As a client, you should expect accountability and professionalism from your paid search agency. Your agency should take the time to learn your business and genuinely care about the success of your campaign. Poor performance is generally the reason relationships ultimately don’t work out, but lack of accountability on the agency side is often a major factor in these decisions.
Below, we discuss five ways that agencies fail to hold themselves accountable.
Little Transparency and Communication
An agency should be transparent with you at all times. If your agency isn’t on the ball with communication and transparency, it’s probable that they’re hiding something from you. Companies don’t stay silent on positive results and they shouldn’t on negative results either. When results go south, the best companies will own up to it, tell you ahead of time, and remain proactive until your hitting your goals and beyond. Your success is their success.
Don’t accept being left in the dark. Transparency equals trust and if you don’t have it, chances are you’ll never have a great relationship with your agency. You should always expect 100% transparency.
Account Activity Isn’t Shared
As with any other progress-driven account in business, you should have at least a weekly report that gives new statistics with descriptions of what these numbers define, and a detailed outline of a plan to either continue as is or implement solutions. If your agency refuses this courtesy you may need to reassess your vendor.
Read more in the full white paper: 27 Signs You Need a New Agency »
Budget Increases Aren’t Explained
Budgets are the primary way that companies track and control their spending on any one expense. A sudden change in your budget without explanation is a major cause for alarm. When faced with a sudden and unexplained budget change, you should start asking where the other budget went, and what the plan for each part of the new budget is.
Unwilling To Share Information
Communication between agency and client is the most important key to success. Without sufficient communication, the understanding and cooperation of the account suffers, and it can cost you a hefty chunk of change to make up for the lack of progressive interaction in your professional relationship with your agency. If your company refuses to share information with you, it should set off some alarms in your head that something might not be going according to plan.
There Is Little To No Feedback
If you can’t get constructive feedback for your account, you will never know what needs to change to make your campaigns more effective. If you have killer ads but a terrible landing page, you are not likely to get as many conversions. The problem: if no one tells you how to fix your landing page to make it more accessible or attractive to prospective customers, the issue will never change, but continue to manifest new problems as your page gets more and more views from your ad leads.
