Management fees start as soon as we start working on the account (in fact, we'll need payment in order to get started working). This includes the planning phase of the project (though we realize there may be some initial scoping done to even quote the project).
There is a flat setup fee for each campaign.
After the setup phase, regular management fees start at the planned start date of the campaign, even if the campaign is delayed.
For example:
Today is May 15th, and we’re starting a campaign on April 1st. This gives us 2 weeks to set up the campaign, with a setup fee attached to pay for those 2 weeks of work.
April 1st comes, and it turns out that you (or the client) isn’t ready. Maybe the landing page isn’t done yet, or the client failed to provide us with a credit card. The campaign ends up starting on April 12th by the time everything is sorted. Regardless, we will still bill you from April 1st.
This gap between the 1st-12th always includes project management/hand-holding, emails back and forth, etc. from my team, which needs to happen within the context of a retainer. This is why we’ll be billing from April 1st.
There are exceptions. For example, if we decide to postpone for 6 months, or something along those lines (provided there isn’t active work being done by me or my team in that time), then we wouldn’t be charging a fee for that long gap.
Always use the client’s own credit card. If for some reason a client doesn't pay you, you’ll only be on the hook for contractor wages.
Your liability on the account skyrockets if a client doesn’t pay you for a month. Always use client credit cards.
If we're starting a campaign together you can submit a client credit card using this SSL security-encrypted form.
Sometimes it's not clear what's included in the scope of our campaign. First, start by looking at the article What's Included In Your PPC Campaign Management.
The sales funnel graphic that we create together when planning your campaign will give you a good idea of what's included in your campaign.
Keep in mind the following items will increase the scope/fees with your campaign:
All PPC platforms use cookies to track users who perform conversions, so they’ll only count a “conversion” if a visitor comes through an ad (not if they come through other means).
What types of actions can we track from PPC campaigns?
Almost anything, but some things are tracked more easily than others.
For example: tracking form submissions. If the form redirects to a thank-you page, this becomes quite easy to track because we can just place some conversion code on the thank-you page, and it will register a conversion a single time when a visitor comes through an ad and then sees that page.
But what if you don’t want a thank-you page, and instead just want to track when someone clicks the submit button? We can do that, with a caveat – what if the person clicks the button more than once? What if they hit the “enter” key on their keyboard instead of clicking? These would skew our numbers. That’s why we really really prefer to use thank-you pages to track most conversions.
Other types of things we can track as conversions (not a complete list):
I recommend sticking to forms and calls for service-based businesses (and purchases for eCommerce sites).
For particularly large campaigns we can get into the other types of tracking.
Campaign launches are the most stressful part of working with a new client.
From ad disapprovals to filling in gaps missed during the strategy phase - if something can go wrong, it will (murphy's law).
We work very hard to make sure every launch goes smoothly with the least amount of friction or stress. In fact, while working together you may not get the chance to experience the stress of a typical launch!
There are two rules we need to follow to keep things smooth:
1. We need 2 weeks to launch your campaign. This means the strategy and sales funnel has been finished, the landing page is built, and THEN the two weeks starts.
2. We only launch 1 campaign per week. This is very important for scheduling because your planned launch date may coincide with another campaign we're launching.
When planning out a campaign, it's vital that you check in to make sure we have availability for your planned launch date. It's possible the campaign may need to be launched 1-2 weeks after you initial intend, and setting client expectations about that queue is vital.
This really depends on the scope of the campaign, but most campaigns take 2-4 weeks to get started.
There are parts of new campaigns where we'll require your input or work: getting access to different software (Analytics, Tag Manager, Website Logins, etc.), landing pages prepared, email campaigns prepared, etc. – in 98% of cases, it's providing these resources to us that slows down the start of a campaign.
Please see What do you need to provide BEFORE I can launch a new PPC campaign? for more information on what you'll need to provide. Beyond that, we'll create a timeline for the launch of our campaign with clearer expectations for you.
If we’ve (or you) have installed Google Tag Manager (GTM) on the site, then you don’t need to insert Google Analytics onto the site itself. We’ll inject Google Analytics using GTM, and putting a tag on yourself will actually cause us to have duplicate tags on the site.
If analytics is already on the site, please remove it so we can install it using Google Tag Manager (if you've already installed it using GTM then you can leave it on).
I’ll need a completed, fully-revised landing page at least 2 weeks before the campaign starts.
Keep in mind that revisions or changes to the landing page count here - so if you make changes to the landing page, this could set back our start date depending on the nature of the changes.
Other than our strategy call, I’ll mostly need access. Access to the website, Google Tag Manager, Analytics, etc.
The other important piece of information is the customer lifetime value (click to use our Customer LTV calculator). By knowing this, we’re able to know whether our ads are actually profitable.
The other bottleneck for campaigns is typically the landing page.
For more details on what you need to provide, see this article: What do you need to provide BEFORE I can launch a new PPC campaign?
Every agency has a different style here.
Most commonly we will send you a report that you repackage and send to the client. Many agencies like...agency to edit reports as they see fit.
Some clients prefer us to use an email directly from their domain (andrew@agency.com) to the client. We can accommodate that as well if needed.
Between the 5th-10th of the month. This allows us to get the data from the previous month for all of our clients together and deliver them to you in a consistent schedule.
We use CallRail, which dynamically swaps phone numbers on your website so that only visitors who come through our ads see our tracking numbers.
This means that you shouldn’t do anything to the numbers on the website - just leave the business’s phone number on the website, and we’ll set up the script using Google Tag Manager so that the numbers automatically swap when a user with a Google/Facebook ad cookie arrives.
Important: do not manually swap the phone numbers on the website.
We always use a pool of 4+ numbers so that if multiple visitors arrive to the site, they won’t see the same number - this allows us to track exactly which ads drove the calls. This is vital for us to be able to optimize ads (rather than just proving that a call was driven).
We can track people who come from ads, organic SEO, or any other referrer that you prefer.
