In this video we are going to go over the 5 Simple Questions Every Busines owner should be asking their marketing agency. This will save you a lot of time, and money.
Hey, what’s up guys? In this video we are going to go over the five things business owners should be asking their agency or the five things business owners, if they’re doing their own marketing, should know for a good marketing campaign. My name is Jace. I am with Red Digital. And if you’re wondering what happened to my face, I played a lot of basketball this morning, or yesterday morning. I got hit in the face with somebody’s head and I lost. So, got some stitches, got a nose thing. But that’s okay.
So first off, question number one, so how this video came about. Let me explain that first. So how this video came about was yesterday morning, actually the guy who was doing my stitches, we were discussing his marketing agency and he had a couple of questions and they ended up … A lot of agencies do this, is when the business owner starts to ask questions, one, they don’t have good answers or they start to scramble. So, this might’ve happened to you where they start scrambling and they come up with all of this stuff to say, “Oh, your words are climbing.” And they’ll use marketing jargon to try to confuse you to think, “Oh, that makes sense.” Or, “Okay, I guess they’re doing something.”
So, what I want to do is there are some numbers that you guys need to know if you want to have a successful marketing campaign. So, question that you should be asking them. Question number one is: What is your cost per lead? You need to know that. They need to know that. So, as an agency, it’s important to know your cost per lead. Now you may not have it exactly, that’s something where you could have organic stuff coming in. But if they’re running Facebook ads, if they’re running Google ads, you can even track direct mail, any of those types of things, you need to know what your cost per lead is. Whether it’s 10, 20, $30, everything is based off that cost per lead. Okay.
So, that’s question number one you should be asking them and they should know that number and you should know that number all the time. At the end of every week. What is my cost per lead on Facebook? $20. What is my cost per lead on Google ads? This much. So get to know that number.
Next number you need to know is how much you’re actually spending on ads. So, a lot of agencies will charge you a fee. They don’t give you access into your ads account, nor do you get to see what’s actually happening on your platform. That’s another video in and of itself. You should have access to anything. As a business owner, make sure when you hire a company that you own everything. You should own your own Ad Words account. You should own your own Facebook Ads account, or have admin access so you can look at any time.
A lot of times agencies make it proprietary or they say, “Oh, we have a proprietary system.” That’s a lot of B.S. Everyone goes through Google Ads, whether they tie into their API or not. So, just understand that, that need to have full access to everything so that you know how much is being spent on ads. If they are taking a $2,500 fee and they’re telling you we’re spending $500 on ads, there’s a disconnect there. We don’t operate that way. We normally do just a standard fee and then anything above that is ad spin so that you know the exact ad spin.
Next thing. You have to ask business owners, this is number three. Make sure that you have tracking in place. Ask them what kind of tracking do they have in place and do you have access to that tracking? Everyone should be using Google Analytics. You don’t need to go out there and use some other software. Just use the Google Analytics and make sure all your conversion codes are being or setup. When I say conversion is if somebody fills out a form and hits a thank you page, that counts as a conversion. If somebody calls, you have call tracking, that all needs to be put into place. And everyone should be using Google Analytics. It’s the best system. Anybody who has a proprietary one, they are tying into Google Analytics or the Facebook Analytics or you can have them create you something on data studio for free. Got it?
Number four. So, this is a big one and this is going to be a little harder to do for business owners, is does your agency practice what they preach?
Example, if an agency is out there telling you they know how to do SEO, if they’re like, “Yeah, we’ve done SEO. We know how to do it.” And SEO is search engine optimization, but if an agency is saying, we know how to do search engine optimization, what you do is you go look at their own site, see how well their own site is ranking.
Look, I’ve had a lot of people call me and they’re like, “Hey, will you take a look at our agency?” Because we do an agency audit. We’ll look at the agency and immediately we realize this agency has never written a good blog that will rank. They don’t rank anywhere. They don’t rank for keywords. So, you have a company saying, “Hey, we’re going to get you 1,000 views a month organically.” When they themselves are getting 30. There’s just a disconnect.
So, whatever your agency is pitching you, just make sure that they are doing it. Good example, we pitch create video. Well, what do you think I’m doing right now? I am creating a video and I do this for my own agency because I need to know what works for me in order for me to use it all my clients.
And lastly, this is a big one. Who is actually doing the work? You have to understand that marketing takes time, money, and expertise. If you have some intern who is working on your project, and this is how a lot of agencies operate, if you’re working with a big box agency with 50, 60 employees, not every one of them is that good. Very few of them. Okay? The top 5, 6% they’re either going to start their own industry or they’re going to go to some other job and get paid a lot of money.
So, you need to know who is actually doing the work on your account because your account is only as good as that person. If they know what they’re doing, you’re going to have good success. But the majority of these agencies do not have the staff. They do not have the expertise. They haven’t trained well enough for these guys to know what they need to do to make you successful. So if you’re dealing with an intern, somebody who’s been in marketing for six months, that’s a big problem because you’re just not going to see results. And how most of them operate is they have a gatekeeper who is your account manager and then that account manager has three or four other people, “Hey, you’re doing AdWords, you’re doing this.”
And the latest thing that I’ve seen pop up with agencies is they’re just outsourcing it all overseas. So, they’re not even marketing people themselves. What they’ve done is they’ve started an agency, they fooled business owners into signing up with them, and then they’re just going to outsource it all to somebody overseas and hope they can keep you as long as they can. I’m seeing that everywhere right now.
Just had, it was actually a good experience, we were just taking over an account and this account we called up to get access to the AdWords. Well, we found out another company was running their AdWords and then we found out another company who’d never done AdWords was running their analytics. Total mess. So, you need to know who is the one who is actually creating and doing the work on your account. If you are five steps removed, that tells you you’re dealing with an agency that they have one guy who knows AdWords that’s dealing with 150, 160 accounts.
That doesn’t work, so I hope that makes sense. You have to drill down who is the person you are dealing with that can make the changes. Now what we’ve done, just to give you an example of what you can look for. I’m not telling you you have to hire us. I’m not telling you to come to us. But we spend a lot of time in training. It takes a year for you to really know what you’re doing. But we have one person that controls the account and they’re doing AdWords. They’re doing Facebook Ads, they want to know your messaging. So, they operate more as a Chief Marketing Officer so that they understand everything about your business.
So, that’s what we found that model works. Now is it scalable? No. We’re really tapped out. It’s hard for us to take on like low budget clients just because we don’t have the manpower to do it because it takes so much work to get people to where they need to be.
So, that just gives you some ideas. So, if you have questions, let us know. But I hope that helped. Those are five questions every agency should be asking, every business should be asking their marketing agency, or those are some of the five questions you should be asking yourself if you are running a marketing campaign. If you have questions, just let us know. We’d be happy to help. Check out our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe if this is on YouTube. Go Facebook, LinkedIn, we’re all around. And at the end of the day, we just want to help businesses grow. So, keep marketing. Good luck. Peace.
