So, you’ve just engaged with a brand new SEM agency and are feeling pretty excited about the future of your business? You’ve probably been given a pretty good overview of what to expect, including a guaranteed lift in your online leads & sales. This will likely include a whole range of reporting methods to measure your account’s ongoing performance.
But there’s one tool that every client should use after they’ve started working with a new agency. It’s called SAYSAM… haven’t heard of it? It’s not an app, it’s a bit more old fashioned. It stands for Simply Ask Your Search Agency Account Manager…and it could save you a lot of trouble down the line.
1. Optimising your account
It’s common for digital agencies with a large portfolio of clients to do these two tasks on a monthly basis: send you a report and adjust keyword bids. That’s simply not good enough, and won’t lead to a continuing increase in leads for your business. To see consistent improvement, they should be proactive in their approach to managing/optimising your SEM campaign, including refining and enhancing your ad copy, landing pages, ad group structure, negative keywords and bids. And that’s just for starters.
SAYSAM: “How often are you guys optimising my account?”
2. Understanding your change history
Your agency might be caught off guard by the question above and come up with an answer they think you want to hear. Most would think you’re gullible enough to believe whatever they say. However there’s proof of the amount of work they’re carrying out within your account. You can simply ask for an export of the Google Ads Change History report which shows all actions made in the account, timestamped and labelled. Now they’ll have nowhere to hide!
SAYSAM: “Can you show me the account change history for the past 30 days?”
3. Having your website actions tracked
Conversion tracking is another element that can be conveniently overlooked, or not set up in the right way. These tells us how many leads are coming from your Google Ads. It’s critical that your account is setup correctly and measures every lead within your website. This can include form submissions, email enquiries, phone calls and online purchases. Nowadays it’s common to track all these actions in Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics & Google Ads – so don’t be kept in the dark, shine a light on your account manager.
SAYSAM: “Are you tracking all possible lead sources on our website? If not why?
4. Increasing leads or sales in the next quarter
This is why you’re paying your search agency. For their strategic thinking gained from working on a multitude of Google Ad accounts across a wide range of industry verticals. No matter how good or bad your account is performing, they’re numerous techniques to reach that next level. They may not be the most obvious methods, but they do exist. Your agency should have strategies and techniques it uses to improve performance, so make sure they’re earning their money!
SAYSAM: “What 3 strategies or tactics will you employ to get me more sales/leads in the next few months?”
5. Increasing the lead to booking or sign up rate
This is a valid and extremely important area of your account. It’s a matter of lead quality. Generating an increase in leads isn’t rocket science, but it’s useless if you’re seeing an increase in volume, but a decrease in quality. Something very few SEM agencies do is import offline conversions into their Google Ads data. This gives you an indication on how many of those leads that came through the SEM channel ended up as paying customers. A simple and effective example is: Keyword ABC may have a high CPA (cost-per-acquisition) for leads when compared to keyword XYZ, when in actual fact, keyword ABC had a higher lead to (paying) customer rate. It’s critical you’re monitoring and measuring all types of leads (actions), as it’s the only way to give you a true reflection on performance.
SAYSAM: “Can you help us to import offline conversions into Google Ads to give us a true picture of SEM/Google Ads profitability?