NewRedBook – The Nick Garner Blog

I was asked for my opinion on hiring a PPC agency…. so here were a few of the cirteria I would use to pick the right PPC company to work with !

The general things to think about are a combination of ‘likeability’ and efficiency. When I speak of nice people, I assume that people, like people, like themselves.

And that being the case you get more done and have more goodwill to help you through any tough times you both may have.

The efficiency stuff:? 

PPC agency requirements

• Cost per hour or day of service
  • How do they account for this
  • If there is more work involved than expected, then how would this be accounted for
• Invoicing terms
  • Monthly?
  • How big is their credit line?
  • Gap between being invoiced and being paid ?€“ making sure cashflow is managed
• Consistency in service standards
  • How will these agreed standards be maintained
    • What are the mechanisms to track this?
• Quality of the people administering the account
  • GAP qualified? (google adwords professional qualified)
  • Years experience
  • Interest in what we do?
• Flexibility of the company
  • Account management structure
    • Do the people between the account expect and us know what they are talking about?
    • Can they translate our wishes properly (We give a brief – do they understand it?))
    • Do we have clear access to the execs?
• Expertise in this sector
  • As a business have they managed accounts this size
  • What case studies can they present
• Assurances on consistency of personnel
  • What contractual elements can we have to make sure the personnel we ?€˜buy?€™ are the ones we keep on the account
  • If these people leave, what arrangements do we have to replace them with appropriate people
• Bid management / general technology they use
  • How do they see this tech working in our circumstances?
  • What will this cost be and what savings has this tech given with other clients
• Reporting
  • Examples of client reporting
    • What analysis
    • How robust is the data
    • Tags ? which ones?
• Access to accounts
  • Can we? ?€“ we don?€™t like ?€˜black box?€™ so access here is important
• Contractual stuff
  • How long?
  • What is its broken by us ?€“ penalties?
  • What liability on their part if they mess up? i.e. they mess up some max cost per click figures and burn a load of money
  • Can some of the things we want be incorporated? I.E. pick of certain execs?