When it comes to working with an agency for your digital advertising (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.), you want to know that every dollar you invest contributes to a positive ROI.
One thing that surprises us when onboarding new clients is that many of them had no idea how much of their investment had been going down the drain due to a leaky digital advertising bucket.
There are numerous types of leaks and holes that can channel a large portion of your investment into obscurity when it should be contributing to your bottom line.
You don’t want buckets. You want pipelines—pipelines that can funnel your investment effectively and ensure that every possible dollar is driving leads, revenue, and overall profits from your digital advertising strategy. For this reason, it makes more sense to start fresh and rebuild a campaign instead of attempting to repair a bucket that is riddled with holes.
Let’s check out what some of these holes are and how they might be draining your paid search investment.
Subpar Lead Tracking
Tracking conversions in your campaigns is great, but tracking lead traffic paints a clearer picture.
Perhaps you had 10 conversions come through from your campaign’s landing page and 20 calls in the same week.
While on the surface, call traffic may seem better than your landing page performance—unless you are tracking all your lead sources, you may never know.
If a portion of these calls also stem from your campaign (and someone just chose to call instead of click), your campaign just became that much more valuable.
Agencies that cannot provide adequate lead tracking (not just conversion tracking) for your campaigns are far more likely to leave potential leads (and profits) in the gutter.
Inflated (or Hidden) Fees
You should know what you are (or will be) paying up front when you work with an agency. Of course cost will vary depending on experience, capabilities, and ad spend, but don’t let yourself be nickel and dimed for excessive “add-ons” or “optimizations.”
For example, let’s say you are going to invest 10K of ad spend into a campaign with an agency that charges a “20% of ad spend” management fee to run your campaign—so far, so simple.
You expect a 12K contract. But you soon discover that you are being charged 14K per month… So, why are you being charged an extra $2,000? Chances are you are being charged hidden fees, placed in a different “tier” than original discussed, or a multitude of other things.
You will likely be charged for things like custom graphics or additional landing pages (which is normal)—but usually these are “one-off” additions and not reoccurring.
This is why you must ensure that your agency is 100% transparent and there are no inflated or hidden fees in your partnership. While most agencies do have their clients’ best interests at heart, make sure you do your homework before signing on the dotted line.
High Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) or Cost Per Lead (CPL)
It’s easy to get caught up in the quantity of lead traffic you’ve received in the past as the benchmark for what you expect moving forward. However, the cost you are paying per lead matters greatly.
This is part of optimizing a campaign—finding the right balance between the cost you are paying per lead and the quality of lead traffic flowing from your campaigns.
If your cost per lead (or conversion) is high but you also have a high sales conversion rate, then the cost is likely worth the high quality you are receiving.
However, a high CPA/CPL with minimal sales conversions could mean that your campaigns are not being optimized effectively, and these high costs could be ringing your campaign dry.
Be sure to ask your agency what the plan is for keeping CPAs and CPLs in check in order to stretch your campaign to its higher profit potential.
Poor User Experience (UX)
Part of your campaign costs on a platform like Google Ads comes from the quality of your campaign and its associated creatives. Ad copy, descriptions, landing pages, and more can influence the quality of your campaign, ad clicks and engagement, as well as the overall costs you are paying per click.
Without diving too deep or getting too technical, the TLDR is that Google wants to provide quality ads to those searching for a solution. If your agency is not up to snuff with ad quality, a portion of your budget is going to be lost to inflated click costs and/or clicks that are not converting.
Be sure to ask how your agency is continuously striving to improve the quality of your ad campaigns.
No Strategic Approach
There are tactics…and then there are strategies. And no, they are not the same thing.
Success starts with a solid strategy with programmatic approaches to your success. Tactics are tools, while strategy is the intricate game plan dedicated to achieving the goals surrounding your brand’s growth.
There is enough research that goes into launching a successful campaign to make anyone’s head spin: brand, industry, and competitive research, benchmarks, testing, audience targeting—and this is just scratching the surface.
If your agency is not asking probing questions surrounding your goals, target markets, or even business processes—be wary.
If your agency is ONLY talking budget and not talking strategy, you may want to continue looking for an agency that is going to take your success personally.
Moving Forward
In order to keep your paid advertising on point, your agency should be strategically building pipelines to your success rather than constantly refilling leaky buckets. So, you can see that it is not just operating at peak performance that matters but that keeping your investment from leaking needlessly is also a top priority.
Getting the most out of your marketing investment means keeping as many of your ad dollars flowing towards lead traffic as possible. Does optimizing a campaign take time? Of course. Is there a one-size-fits-all solution? Of course not.
If you need any help pinpointing potential issues with your campaigns, our team of seasoned experts is always available to offer a fresh perspective. Paid ad campaigns can be fantastic, and the landscape is constantly evolving, so if you have had a bad campaign in the past, don’t be disheartened—there is almost always a path to advertising success online. You just need the right team, the right strategy, and the right pipeline.