Sounds like a great idea, right? Some agency approaches you with an offer to give you a free audit of your Google Ad campaigns. If you’re already using an agency, you think, “Why not, maybe this agency will spot something my current agency is missing.” If you are doing it yourself, you think, “Sure, maybe I can use the tips they are going to give me to improve my campaigns.” You’d be wrong on both counts and let me tell you why.
AUDITING YOUR AGENCIES’ WORK
Your current agency has most likely spent months if not years learning about your company and your market. They spent at least the first 3 months working with you trying various approaches to reach your goal. In that time, they learned what works and what doesn’t for your market. If your current agency is a Google Partner, they have to pass a test each year to show Google that they understand the Google Ad products and know how to use them. There’s no real reason to doubt the strategy that you and your current agency have in place. As Google rolls out new products, your agency will be notified of them and determine if this new offering is right for your market. They have accumulated data that they can review with you to plan future strategies.
Now, along comes this new agency offering to audit all of the work your current agency has done. They know very little about your company and/or your market. They will view the work done by your current agency with an eye for what is done for retail companies or consumer services. If you sell to businesses and/or industries, this information will be useless. On top of that, you will be granting them full access to your accounts and they can destroy your ads, delete keywords, change campaign names, etc. Web-Kare had this happen to us once and we had to rebuild the entire campaign after the client realized that the competing agency didn’t know his market at all.
AUDITING YOUR WORK
This should work, right? Guess again. You know your market better than anyone. You may not be as well versed in the Google Ad platform, but there’s a free and easier way to fix that. Create a free Google partner account and go through their learning modules. It will take you some time, but the lessons are valuable. By the time you complete all the lessons from Google directly you will have a strategic plan to put forth on your own account. You will also realize that this is not a “set it and forget it” way to market. Google’s offerings change frequently and you must stay up on those changes. In fact, you should check your account at least once-a-week for the Google suggestions. You don’t have to agree with their suggestions or implement them, but you should review them before Google automatically implements them for you.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE AUDIT
The company that is offering this free audit is really just trying to get your business. It’s a sales ploy. They will find problems with any audit they do no matter who is managing the campaign – even if Google is managing it for you. If you have a good relationship with your current agency, trust them. Express your concerns if you feel they can do better and discuss testing some new ideas.
Trust yourself if you’re running your own campaign. If it’s becoming too time-consuming for you, check out an agency that specializes in your market. Don’t trust an agency that “does it all” – there’s no way any one agency can understand every market out there: retail, b2c, b2b, industrial to industrial, medical, financial, consumer services, business services, etc. Find one that has the expertise in YOUR market and a proven track record and then trust them.