Many companies don’t know how to go about finding and then vetting PPC consultants or management companies for a few good reasons, namely they themselves may not know enough about pay per click or search engine optimization to feel confident in the interviewing process.  A parallel can be drawn to those of us not mechanically inclined when taking our cars for a service.  For this reason we’ve outlined a few points or suggested questions to ask yourself about your ppc marketer and their relationship with you and the campaigns they are running on your behalf.  Being a Certified Google Partner, we know how much trust is involved in running a portion of our clients’s businesses for them.

1. Is your PPC consultant certified through Google and Bing?   Both Google and Bing provide badges that should be obviously displayed on your marketers web site, and while these certifications themselves are not the end-all-be-all verification of capability and trust, is should be your starting point.
2. How is your AdWords and Bing Ads agency reporting to you?  Do they contact you or do you have to contact them to keep a communication line open.  We strongly suggest phone and/or email correspondence with our clients at least twice a month, including a mini mid-month update and a full monthly report.
3. Additionally, your PPC manager should be contacting you at least via email fairly regularly with questions of targeting for your the expert in your field.  As we see keyword clicks come through on phrases that we aren’t sure are appropriate for your custom business goals, we ask because while we know online marketing, we aren’t yet experts in your marketplace.
4. Is your PPC consultant always trying to get you to increase your budget?  Moreover, are they providing value projections for adjusting the budget?  Be weary of any marketing company whose up-charging click costs as their fee– maybe most easily noticeable by contracts that guarantee you a certain position and click volume.  PPC controls many of the marketing variables, but there is no way to guarantee placement with the quality score affecting bid rank.
5. Finally, (depending on your business model) your PPC management company should be providing you with a bottom line metric, ROI of some kind.  For e-commerce that bottom line value is simple, sales minus costs.  For our serviced based businesses most of the time we create a cost per lead and define all the value that goes into each revenue path.

When it is all said and done, regardless of your pay per click education level, you as the client should know at least roughly how effective the marketing has been in real dollars.  You should also feel like you can contact your PPC professional with any questions and they should be contacting you, demonstrating their involvement and care for your campaigns. If you feel like your marketer isn’t providing all it could, contact us and we’d be glad to consult you on what more they should be doing in your best interest.