Whether an agency has a client who’s set to spend a lot of money on paid search and display or a small budget that they need to manage, those clients will expect to see a detailed plan for how the agency is going to spend their budget. In this post I outline the four pillars of a successful paid search or display agency campaign pitch – including the tools and technologies you need to impress clients.
Planning
The first step in planning a great paid search campaign after determining a client’s goals is to determine their budget. If you’re an agency this is one of the first questions you’ll ask your client: how much of your marketing budget is allocated to paid search this year? Budget determinations should be made based on data – what was your client’s ROI last year from paid search and what is an acceptable ROI this year? There’s no such thing as too much money spent on PPC if it is converting appropriately for a business. Most of the time, agencies will be asked to make a budget recommendation and justify it to their client – simply asking how much is not enough, so be prepared with industry data to back up your recommendation for each client.
The next step in planning is determining which campaigns and networks should get the highest budget – which campaigns do you expect to convert best? This should dictate how much budget is allocated to each campaign.. Once you’ve done that, you can start building out campaigns by product, service, location, and more. You’ll need to do some research about your client’s business – using the keyword research tool you can determine the estimated CPC for their top keywords and the estimated CPM for the display network. Here you’ll also need to do some competitive analysis to determine the best ways to beat out your competition in paid rankings. Be sure to provide a detailed explanation of your plan to your client and any stakeholders – it’s important to reaffirm the need for proper expectations with your clients.
Attribution
Once you’ve planned out your client’s PPC campaigns, you need to pitch the best way for them to attribute the leads these campaigns generate. This is especially important for the agency because it’s how you show your clients that you know what you’re doing. Part of this is being able to show them how to properly use analytics, and being able to pull comprehensive reports from their analytics campaigns.
The next part of this is being able to track conversions on the campaign and ad level. You want to be able to show your clients the specific keywords, ads, and campaigns that are generating conversions and leads, and how much those leads are costing on the campaign level. You need to be able to track leads from every source – web form fills, in-store visits, and inbound calls.
The number of new leads generated and CPL are two of the most important metrics agencies need to provide to their clients. If you’re only tracking leads from web forms, the number of new leads generated may appear lower than it actually is and your CPL may appear higher than it actually is. You need to also track in-store visits and inbound calls to be able to demonstrate the real number of leads you’re driving to your client and the actual CPL
With call tracking software you can track all of the phone calls your PPC campaigns generate, down to the keyword level. This not only helps you to provide a more accurate number of leads and CPL, it also helps you optimize the campaigns that are generating the most leads. 66% of sales managers rate inbound calls to be good or excellent leads. If you can optimize paid search to generate more inbound calls, you’re bound to have a happy client. Even the most e-commerce-centric businesses should still concern themselves with call analytics because customers may need help throughout the checkout process, they want it right away, and the best solution is to place a call and speak to a real person.
Targeting
Now that you’ve got planning and lead attribution down, you need to come up with the best way to target your ads. On the display network you’ll need to decide whether automatic placements or managed placements are right for your client – automatic placements are better for overall brand campaigns and managed placements are better for lead gen specific campaigns.
On the search network it’s important to show ads to the right people at the exact moment they are searching for your keywords. Using contextual targeting you will be able to show your ads to users based on their “Internet identity” and the content and keywords they are currently searching through.
Knowing the audience your client is trying to reach is really important here – and you can discover that information through conversations with your client but also through competitive research.
Creative
Now it’s time to put together stunning creative for your client, or gather it from their designer. Landing pages, display ads, ad copy: all need to have a coherent flow with consistent branding. Ad copy and landing pages should contain the keywords you are bidding on as well as a powerful call to action.
Once the campaigns are launched and have been running long enough to gather sufficient impressions and clicks, it’s time to do some A/B testing. Using Optimizely you can test all of your landing page designs and copy without creating additional creative – you can change the layout, text, calls to action, and more using their interface alone. You can integrate these landing page A/B tests with call tracking software to optimize landing pages to drive more of those valuable inbound calls, too.