Is it Time to Switch Your Pay Per Click Company?

Signing up wasn’t the greatest experience.

They seemed so nice when they were competing for your business – but as soon as you gave it to them, your pay per click company turned ice cold. For example, they waited weeks to ask for your login information; without this information, there isn’t much they can do for you. Their procrastination to get started is a sure sign that they do not intend to do much for you throughout the campaign.

They fail to deliver on reporting.

Your business is unique, and that warrants a unique PPC campaign. The reports delivered by your pay per click management agency should be customized, not canned. They should track your conversions for every keyword, and provide metrics on any aspect of the campaign you request (if possible).

If they don’t provide reports at all, this strongly suggests that they don’t have processes in place for thorough campaign setups and ongoing campaign improvements. If their reports don’t tell you anything of value, this tells you they’re not paying terribly close attention to your campaign. If their reports don’t tell you anything, if they send any at all, it may be time to switch to a new pay per click company.

They only use broad match.

Keyword matching selects which of your ads will be displayed when a user performs a search query using your keywords. Pay per click management teams can use these keyword matching types to deploy your ads:

Exact match: The search query contains the keyword phrase, in exact order, with no other words.

Phrase match: The search query contains all the words in a keyword phrase in order, and may include other words before or after the keyword phrase.

Broad match: The search query contains all the words in a keyword phrase, and they may be in any order with or without other words.

Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned if you don’t specify another one – and although it is helpful to have it in your campaign, it should not be the only match type used by your pay per click company. It is good to use broad match so that keyword variations like synonyms, plural forms, misspellings and phrases containing the keywords can get your ads displayed on Google. But when the entire account is created in broad match, the company is really just trying to create fewer ad groups to save time. Your account performance will suffer because of their laziness, so if your pay per click agency is using broad match across the board, it’s time to move on.

They don’t perform ad text testing.

Testing the text in ads is one of the best ways to analyze a PPC campaign, as text optimization directly affects a campaign’s quality score. (See the graphic, below, for other Quality Score factors.) There are different ways pay per click management teams can perform ad text testing, including rotating a standard set of ads per group and making changes based on campaign report data. When they find out what works, they can adjust the campaign strategy as needed to help their clients increase conversion rates. Ask your pay per click company if they are performing tests on your ad text; if the answer is yes, great! If not, then find a company that will.

They don’t provide attribution.

Your PPC campaign reports should show which keywords are driving traffic to your website and optimizing it for conversions. If they only show what happened with the last click, that is not enough attribution to reveal anything of value. You need a pay per click company that understands the role each keyword is playing in your campaign, and reports it to you accurately.

To speak with a pay per click management professional who can deliver on your expectations for a stellar PPC campaign, contact the PPC experts at Crest Media today!