Question

Hoping to get people's professional opinion on something. I hired an ad agency three weeks ago to take over my google shopping campaign. It is running through their own ad account and I paused my own. Since then the CPC has gone up from £0. 23 to £0. 35. The CPA has gone up from £5 to £9. This is even with a higher budget of £50 per day compared to £40 per day when I was doing it myself. The only thing that has stayed the same is the number of orders we are getting. But at a higher cost all round. It's not looking good all round. Their reasoning is because of all the changes they made to my campaigns. I just had one campaign with all of my 200 products in it. They segmented everything into categories and they are limiting budget to between the hours of 7am-11pm. Maybe they have performed some other changes that I don't know of. If they are any good, shouldn't the campaigns have improved by now compared to what I achieved on my own?  

Answer 1

Sounds about right to me. You will soon be able to see now where to increase or decrease budgets better. There is always this testing period, but they have made your campaign easier to manage.  

Answer 2

I don't know this agency so I can't speak on their behalf or understand what they're doing exactly. But it needs to be looked at beyond just CPC or even CPA. My approach is that I target the right audience that will be more profitable to you, even if that means higher CPC/CPA, but I make it up from less-profitable targets. If that's what they're doing, then it should be no problem. And it's difficult to get this done right off the bat so give them time. But you should understand clearly what their strategy is so I would ask if you're not yet sure.  

Comments

@bratislava56420 what do you mean by targeting the "right audience" when it comes to Shopping campaign?  

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It's definitely limiting compared to text ads but you can still target demographics and audiences. You can choose to go wide and thin or focus on the performing segments until something changes.  

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Could you elaborate more on audience targeting? I can't see how that works

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@sure50 @raynell9 how I typically approach is that I look both inside and outside of Google. You can look at your typical best customers (ones that make you the most money by buying more, more frequently, and stay with you longer) and compare against your performance history. In Shopping, you can target certain demographics and audiences, not as in-depth as text, but you can still eliminate obvious non-converting targets, such as specific geo or interests. If you don't have a whole lot of first-party data, you can start with historical Google Analytics data. At least that can help you distribute your budget a bit more proportionately between people that are more and less likely to spend more with you. Then you can consider growth options once you start seeing some results at least. This is on top of all you'd do with negative keywords to eliminate as much wasted spend since Shopping has gotten ridiculous with how they send traffic.  

Answer 3

3 weeks is not enough time for evaluating , in my opinion you need at least 2 month (maybe if they are a disaster a bit less). So far sounds ok the Approach they have taken. The question is why they are using a new account! You have to run campaigns on your account always, no matter if you do it or the agency does it.  

Comments

@cathryncathy yeah this is the only thing that concerns me they should have followed beat practices and kept it under the business manager's profile of the owner and added themselves in.  

Answer 4

Seems fine for me. Their approach gives them more control over adspend for each category. What I wouldn't have agreed is running my campaigns in their ads account. Instead I would have added them to manage my account.  

Answer 5

Thanks all. I have to say the fact it is on their account is what also gives me the most concern. Getting data from them is like getting blood from a stone. they just aren't providing what we ask them to provide. I just get the feeling they are hiding something. I asked for the cost data from day one and I only juts got it today.  

Comments

@upali574 do you have any access to the account?  

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@poyssick not at all. I’ve asked numerous times. They won’t even give reports from google. The only two reports I’ve had from them all formatted by them.  

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@upali574 fire them

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I personally think they're not spending our full budget and they are taking money from it for themselves.  

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@upali574 who pays the Google invoice

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Some school boy set ups will try black box accounts so be super careful.  

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@poyssick they pay it. They are a medium sized agency. It all looked good. Their name is Adrac based in Manchester if you have any insight on them.  

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@upali574 at this point it doesn't matter who pays for the ads. If you had your own account and they took your campaigns somewhere else, that's really shady. If an agency would ever pitch that set up to me, I would send them fly a kite.  

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@upali574 With not giving you access to the account, and not giving you regular reporting, these are definite red flags that you should cut ties. I know I don't have the full picture, but this is a very suspicious management practice.  

Answer 6

That’s normal since they don’t have historical data, it should improve with time

Answer 7

Definitely normal results for timeframe; especially when the number of orders stayed the same. Also they’re employing day-parting

Answer 8

If they are not using campaign priority get somebody else.  

Answer 9

I'm more concerned about the contractual situation you have with this agency, specifically why they are running the campaign in their account, not yours. Are you locked in for a minimum term? At the end of the agreement, do they transfer the account to you?  

Answer 10

They should be managing in your account.  

Answer 11

Can anyone tell me how long would it take you to do a complete restructure of campaigns before it would go live?  

Comments

Thanks guys. Basically, it took them 2 weeks to restructure and get the campaign live. I think they did this so they went past the cooling off period that allows anyone to cancel a contract within 2 weeks no questions asked.  

Answer 12

Depends how they set it up, but these things take time. You should give them a solid 3-4 months to prove themselves as they will now be able to further optimize your account. Why don't you turn your attention to CRO?