time.
The rules of engagement could also be in an online document pinned to a Slack or Teams channel.
It is important to reiterate that getting everyone’s commitment is key here.
One of Dale Carnegie’s principles in “How to win friends and influence people” is “Letting the other person feel that the idea is theirs.”
It is important to remember this principle when establishing rules of engagement with customers. If customers are involved in developing the rules, they will be more likely to follow them.
Deeper: How to Retain Customers in PPC
How to deal with problems during engagement
Inevitably, issues will arise during engagement that require a review of the SOW.
The client may request more meetings than you have contracted.
Or they start expecting faster turnaround times on the work you’re delivering.
It’s complicated because, on the one hand, you want to do everything you can to keep your customer happy.
On the other hand, your agency must be profitable.
Consider carefully whether to accommodate the customer’s request or back off.
Each approach has pros and cons.
If you’ve established ground rules and SLAs in the contract process, it’s not wrong to gently remind the customer what you agreed to.
In this case, I’ll usually say something like, “We understand how important this launch is to your business. Our contract stipulates a 5-day lead time for new campaign launches. Given the urgency of this campaign , we can try to deliver it in 2 days. We will have to re-prioritize some of your other work to accommodate this and we are happy to help you achieve your goals.”
A statement like this does several things.
Recognize the importance of the question to the client’s business. It reminds them of the delivery times you set in the contract. It addresses your question, while pointing out the ramifications of compressing the timeline. It reinforces the client-agency partnership in the last statement: “We’re happy to help you achieve your goals.”
Making exceptions for customers is part of being a good partner. But if exceptions start to become commonplace, you’ll want to give a more forceful reminder of the rules of engagement, and you may want to back off.
Renegotiating the contract is another option.
For example, you can add staff to the account that would allow for faster turn times, at an additional cost.
Or you can charge the client the hourly rates you set in the contract.
If you have set expectations clearly at the outset, you have a good chance of avoiding a major mismatch between your reality and the customer’s.
Clear expectations make relationships win-win!
Dig deeper: 6 tips for building relationships with PPC clients
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
