How to Make Sure Your SEM Agency Is Giving You Their Best

Retaining an SEM agency is similar to figuring out a loved one: It’s tricky at times to understand exactly what goes on in their minds, it’s important to keep track of important events along the way and the ups and downs are inevitable.

How could you predict whether the relationship with your SEM agency is a great bond or an unavoidable failure? And how could you make sure it starts out strong and carries on that way?

Why Small Companies Should Not Use SEM Agencies

Search engine marketing is a tedious occupation, ungrateful at times and, while easy to learn, incredibly hard to master. It’s a time-consuming effort to create even a sub-par conversion rate, not to mention a successful overall campaign.

Unexpectedly, the pain is the same for small and large companies alike. As any SEM agency could (but probably wouldn’t) tell you, it’s very hard to create a profitable business with many small businesses as clients, due to the ridiculous amount of hours spent on every single aspect of the campaign, regardless of the client’s budget.

Therefore, it’s advisable for smaller businesses to take matters into their own hands, and bootstrap their search engine marketing efforts. It will make sure their funds are allocated into actual media buying, and not into a vendor’s pocket.

4 Ways to Make Your SEM Agency Is Stepping Up To the Plate

Putting that aside, there are a few key factors in the creation of a successful search engine marketing campaign. It’s definitely possible to steer your SEM agency in the right direction using these tips:

1.       Let Them Know Your Expectations

Every campaign has certain goals. Be it increasing acquisitions, obtaining users, raising awareness or just increasing overall traffic, it’s critical your SEM agency knows exactly what needs to be done. Come to the table with a list of acceptable campaign outcomes on your part, using exact numbers and figures - not general talk. If you decide to change your mind mid-way – it’s fine, just understand that the SEM agency needs time (sometimes even weeks) to tune the campaign to your new needs.

2.       Patience Is Key

SEM is a completely number-driven profession – each bit of content is tested, retested, tweaked and optimized on a daily basis to ensure the best results possible. It is, however, a time-consuming process, as it is done in retrospect: there is no way to know immediately after investing what the keyword’s effectiveness will be - it takes time. Let your SEM agency do its thing.

3.       Give Your Information Away

Each company involved in the online marketing game has a book of little secrets – conversion rates in a prior affiliate marketing attempts, CTR of a deserted PPC campaign and so forth. A smart SEM Agency will know how to spin this data in order to bring you the best results possible.

4.       Make Them Show Their Hand

The easiest thing for an SEM agency to do is sit back and let your money do the work for them. The agency is paid a percentage of all media spent, and not an hourly wage multiplied by the amount of hours allocated to the campaign. Demand exact reports of what optimizations were made in the past week. Check the Google Ads logs for yourself. Make sure they’re just not wasting your time and dime, but taking actual actions to further your campaign goals and to get you the best bang for your buck.