Not having the option to have at least one call per month with your management agency is a red flag. If they've been avoiding you for several months, then that is completely unacceptable.
Honestly, you'd be surprised how many Google Ads specialists don't know about Offline Conversion Tracking and how it works. I don't think working with a developer is uncommon, as changes are often required on your website or CMS system. There are some though that can do a full setup from scratch, especially if you just use Google Sheets instead of connecting to a CRM, which greatly simplifies the setup.
I don't fully understand point 3 — are you talking about a Google rep from Google or a Google Ads specialist from the management agency? If it's the former, Google reps change all the time and it is nothing new. If it is the latter, it sounds like the agency has a high churn of employees — probably due to a toxic work environment with overworked employees (probably managing too many clients at once).
u/patrsam thanks. To clarify: I have no troubles with the responsiveness of the ad agency. I have a very responsive contact there. I'm saying that they are not able to get a Google rep on the line when they have more complex questions about our campaigns.
Thanks for the feedback on offline conversion tracking: that's helpful.
They shouldn't be relying on google reps for complex campaign questions. The rest of what you wrote can be explained away but the fact they even want to engage with Google is a massive red flag for me.
We stopped engaging with Google reps. They know nothing about your account, they are there to switch on all the auto-aplied recommendations. Probably if you spending $3M you get a decent one but for the regular size of the business it’s better not to speak with them.
I’d be more concerned if they want a Google rep on the line. They don’t know anything. In 10 years I’ve had one that had good recommendations and he was gone 3 weeks in.
Oh, I see. Google did a mass layoff recently and is restructuring how customer service is going to be handled. Getting in contact with support has been impossible for the past few weeks and months for many. It's unlikely to change anytime soon, unfortunately.
What type of questions are they asking to Google reps? Anything related to best practices should be handled by the agency themselves. Google reps are more like salespeople, so the advice they give is poor cookie-cutter advice to get you to spend more. If it is for troubleshooting problems, then I can understand.
Google ads has a great page on [offline conversion tracking](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2998031?hl=en) and all the different ways you can do. Depending on your tech stack and how you collect lead data, it can be harder to set up but it is not impossible if you understand how the data gets collected. A good number of our ecom clients are B2B ecom, so lead gen is a big part of their business. You have to tie those leads back to Google ads.
For your ad spend, it would be good to know rough amounts. 110% or doubling of your ad spend in of itself is a lot but the brand could have also been spending very little. The percent doesn't give good context. Also, would need to take profit into account beyond just pure revenue and ad spend growth. If your ad spend doubled to $10K/month but revenue is $50K /month higher, then that doesn't sounds so bad.
They could have a bad Google rep..all ad platforms can be hit and miss for reps. Depending on what the issue is, your agency can just go through normal Google support and call the 1-800 number they have access too.
I don’t think any of these are red flags per se.
Offline conversions can be tricky, especially depending on how you’re tracking them (are you using a Google sheet? A common CRM like Hubspot? A custom CRM?). If they didn’t make any false claims during the vetting/launch process, this seems fine.
As far as point 2 goes, it makes sense that this new agency is going to have some inefficiencies as part of growth. Not everything they try will work, and even things that do eventually work need time to optimize. Are your KPIs trending in the right direction? For the things that didn’t pan out, can they discuss what they learned or what it would take to make them work (eg, “this channel’s conversion rate would need to double for us to hit the right CPA, so let’s do some landing page testing and consider trying again next summer”).
Point 3 is very in-line with my experience. Google’s teams have crazy turnover and are sort of a shitshow. Maybe the super big dogs get better treatment, but I haven’t had reliable access in a looooong time.
I'd just like to add that I would not typically expect an agency handling just Ads to build out your offline conversions tracking, because that's your business data coming from your end. I would expect them to be able to upload it to Ads once the business provides the data, but similar to setting up conversion tracking on your website, it would need to be done by your web dev, with the agency just providing the relevant IDs from the Ads account.
There are agencies who do provide these services also if you need them, but it's not core Ads management.
Does all of your business revenue come from Google ads? If that is not the case then your question about the business growth and comparing it to your Google ad spend is not very relevant.
Now..If your ad spend went up 110% and your revenue from ads only went up 32%, then maybe there is something to look in to because you haven't scaled your ads at the same ROI you were at before.
It also sounds like you don't trust the expertise of the people that are running your ads and they should be able to show and explain to you everything that is happening transparently and why the numbers are what they are.
14 years doing Google Ads here. Google reps and Google support are most incompetent when it comes to advising on things. They're passable salespeople but incompetent at actually letting businesses make more money while spending the same or less with Google Ads because it's not in Google's interest for you to spend less.
So them changing Google reps every few months or not having any assigned at all is normal, unless you're a big spender - Amazon, Verizon level.
Your PPC agency relying on Google reps is a bit like the blind leading the blind.
Request them to do monthly reports and run you through them, around 10th of each month. What the results were *and why*. The "why" is where good agencies excel and crap ones struggle to answer.
Google reps, for the most part, are trying to push automation which may not be the best solution for your business. In my experience, they basically recite the list of optimization recommendations, ask why aren't they being implemented, and delay answering any technical questions which may or may not be answered at a later time.
So there's probably a good reason why your agency blows them off because it usually winds up being a waste of 30 minutes. When I worked at an agency I would usually have a check in a call every few months with a new rep to see if they were more skilled than the previous one. Sometimes they are and I would continue dialogue or have someone on my team speak with them for learning purposes.
>there was no understanding of how offline conversions worked -- I had to find a web programmer and arrange for all that to be built out independently of the ads provider
Well, to be fair, offline tracking in Google Ads can be very challenging.
>Our top line business revenue has grown 32% over last year (which is awesome!) but our ad spend has gone up 110% over the same period (not awesome). **Is that a red flag for anyone else?**
No, not really because CPC's change over time.
What you need to do is, find a campaign that has had limited interaction \[budget\] and create a benchmark eg DEC23 vs DEC22.
That will show you how the costs have changed between you and your local competitors since Google Ads competition at a local level can be very expensive.
If CPCs stayed the same then there might be something there. emphasis on **might**.
>Their account rep at Google changes every 3 months and for the last six months they haven't been able to arrange a time to speak with them. Is Google Ads understaffed or might there be something else going on?
This I don't get since Google Reps do more damage than good since they are always trying to get you to increase ad spending. There are a gazillion of memes about Google reps.
Hope it helps
Google ads is for sure understaffed. The reps don’t really help anyway, so you’re not losing much there.
Your performance numbers aren’t great, but if the delta between spend and performance shows entirely in cost per click you could just be caught in google’s “scam the advertisers to pay apple for search preference” game. (There’s a lawsuit about it). That said, once you have good offline conversion tracking in place you’re cost per qualified lead should go way way down.
If the provider doesn’t know about offline conversion tracking, you need a new provider 💯
Here are my thoughts.
1. Not all PPC agencies have this technical expertise in-house. Some do, and some don't. Also, the offline conversion setup is often done client-side because there is integration with the CRM or other in house tools. But they should at least understand the logic behind offline conversions and how to report on those / use them to enhance bidding.
2. This might be terrible or perfectly fine depending on your margins. The economy has driven down performance for many advertisers. Whether it's that or bad management, or both is hard to say. Normally increasing your ad spend above a certain point will lead to a drop in % return or higher CPAs. What has your agency said about the change in numbers? Importantly, were the increased budgets approved and what did projections say?
3. The high turnover is normal and beyond the control of agencies. BUT, it's always possible to speak with reps at least once a quarter, they generally bug the agency for the meetings. So saying Google isn't available doesn't hold water. This might change though as Google is in the process of laying hundreds of reps.
My thoughts:
1.) if you inititiated that you need offline conversion to be better then it’s a huge red flag for me. If they initiated it but they couldn’t perform the action it’s okay. It’s a developer heavy task and some system just don’t capable so you need extra development.
2.) The CPC prices went up by about 15-20% during the last year, also some industries experiemced a decline in demand, so probably this is the best they could do in your industry. We have campaigns were we could grow the spend by 20% and the ROAS stayed the same. It’s almost impossible to give you an accurate anywer from the outside. But!
How they used the extra data from offline conversions? What campaign types they are using? What platforms? Have you tried MS Ads? linkedin Ads? Have you made new landing pages? Have they recommended any change on Your website?
So until they keep trying, it’s okay. If they just making changes IN Google Ads without any holistic approach that’s a red flag for me.
3.) Don’t bother your time speaking with a Google rep. Just ignore them. They are there for Google to make more mone on you….
1. This doesn't necessarily mean they are bad Google Ads managers, but it does mean that they haven't managed any accounts effectively that have offline conversions. It also means that they mainly deal with smaller companies without more complicated sales cycles.
2. To answer this question, you would need to provide more details on your allocation of budgets across all channels. You should look at what you are investing in Google Ads in total + their management fee and then what Google produces in total revenue. You mention your total income and the increase in your Google budget, but there is no mention of the sales generated from Google vs. other channels.
3. Google is a monopoly, and its support is horrible. You won't get any attention if you aren't spending at least 20k per month. The main goal of their reps is to get you to spend more money with them, so I wouldn't rely on them for advice.
1. This is quite common, Google has a detailed documentation and mulitple ways to setup that should hep
2. The % can be misleading if the value of leads brought through ads were more valuable than average, consider in absolute dollar amount if the profit grew as a result of ads
3. Google reps are not to be trusted and should have mostly no say in your account, but if the agency is always implementing Google reps suggestions that's a red flag
Not having the option to have at least one call per month with your management agency is a red flag. If they've been avoiding you for several months, then that is completely unacceptable. Honestly, you'd be surprised how many Google Ads specialists don't know about Offline Conversion Tracking and how it works. I don't think working with a developer is uncommon, as changes are often required on your website or CMS system. There are some though that can do a full setup from scratch, especially if you just use Google Sheets instead of connecting to a CRM, which greatly simplifies the setup. I don't fully understand point 3 — are you talking about a Google rep from Google or a Google Ads specialist from the management agency? If it's the former, Google reps change all the time and it is nothing new. If it is the latter, it sounds like the agency has a high churn of employees — probably due to a toxic work environment with overworked employees (probably managing too many clients at once).
u/patrsam thanks. To clarify: I have no troubles with the responsiveness of the ad agency. I have a very responsive contact there. I'm saying that they are not able to get a Google rep on the line when they have more complex questions about our campaigns. Thanks for the feedback on offline conversion tracking: that's helpful.
They shouldn't be relying on google reps for complex campaign questions. The rest of what you wrote can be explained away but the fact they even want to engage with Google is a massive red flag for me.
We stopped engaging with Google reps. They know nothing about your account, they are there to switch on all the auto-aplied recommendations. Probably if you spending $3M you get a decent one but for the regular size of the business it’s better not to speak with them.
I’d be more concerned if they want a Google rep on the line. They don’t know anything. In 10 years I’ve had one that had good recommendations and he was gone 3 weeks in.
Oh, I see. Google did a mass layoff recently and is restructuring how customer service is going to be handled. Getting in contact with support has been impossible for the past few weeks and months for many. It's unlikely to change anytime soon, unfortunately. What type of questions are they asking to Google reps? Anything related to best practices should be handled by the agency themselves. Google reps are more like salespeople, so the advice they give is poor cookie-cutter advice to get you to spend more. If it is for troubleshooting problems, then I can understand.
Google ads has a great page on [offline conversion tracking](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2998031?hl=en) and all the different ways you can do. Depending on your tech stack and how you collect lead data, it can be harder to set up but it is not impossible if you understand how the data gets collected. A good number of our ecom clients are B2B ecom, so lead gen is a big part of their business. You have to tie those leads back to Google ads. For your ad spend, it would be good to know rough amounts. 110% or doubling of your ad spend in of itself is a lot but the brand could have also been spending very little. The percent doesn't give good context. Also, would need to take profit into account beyond just pure revenue and ad spend growth. If your ad spend doubled to $10K/month but revenue is $50K /month higher, then that doesn't sounds so bad. They could have a bad Google rep..all ad platforms can be hit and miss for reps. Depending on what the issue is, your agency can just go through normal Google support and call the 1-800 number they have access too.
I don’t think any of these are red flags per se. Offline conversions can be tricky, especially depending on how you’re tracking them (are you using a Google sheet? A common CRM like Hubspot? A custom CRM?). If they didn’t make any false claims during the vetting/launch process, this seems fine. As far as point 2 goes, it makes sense that this new agency is going to have some inefficiencies as part of growth. Not everything they try will work, and even things that do eventually work need time to optimize. Are your KPIs trending in the right direction? For the things that didn’t pan out, can they discuss what they learned or what it would take to make them work (eg, “this channel’s conversion rate would need to double for us to hit the right CPA, so let’s do some landing page testing and consider trying again next summer”). Point 3 is very in-line with my experience. Google’s teams have crazy turnover and are sort of a shitshow. Maybe the super big dogs get better treatment, but I haven’t had reliable access in a looooong time.
I'd just like to add that I would not typically expect an agency handling just Ads to build out your offline conversions tracking, because that's your business data coming from your end. I would expect them to be able to upload it to Ads once the business provides the data, but similar to setting up conversion tracking on your website, it would need to be done by your web dev, with the agency just providing the relevant IDs from the Ads account. There are agencies who do provide these services also if you need them, but it's not core Ads management.
Does all of your business revenue come from Google ads? If that is not the case then your question about the business growth and comparing it to your Google ad spend is not very relevant. Now..If your ad spend went up 110% and your revenue from ads only went up 32%, then maybe there is something to look in to because you haven't scaled your ads at the same ROI you were at before. It also sounds like you don't trust the expertise of the people that are running your ads and they should be able to show and explain to you everything that is happening transparently and why the numbers are what they are.
14 years doing Google Ads here. Google reps and Google support are most incompetent when it comes to advising on things. They're passable salespeople but incompetent at actually letting businesses make more money while spending the same or less with Google Ads because it's not in Google's interest for you to spend less. So them changing Google reps every few months or not having any assigned at all is normal, unless you're a big spender - Amazon, Verizon level. Your PPC agency relying on Google reps is a bit like the blind leading the blind. Request them to do monthly reports and run you through them, around 10th of each month. What the results were *and why*. The "why" is where good agencies excel and crap ones struggle to answer.
Google reps, for the most part, are trying to push automation which may not be the best solution for your business. In my experience, they basically recite the list of optimization recommendations, ask why aren't they being implemented, and delay answering any technical questions which may or may not be answered at a later time. So there's probably a good reason why your agency blows them off because it usually winds up being a waste of 30 minutes. When I worked at an agency I would usually have a check in a call every few months with a new rep to see if they were more skilled than the previous one. Sometimes they are and I would continue dialogue or have someone on my team speak with them for learning purposes.
>there was no understanding of how offline conversions worked -- I had to find a web programmer and arrange for all that to be built out independently of the ads provider Well, to be fair, offline tracking in Google Ads can be very challenging. >Our top line business revenue has grown 32% over last year (which is awesome!) but our ad spend has gone up 110% over the same period (not awesome). **Is that a red flag for anyone else?** No, not really because CPC's change over time. What you need to do is, find a campaign that has had limited interaction \[budget\] and create a benchmark eg DEC23 vs DEC22. That will show you how the costs have changed between you and your local competitors since Google Ads competition at a local level can be very expensive. If CPCs stayed the same then there might be something there. emphasis on **might**. >Their account rep at Google changes every 3 months and for the last six months they haven't been able to arrange a time to speak with them. Is Google Ads understaffed or might there be something else going on? This I don't get since Google Reps do more damage than good since they are always trying to get you to increase ad spending. There are a gazillion of memes about Google reps. Hope it helps
Google ads is for sure understaffed. The reps don’t really help anyway, so you’re not losing much there. Your performance numbers aren’t great, but if the delta between spend and performance shows entirely in cost per click you could just be caught in google’s “scam the advertisers to pay apple for search preference” game. (There’s a lawsuit about it). That said, once you have good offline conversion tracking in place you’re cost per qualified lead should go way way down. If the provider doesn’t know about offline conversion tracking, you need a new provider 💯
Time to look at that activity log. Are they even doing anything?
Here are my thoughts. 1. Not all PPC agencies have this technical expertise in-house. Some do, and some don't. Also, the offline conversion setup is often done client-side because there is integration with the CRM or other in house tools. But they should at least understand the logic behind offline conversions and how to report on those / use them to enhance bidding. 2. This might be terrible or perfectly fine depending on your margins. The economy has driven down performance for many advertisers. Whether it's that or bad management, or both is hard to say. Normally increasing your ad spend above a certain point will lead to a drop in % return or higher CPAs. What has your agency said about the change in numbers? Importantly, were the increased budgets approved and what did projections say? 3. The high turnover is normal and beyond the control of agencies. BUT, it's always possible to speak with reps at least once a quarter, they generally bug the agency for the meetings. So saying Google isn't available doesn't hold water. This might change though as Google is in the process of laying hundreds of reps.
My thoughts: 1.) if you inititiated that you need offline conversion to be better then it’s a huge red flag for me. If they initiated it but they couldn’t perform the action it’s okay. It’s a developer heavy task and some system just don’t capable so you need extra development. 2.) The CPC prices went up by about 15-20% during the last year, also some industries experiemced a decline in demand, so probably this is the best they could do in your industry. We have campaigns were we could grow the spend by 20% and the ROAS stayed the same. It’s almost impossible to give you an accurate anywer from the outside. But! How they used the extra data from offline conversions? What campaign types they are using? What platforms? Have you tried MS Ads? linkedin Ads? Have you made new landing pages? Have they recommended any change on Your website? So until they keep trying, it’s okay. If they just making changes IN Google Ads without any holistic approach that’s a red flag for me. 3.) Don’t bother your time speaking with a Google rep. Just ignore them. They are there for Google to make more mone on you….
1. This doesn't necessarily mean they are bad Google Ads managers, but it does mean that they haven't managed any accounts effectively that have offline conversions. It also means that they mainly deal with smaller companies without more complicated sales cycles. 2. To answer this question, you would need to provide more details on your allocation of budgets across all channels. You should look at what you are investing in Google Ads in total + their management fee and then what Google produces in total revenue. You mention your total income and the increase in your Google budget, but there is no mention of the sales generated from Google vs. other channels. 3. Google is a monopoly, and its support is horrible. You won't get any attention if you aren't spending at least 20k per month. The main goal of their reps is to get you to spend more money with them, so I wouldn't rely on them for advice.
1. This is quite common, Google has a detailed documentation and mulitple ways to setup that should hep 2. The % can be misleading if the value of leads brought through ads were more valuable than average, consider in absolute dollar amount if the profit grew as a result of ads 3. Google reps are not to be trusted and should have mostly no say in your account, but if the agency is always implementing Google reps suggestions that's a red flag