With the digital world growing rapidly in terms of both increase in online customers and in turn increase in the online presence of companies it is quite overwhelming to see new agencies come up every morning. At Whisskers we have collated a list of 8 things you should be careful of when talking to you digital marketing agency. If they say any of the following, you can confidently look for the next one…
1. Cost per Conversion (or Cost per Acquisition or CPA) increased this week probably because of the industry trend and increased for all competitors targeting the same audience –
This is as incorrect as it can get. Industry trend or seasonality surely affect cost but they will always directly affect the CPCs (Cost per click) which you can view in your Auction Insights Report in the Google Adwords interface, relating them to CPA might or not have the same effect. We have seen certain weeks where CPCs increased but CPAs decreased and vice versa also. An excuse like this only demonstrates the team’s lack of understanding of the algorithm of search engines.
2. Implementation takes time
With the plethora of bulk upload and bulk edit tools both from the online ad platforms like Google/Facebook as well as third party tools, there is no way implementation of any volume will take time. A good digital marketing agency will know how to save time on such not-so-productive things and rather spend the hours that you are billed for, performing valuable optimizations and monitoring tasks.
3. A/B Testing does not work in the fast moving and dynamic online space
A/B Testing does not work in the fast moving and dynamic online space
There is no such thing. A/B testing is as valuable in the dynamic online space as much as is in the relatively static offline space. A/B testing strategies, the number of times these are done and the collaterals or features or settings against which these will be done is never decided during the scope of work discussion because these cannot be quantified until there is some performance. But that does not mean this is not to be done. A good digital marketing agency will proactively and continuously suggest A/B testing methods for different campaigns and will perform and incorporate the results in the next phase of optimizations
4. Put money on Facebook rather than Google, without any data supporting the same
This has been seen across multiple online ad management agencies in India, when it is very very different for both channels, depending on the industry that they fall in, the seasonality, the targeting types used, the devices working more for a channel than the other and many other metrics. Our best guess is, this is happening primarily because the facebook ad interface is a lot less complex in terms of auction and optimization than that of Google, which makes it easier for agencies to manage and hence the suggestion. Do not lose out on relevant leads who are searching for you or your competitors online because of lack of talent.
5. There are fixed Cost per Conversions (or Cost per Acquisition or CPA) of approximately Rs. xyz for your competitors/products/services in the industry
Online ads are a result of a highly dynamic real time auction that changes every time a search query is typed on Google. But more than that fixed CPAs is the least likely thing to happen as CPA will depend on the entire experience that a potential customer goes through between clicking your ad, landing on your page followed by the number of clicks and path to be followed before they actually convert on the website. Now this can be different for different website designs, and hence CPAs cannot be constant for any 2 competitors bidding for the same customer.
6. Excessive Reporting or Monitoring on a weekly basis is just time taking, we’d rather use the team’s time in optimizations
ALL REPORTS IN GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK CAN BE TEMPLATIZED. Period. And it goes without saying that we cannot optimize unless we have some data to support the changes and insights to draw.
7. We dont work Saturday/Sunday
Lets come to the real world. If a campaign has to be stopped or changed or sped up because of meeting or not meeting a sales target, it just has to be done. Business does not wait for the weekend to get over.
8. I am giving you a better average position on Google Search or maybe even top position most of the time, that’s the best that can happen
Getting a good position or even getting huge traction in terms of conversions is still not ok if CPAs are not in line. With the lakhs and crores of monthly budget that companies are spending online, a small change in CPA can affect your monthly totals tremendously. Thus any one metric doing well is not a good indicator of how a campaign is performing.