Building mutuallybeneficialagencyrelationships
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Building mutuallybeneficialagencyrelationships
- 1. It Takes Two, Baby! Building a Healthy Relationship with Your PPC Agency 06.26.12
- 3. …this goes both ways! • This is not a one-sided relationship • All must be held accountable for success • Don’t think so?
- 4. Objectives • New relationship? What should you do? • What are some sources of client/agency rifts? • How should your agency be handling themselves to get what they need? • What can you to do stay on your Account Manager’s radar? • Maintaining the client/agency relationship long term • Hanapin examples & experiences
- 5. New Relationship? Ask Questions!
- 6. Getting started • Establish goals • Determine communication frequency • Dive in to previous relationships, where applicable • Don’t be scared
- 8. Client/Agency Throwdowns • Goals • Communication • Ego • Wild Cards
- 10. Agency+ • Be proactive • Deliver the bad news • Stay positive
- 12. Hey! Over here! • You aren’t being ignored • Keep up on your end • Back scratching=good
- 14. Keeping it going • Don’t forget the basics • Be open to new opportunities • Challenge one another
- 15. Been There, Handled That
- 16. You think you’ve seen it all… • Bad agency • Bad client • Good agency • Good client
- 17. Questions?
- 18. Join us next month! Topic: Why Your PPC Account Needs an Audit Presenter: Sam Owen
Editor's Notes
- Hello everybody! Thank you for registering and sitting in on this month’s webinar. As I’m sure you already know, our topic today will be focused on how clients and agencies can work together to make sure the relationship is as beneficial to both sides as possible. So let’s get started!
- Before we get too deep in the presentation, I want to take a second to flush out the overall purpose of today’s webinar.
- That purpose would be to express the overall necessity for both the agency representatives and client contact to accept that this relationship can not be one-sided. In order to have a successful pay per click campaign, both sides need to accept their portion of responsibility for the account to achieve the greatest success. Obviously the client didn’t hire the agency with the hopes to have to do everything, and that’s not what I’m getting at at all. However, there are certain activities the client needs to stay active with and there are definitely tasks the agency must keep up on in order to foster a win-win situation. If you aren’t in complete agreement with me, I can take it. But I assure you we’ll uncover more details throughout the presentation to help change your mind. We’re going to talk about the good, the bad and the very ugly in poorly managed client/agency relationships…and the key to all of the bad and ugly is that one side wasn’t keeping up their end of the bargain.
- Here’s a brief overview of what we’ll be going over today:First, what information do you need to provide and seek out at the start of a new client/agency relationship.Second, what are some typical sources of client/agency rifts.Third, I’ll review a few things your agency should be doing to make sure you’re comfortable with their work and that they are able to get what they need to perform at the highest level.After that, I’ll give some tips for how you can make sure you stay a top priority for your PPC Account Manager.The final tips section will cover how you can maintain your client/agency relationship after a long-term engagement.The last portion of the presentation will give some real-life examples of experiences we’ve had here at Hanapin with the client/agency relationship that you can use to learn from
- First up: what do you and your agency need to be doing from day one to make sure you’re both getting what you need to keep up your ends of the agreement? The true secret is to ask questions.
- Once the client has decided on an agency and an agency has started the onboarding process, it’s time to make sure everything is ironed out as much as possible from the very start. This seems easy, but the first step is to establish goals of the account or campaign. You probably already know the basics: leads, revenue, CPA, etc. If you don’t, now is the time. However, we’re also talking about long-term goals here. Does the client wish to maintain budget and current goals for at least a year before revisiting? Or are things dependent on performance? Is the agency asking these questions before getting started or making assumptions? Again, some of these things may have already been flushed out, but if they weren’t, you want to make sure goals are discussed and agreed upon now, to keep from having a bump in the road later. The next thing you want to do for both sides of the relationship, is establish communication frequencies and mediums. Does the client prefer phone calls or emails? Will the agency be reporting to the client once a week or once a month or will it vary based on performance and/or comfort with the relationship? Will reports be simple bulleted emails or does the client require and desire a particular reporting template? Does the agency have any reporting requirements for back end data? Outlining what is necessary here is of the utmost importance to avoid miscommunications later. As with any relationship, you always say you don’t want to open up the ex-files, but you absolutely have no choice. If the client has worked with an agency in the past and had less than desirable outcomes, you most definitely need to talk these issues out. What were the problems and how could they have been avoided? This will keep the client happy in the long run and will make your job easier as a manager because said issues will already be top of mind for you to avoid. On the flipside, if the agency has experienced issues with similar verticals as the new client, they should be sure to address those applicable trouble spots, as well. Finally, when opening up a new client/agency relationship, the key is to not be scared based on previous experiences. This is applicable for both sides. As I mentioned before, perhaps the client is hesitant from a previous agency relationship or maybe the agency had a client in a similar situation before that was very difficult to handle. This is the time to let those feelings go and put faith in the newly formed partnership.
- On to the next section: what are the usual places where clients and an agency can find themselves on different pages? And how can you handle that from either side?
- Then…then there are the issues that are specific to particular accounts, verticals, clients, agencies, seasons, days of the week…I could go on and on here. The worst part about problems that could come up is that you usually don’t see them coming. Be as prepared as you can be. If you’ve dotted all your I’s and crossed all your T’s from both sides, these should be minimal, but they’re still going to come up. Make sure you’re both available and can talk and work through whatever the hiccup might be, so that both sides can come out feeling like they handled the situation well and in the best way possible.
- You’ve gotten through the initial relationship kick off and have done what you can to make sure from the beginning that you’re avoiding any usual client/agency issues. So what can and should your agency be doing to get what they need from you? And as an agency, what can you do to solidify the trust your client has in you?
- The first big piece of advice for any agency rep or account manager is to be proactive. How can you further increase performance, even if it’s on goal? What opportunities are out there for the client that they haven’t explored yet? Proactivity is what keeps the cream of the agency crop bringing in the best clients, so be sure to find things to do with your assigned account or client before they ask or are necessary. Next up, you aren’t always going to have only good things to say to your client. Maybe there was a dip in leads this week, or CPC spiked a bit, and maybe you don’t have a call scheduled for 3 more days. Just wait and explain it then, right? No. Wrong. Very wrong. Go outside the normal communication frequency and deliver the bad news, and deliver it now. Your client knows you as a person, and people aren’t perfect. Also, we work in PPC and we can’t always see what’s coming down the pipe at us. Bad performance happens, it’s how you handle it that sets you apart. Finally, when this bad news happens, and all times otherwise, make sure to stay as positive as possible. I’m not asking for a Pollyanna “life is so perfect” attitude here, but you’ll find yourself feeling far worse if you can’t find a silver lining to whatever is going on. Maybe performance did drop, but did your client handle the news well? Do you have a plan to avoid that in the future and correct course? Focus on that now, not the performance dip. You’ll drive yourself insane, and your client will lose faith in your abilities.
- So the agency has their advice for how to stay front of mind for the client, but how can the client maintain the attention from their account manager?
- The first tip here is really just general advice, because I’ve heard it out of clients before. No, you are not being ignored. You DO matter and your account manager/agency DOES care. Probably what happened was a crisis elsewhere that you aren’t aware of or something equally out of your control, and perhaps even the agency’s. Now, if the accepted and agreed upon activity on the agency side isn’t being carried through, then you can most definitely get a little more pushy. However, if you’ve sent an email asking for a general opinion, try not to get to upset after you haven’t gotten a response in a couple of hours. PPC account managers are planners, so maybe your particular account manager is in a meeting, working through some ad copy changes, etc. Trust me, if that was your account they were working on right now, you’d want their undivided attention, too. Give them some time and I assure you, they’ll be in touch. The second tip is for both sides, but make sure whatever you decided to or agreed to do with and for your agency, you’re doing it. So if that means you said originally you’d send over backend revenue data weekly, do it. If you can’t do it, let the agency know so they aren’t expecting or waiting for it. Again, no one expects perfection from either side, so communication is key. Keeping up with what you promised your account manager you would do let’s them know you’re serious about the outcome of this campaign, and that will instill even more pride in them to make it work for you. Finally, if you’d like to be able to send an email to your account manager off-schedule, asking them for something to give to your supervisor to prove the validity of the PPC medium, for example, try to return the favor and get data back to the agency that they request off-schedule. Odds are that data is going to help the agency make performance increase, so mutual back scratching is a plus!
- The nature of PPC requires clients and agencies to put their focus on long term relationships, because the trust earning portion of the on boarding process is hard enough, let alone training the agency on your business model and training a client to the way the agency manages accounts. So before we get in to actual experiences we’ve seen here at Hanapin, let’s go over some notes on how to continue the relationship moving up and to the right after some time has passed and the on boarding process has plateaued.
- So when it comes to keeping the relationship up after a long period of time, there are certainly a few things that can be done from both sides to make sure any positive performance keeps up. First, don’t forget about the basics. Whatever communication frequencies you decided on, keep them up. Reporting preferences, don’t start ignoring them. The easiest way to keep things going in a positive direction is to continue doing what got you to the long-term in the first place. The next thing to consider is to be open to new opportunities, from both corners. If the client wants to test a new segment, but it could have a negative impact on your performance metrics, tell them the basis for your concern, but still test it. On the flip side, if your agency approaches you with a new engine they’d like to serve ads from, assuming they’ve done their research and aren’t just spending money to spend it, let them give it a shot. You never know what you could be missing out on if you don’t trust each other to find these new opportunities. Lastly, challenge each other. Not in an egotistical way, as we discussed earlier. But it’s healthy to push a little. If you’re on the phone with your agency and you want to know a little more about a particular performance change, ask the account manager to explain a little deeper. Likewise, should your client tell you revenue from their end seems to be dipping a bit, ask them to show you some reporting so you can accurately assess the problem. No relationship ever profited from both sides twiddling their thumbs and letting the other float through.
- Now for the fun stuff…I’m going to share with you all some of the good, bad and ugly I spoke about at the very top of our presentation in the way of some examples of client/agency issues that I’ve either been directly involved with or seen first hand at our agency. The goal for these examples would be for you to take away some secondhand experience and use these lessons to your advantage.
- Bad agency: Delivering reports, sending weekly emails between monthly reports. Started getting no response from monthly reports, stopped sending weekly email updates. Direct contact went on vacation, their sub had heard about the weekly emails. Immediately jumped on them not coming anymore. Bad client: Determined with account manager that the best way to match up PPC performance with leads was to get some back end revenue data from the client’s sales team regarding best geographic area for leads, days of the week when best leads came in, etc. Client provided such reports for two months and then stopped. Account manager maintained the need for such reports and started following up on communication with the client in between typical reporting schedule with emphasis on these revenue reports. Good agency: Running pilot PPC program for client, with a set budget to spread across 3 months. Month one over spends. Immediately called client to tell them, with a plan for how to offset the overspend and how to keep the overspend from occurring again. Good client: Running an ecommerce account for a client with a broad range of products to sell. Shipping issue from the product provider kept a high-selling item out of stock on short notice. Client called the account manager to alert them to stop running ads for that particular product until the shelves were restocked the next week.
- That wraps it up! Thank you very much for taking time out of your very busy day’s to sit on our webinar this month and at this time, we’re going to open up the forum to questions from you all!
- Before I let you all go, of course I have to plug next month’s webinar which will be presented by Sam Owen. He’s going to cover why agencies do and should offer audit services and how your PPC account could benefit from such an audit. So be sure to visit PPC Hero and register for that session!