So you’ve hit a brick wall with your online marketing and have taken the decision to get some external help.

Great News!

The question is how do you know who to get this help from?

How do you know which is the right marketing agency?

How you choose the right marketing agency for you is something that has perplexed me for years.

Sure, having reviewed 1000’s of AdWords accounts I can tell you the good, bad and indifferent agencies.

But not only is that unprofessional but it’s not what we are about. I much prefer for you to see it for yourself.

So after many years of working in this business here’s my guide to help you make the most of your money when choosing an agency:

• Who runs the Agency? – In reality what you need when you are looking for the ideal company is a marketing techie. Online marketing is about  understanding the technical advertising system, seeing its flaws and using them to the client’s advantage. An agency led by a sales person is a sure guarantee of a full order book for the agency but not for the client. The lowest performing accounts we see are always created by an agency who we know to be led by a sales focused owner.

• Who has the agency worked with? – E-commerce is a direct response market. If you are a retailer then an agency with a strong background in E-commerce is for you. Alternatively, if you are about lead generation or brand awareness, then seek out agencies that have these specific talents.However use some caution if an agency talks about having worked with very large brands. If you’re not a big brand yourself then question whether or not you think they will work as hard for you. In truth if you choose a blue chip company for your E-commerce site but you are a lower revenue client it’s likely that you will end up as lower priority client for them. As an example for this, I had a prospect that was going to place his business with an agency who claimed to work with the BBC. The BBC is a great brand that sells itself but they do little to no PPC work for the account and have no need of Google Shopping. Upon consideration of this point he thought very carefully and became our client instead.

• Do they have a database expert? – PPC/AdWords isn’t getting any easier, long gone are the days of putting up an advert and adding a few keywords and throw some money at it for it to work. Increasing your sales is now dependent on data exports, feed optimisation etc… Unfortunately a lot of people don’t realise the importance of this. So we know how important it is to choose an agency with a database expert on the team who can modify and optimise your potential for sales and leads alike.

• Does the agency have an in house solicitor? – Now that’s an odd one I hear you shout, but think about it, why have they got one? In house legal departments are primarily used for debt collection and to enforce very restrictive contracts. If the work these agencies supply is of a good enough quality then their clients shouldn’t struggle to pay and wouldn’t want to get out of such a restrictive contract.

• What type of people do they employ? – In my experience you need a PPC agency which employs Account Managers who have both made and lost either their own funds or the funds of someone who is close to them (family, partner etc…). Until you have experienced the pain of losing money you cannot really appreciate how a client may feel if their account is struggling. I know from experience how this feels therefore we are able to offer a completely different view point based on experience.

• “We can do everything” or “we are specialists”? – I will not sit on the fence with this one. In my time I have hardly, if ever, seen a successful PPC account created by a full digital agency unless they have specific teams who only deal with each particular marketing media (these are very few and far between). Many times I hear people saying “My web designers are doing it for me”. In reality you have said it all in that sentence; “my WEB DESIGNERS will do it”. Yes it sounds like the easy option, but if you are spending all of this money why would you pass your account to someone who has just said “we’ll give it a go”. I have to admit that we have moved away from our original premise of a pure PPC agency to incorporate the likes of Facebook, SEO and Amazon, however we have only done so once we have expert knowledge in house for these projects. We are very strict on who we offer each of these services to as we only have a limited number of client slots available. But we are looking to expand and bring in further expertise (If you call in and we don’t have availability for you at this point in time, we can add you to our waiting list).

• I want a silver bullet? – I know most people can’t help thinking this, however I’m sorry to tell you but this is a myth, and there is no such thing as a silver bullet for your online marketing. Between 2010/2012 we were renowned for our Stop the Bleed, Regenerate your Campaign and Expand your Business ethos and it worked. It was and still is referenced by many in the industry, but honestly it’s now outdated as PPC has vastly changed. You now need to know where you are, where you want to go and how are you going to bridge that gap by marshalling your resources. Yes you can type in Google ‘how to do PPC’ but what you really need is someone on the ground who’s there to help you find your way through the pitfalls. If you chose to put into action every bit of “advice” you read or watched on YouTube by yourself, your defeats will massively outweigh your wins. You need to find out as quickly as possible what will work and what wont (simple huh!).

Having over 10 years of experience with PPC marketing I can honestly say that I know why most PPC accounts fail and what you can do about it.

Obviously things change constantly but I pride myself on the fact that I keep myself and my team ahead of the game.

But I have to admit that what keeps us there is our office in the US.

Google and the likes are renowned for trying everything out in the US before rolling any changes to the UK and around the world.

Having our US office out in California ensures that by the time changes hit the UK we are ready to deal with it and can keep your business ahead of the game.

Now I have some questions for you: are you ready to outsource your marketing to specialists?

Or do you want to provide cutting-edge training and assistance for your in house marketing team?

Why not give Click Convert a call and see if we can fit your business in and drive you to success online?

Call us now on 08444 780 999 and begin your journey to success!

P.S. As a little freebie from me, I want to share something with you that you may not yet know. Before selecting your Marketing Agency I suggest doing a little reverse check on them. So you want to implement a PPC Campaign, or perhaps you want to advertise your products on Facebook. There are two little add-on programs for Google Chromes (Tag Manager and Facebook Helper) that allow you to see if the Marketing Agency you are thinking of using is using these things themselves. I mean the “Do what I say, not what I do” here simply does not apply!