Have you noticed a change? Does something not feel right with your current agency? Has the performance dropped? Are you seeing the results you were promised?
If so, here are 5 indications why you might need a new PPC agency:
1. Lack of Proactivity and Change in your PPC account
Do you feel there is an uneven split in regard to who is coming up with new ideas? When working with your agency you become a partner and should both be coming up with new ideas to help you improve. Part of your agency's role is to test and create new ideas to see which could potentially drive results for you. If you feel as if they aren’t suggesting new ideas and are just going along with what your suggestions are, it could be a sign that your current agency has lost interest.
With Paid advertising change is inevitable and you are constantly having to adapt to new trends. There are many ways that you can keep on top of this from making sure campaigns are optimised fully to reviewing campaigns to make sure they are still working to the best of their ability. If you notice that your account is looking dormant and not much change is occurring this could be a sign of greater problems later down the line.
2. Missed Opportunities
As a specialist in their field, a PPC agency shouldn’t be missing opportunities when they occur. We are surrounded by change and new opportunities every day so they should be looking into those opportunities and seeing how they can help your company grow. If you have found yourself having to contact your agency regarding potential opportunities and growth this isn’t right. You are paying for a specialist, they should be coming to you with new ideas and opportunities.
How often are you flagging missed opportunities with your agency? This shouldn’t be the case and you should have a level of trust in their work that they are constantly looking for new opportunities and have your best interests at heart. The PPC agency should be the team to notice if your competitors are doing something better, you shouldn't have to reach out to them to tell them that.
At Big Bear Creative we are proud to say we can confidently provide an audit of your performance against your competitors to see how you stack up against them. As well as providing recommendations to help you improve in the future.
3. Poor communication
Communication is key, arguably the most important factor when working with an agency. Ideally, you would want to have at least 1 meeting every month, this is a good structure to have because if events or changes of focus have occurred throughout the month it is a good time to raise them. Other ways of communicating should come as a standard, constant emails updating one another as well as phone calls if there's anything urgent. If you feel as if you're always the one to reach out first this is a problem.
When things may not be going as well as they should be or things are going wrong, this is when the level of communication should increase. As a partnership, you should both be working together to try and resolve the situation. Every step the agency takes to fix things they should be keeping you in the loop to minimise the problem getting worse. How does your agency react when things go wrong? Is the level of communication increased or decreased? If it decreases, it's a problem.
4. Declining ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) with no explanation
Each month's performance will fluctuate, that is no surprise with paid advertising. However, if you are starting to notice this happen more often than not it starts to become a problem. Everyone is prone to a bad month, it is then down to the agency to communicate to you why they think this has happened and what they can do next month to make sure it doesn't happen again. If the agency notices the decrease in ROAS and does not raise it to you this is a big problem.
One of the main reasons why you would partner with a PPC agency is to help grow as a business and increase the growth of your account. If you are starting to notice that the general growth of the account is becoming slower this is a key indication telling you they aren’t doing their job properly. We know this as an agency ourselves, you should always be looking for ways you can use your expertise to help your clients grow and if they're not doing that it’s not good at all.
5. Are you and your agency working towards the same goals?
When working with a PPC agency you should be working together as a partnership to collectively reach the same goals. When working together both parties must be on the same page, making sure the agency and the client are working together to achieve the same goal. There are many ways to make sure you are working together, one is reviewing with the customer each month to make sure everyone is still on track with what they need to do. This gives the customer a chance to tell the agency if they have any new goals and keep the original goals aligned. If you begin to notice your agency is working on one goal and you're working on another, this could be down to a lack of communication.
Miscommunication can happen, it’s bound to happen at some point but if you begin to notice it happening more often it can slowly start to be a problem. Mistakes start to occur, people get distracted with different goals and before you know it, your business and the agency are working on separate things. By communicating well with one another you are already setting yourself up for success, if both parties are working on the same goal you will be able to achieve that goal quicker and more efficiently. Think to yourself are you and your agency aligned with each other or is this a problem you're currently facing? If so you need to look elsewhere. Communication is key.
After reading those indications, are any of them relevant to you? If so, you have a decision to make.
We get it, changing agencies isn’t easy but would you rather suffer with your current agency or fix these problems and stop them from happening over and over again? At Big Bear Creative we pride ourselves on delivering excellent service and having a good working relationship with all our clients above anything else. We treat your PPC budget like our own and work our hardest to ensure you are getting exactly the results we promise.
