You need no introductions to paid advertising. We all grew up seeing ads. We are bombarded by ads everyday (by the thousands, per day). There isn’t a television channel, an event, a web page, or a platform that’s free of advertising.
There are ads on billboards. There are ads inside the airport. There are also ads inside planes.
But let’s not digress….
If you’d like to level up your e-commerce efforts, chances are that you’ll not only consider paid advertising (mainly on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and others) but also look out for a paid ads agency.
Since not all paid ads agencies are built the same, here’s how to find and manage e-commerce paid ads marketing agencies:
Be Realistic in Your Business Expectations
Don’t expect agencies to wave a magic wand at anything (we know since most clients do).
Marketing success depends a lot on what agencies do, the type of campaigns you run, the length of time you run these campaigns for, and the actual content of the campaigns (ad creatives, images, graphics, angles, offers, and so much more).
But marketing campaigns can never save bad products, or products with low demand, or products that no one wants (just look out for the uphill battle that Apple will have to face to sell its expensive Apple Vision Pro).
There are two sides to this equation.
Challenge the assumptions of the agency sales pitch
Agencies normally use stellar sales pitches, impressive case studies, and make a few assumptions about your e-commerce business.
There are also chances that agencies overpromise to get you on board (but could severely underdeliver).
First, challenge all assumptions an agency makes about your business (which inherently depends on your business and what you are doing with respect to paid ads -- including your metrics, KPIs, results, performance, keywords, creatives, ads, sales funnels, and more).
Further, rev up the game by putting forth a set of questions that lets the agency know that they aren’t dealing with clients or businesses that have no idea about paid ads.
Managing creative side As Well as The Technical Side
We’ve often come across agencies that “demand” that clients produce their own ads, create their own sales funnels, and build their own landing pages. Apparently, all that the agency will do is to upload ads to specific platforms (like Google Ads or Facebook Ads).
That’s not the reason why you should hire agencies. Be sure to find out if your agency also creates ads, sales funnels, manages bidding processes, tests, and optimizes campaigns on a regular basis.
Without that, all conversations are off the table.
Challenge Their Reporting to Make Sure They’re Conversion Centric
Some agencies are set in their ways (of doing things), including reporting. We once knew of a Google Ads agency that’d send out a report (with an excel sheet) showing impressions and clicks -- and how these impressions and clicks grow over time.
You can see just how easy it is to manipulate these results. Every ad gets impressions. Boost the budget and those impressions will grow. Most ads get clicks too.
How does that help the business (read: you) if you were told that your ad got 450,000 impressions and 5,674 clicks last week?
While we aren’t saying that the agency you are working with will do this, it’s better to keep challenging them on their reporting side of things, with a singular end goal: How conversion-centric is their reporting?
Transparency (on both sides)
Transparency. Clarity of communication. Honesty. Decency -- all of these are slowly dying traits (on both sides -- agencies and businesses).
Save the fall there.
If you are looking to work with a half-decent agency, it’s imperative that you remain honest, realistic (see above), and open to ideas (agencies have lots of ideas, by the way, since it’s their business to take these ideas to life).
You’d expect the exact same from the agency itself: honesty, speed and clarity of communication, and honesty.
Without transparency and trust, no relationship will work (including the one you are trying to work with your agency)
Challenge Their Creatives (+ Give Them New Ideas)
Working with paid ads marketing agencies doesn’t mean you take the foot off the pedal even while a lot of the work -- including ideas, angles, offers, creating ads, managing ads, doing A/B testing, controlling bids, and optimizing campaigns -- is done by the paid advertising agency you hire.
Your active involvement (not micromanagement) will help make a huge difference to just how successful your ad campaigns are going to be.
Let agencies take the first shot at ideas, ad creation, ad deployment, ad management, and more.
You can challenge agencies by asking the right questions, floating more ideas, and providing them with creative inspiration.
With a single tool in your belt like Panoramata, for instance, you can show agencies what your competitors are doing with their ad campaigns -- including the actual ad creatives, product highlights, and offers.
