How to ensure your AdWords Marketing Budget is being rightly used by a SEM company?

I recently heard an unfortunate experience from one of my customers who switched to us for managing their Google Ads campaign. The incident highlighted how they were almost cheated by a SEM company helping them manage their Google Ads program. This prompted me to write this post and what should clients ask SEM companies to ensure they get the best value for their buck on Google Ads.

Question 1 – Explain what you do as part of AdWords campaign management?

Typical answer – We help you get more visitors to your site, or more clicks for your budget or help you get a top 10 position on Google.

Best Answer – We work with you to understand your business and services/products, type of audience you want to cater for and based on that come up with a Google Ads strategy to help you drive targeted traffic to your site. Getting more clicks and lowering the cost per click may be a side effect of good campaign management but cannot be the primary target unless its a pure brand campaign. Remember you want targeted traffic NOT cheap traffic to your site.

Question 2 – How do you ensure targeted traffic to your site?

Typical answer – No answer because this question never gets asked too often.

Best Answer – We not only generate search term reports but also send it to clients for review on a regular basis to ensure a collaborative approach and ensure best results. We study the keyword search term report and weed out parts of the non-targeted keywords and add it to negative keyword list. For e.g. for a bankruptcy lawyer, a targeted keyword could be “bankruptcy lawyer” and not “bankruptcy lawyer software”. So you should consider adding “software” as a negative keyword.

Question 3 – Billing  – Do 1 see one bill from you or 2 bills ?

Typical answer – We will bill both the Google charges and our fees to your account. So you only see 1 charge.

Best Answer – While we will bill our charges separately, we will setup your card for Google billing directly. That means you should see a charge on your card from Google not from us. What SEM companies do is they assure you that they will spend $1000 + their fees on your card and then end up consuming only $800 or $900. The difference goes in their pocket. Having the ability for Google to bill  you directly just makes things crystal clear without any scope of manipulation in your AdWords budget.

Question 4 -Do you send monthly click/budget report or can you give me access to AdWords account?

Typical answer – No. we cannot give you access. Clients hardly ask for monthly reports which is a big mistake.

Best Answer – Clients should have full transparency as far as billing goes. So a good SEM company will send you a report on monthly basis. They should also be able to provide you access to your account to see reports.

Apart from several parameters that determine the success of an AdWords program, the above will help a client get optimal results for their AdWords spend and avoid getting cheated by fraudulent SEM companies. If you are looking for a experienced and ethical Google Ads management company, you may call us at 1-888-488-7287!