Discover Featured Snippet Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Winning featured snippets is one of the best ways to get visibility on page one of Google’s SERPs. It’s a competitive environment, though, and there are tons of specific considerations when it comes to increasing your chances of earning that spot. Today’s Whiteboard Friday, number one of an upcoming three-part series, is brought to you by Moz’s resident SEO and mini-pig advocate, Britney Muller. She covers the keyword research you’ll need to do, evaluating your current ranking, and recording relevant data in a spreadsheet with the help of a couple useful tools.

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Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going over all things discovering featured snippet opportunities. So this is the first part to three videos. So this will be the discover, but we’re also going to have a target and a measure video as well. So really, really excited. It’s going to be a ton of fun. I’m doing it with you, so you’re not going to be alone. It’s going to be this cool thing we all do together.

Part 1 of 3: Discover, target, measure

So for those of you that don’t know what a featured snippet is, it is one of those answer boxes at the top of search results. So let’s say you do a search like, oh, I don’t know, “Are teacup pigs healthy?” which they’re not, super sad. I love pigs. But you’ll get a featured snippet box like this that tells you like, “No, they’re actually starved.” It gives you all this information. So it’s different than something like “People also ask…” boxes or your typical search results.

They’re particularly appealing because of the voice search component. So most voice searches come from those featured snippet boxes as well as it just being really appealing in general to have that top spot.

#1 Keyword research

So this process is pretty straightforward. You’re going to start with just your basic keyword research. So you’re also going to focus on questions. A.J. Ghergich did this incredible study write-up, on SEMrush, about featured snippets, where he discovered that around 41% of all featured snippets come from questions, which makes sense. The how questions are really interesting because those results are most likely to result in lists.

Now, lists take both the form of numerical as well as bullets. So something to kind of keep in mind there. But what’s interesting about these lists is that they tend to be a little bit easier to truncate. So if you know that Google is showing 8 results, maybe you go back to your page and you make sure that you have 10. That way it lures people in to click to see the full list. Really interesting there.

#2 Evaluate your current ranking

You also want to evaluate your current ranking for these particular keywords. You want to prioritize keywords based on ones that you rank on page one for. It tends to be much easier to grab a featured snippet or to steal one if you’re also on page one.

#3 Put data into a spreadsheet

From there, we’re going to put all of this data and more data into a big spreadsheet so that we can really analyze and prioritize some of these opportunities. So some of the metrics I came up with — feel free to share some ideas below — are your keyword, average monthly search volume, current featured snippet URL, that’s this guy over here. What is that domain authority and page authority? You want to make note of those. Is it a featured snippet hub? This is such a cool term, that A.J. came up with in his article, that essentially coins a featured snippet URL that ranks for 10 or more featured snippet boxes. You probably won’t know this right away, so this might stay blank. But once you start seeing more and more of those same URLs, you might think it’s one of those hubs. It’s kind of cool.

Featured snippet type. Is it a paragraph, a list, or a table? Is there any markup? Is there schema markup? What’s going on, on the page in general? Just sort of scope all that out. What’s your rank? This is actually supposed to be over here. So, again, you want to see if you’re ranking 10 or under on a particular page, hopefully on page 1.

Then is there an image? So the featured snippet images are really interesting, because Google likes to swap them out and remove them and test them and do all this crazy stuff. I got to talk about these images and the tests that I’ve been doing on them on the Two Peas podcast with Brian Childs, part of his MozPod podcast series. It was super fun. I share some secrets in there, so go check it out.

Then what’s the type of image? So typically, you can start to see a theme of a particular niche or industry in their featured snippet images. Maybe they’re all stock photos, or maybe they’re all informational type photos. Maybe they all have the same color. Really interesting to sort of keep an eye on those.

What’s your desired featured snippet URL? This will typically be whatever URL is ranking. But maybe not. Make note of that.

Other notes, you can mention where Google is pulling the featured snippet from that page. I think that stuff is super interesting. You can do all sorts of fun stuff.

Research tools to use

So two primary tools to do all of this research within are Moz Keyword Explorer and SEMrush. Both have some caveats. Moz Keyword Explorer is great because you can do a bunch of keyword research and save them into lists. However, you can’t do keyword research only viewing the keywords that have featured snippets. You can’t do that. You have to do all the keyword research, put it into a list, and then we give you that data.

With SEMrush, it’s pretty cool. You get to filter only by featured snippet keywords. So that, off the bat, is awesome.

However, once you get a keyword list put together in Keyword Explorer, not only do you get that information of whether or not there’s a featured snippet, but right within your list of keywords, you have the ability to add your website and immediately see your rank for all of those particular keywords in your list, making this super, super easy.

I tried to do this with SEMrush. I know they have all of the features necessary to do so. However, it’s just not as easy. You have to use a combination of their different tools within their tool. I hit a couple different limits within Keyword Analyzer, and then by the time I got to position tracking, I lost my search volume from Keyword Magic tool, which was super frustrating.

There might be a better, easier way to do that. Maybe their API are pulling some stuff a little bit differently. Feel free to comment down below. Maybe there’s a better way than either of these. I don’t know. You could also do it pretty manually too. You could use Google Keyword Planner and look some of this stuff up yourself.

But I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to seeing you all soon. Thanks.

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Inactive AdWords Accounts Are About to Go Bye-Bye

“Is it true that if you don’t use it you lose it?”

Google: Yeah.

Starting Monday, March 26th, inactive AdWords accounts—defined by Google as those that have not spent any money at all in the past 15 months—will be “cancelled.”

Here’s what we know…

“Why Is Google Killing My AdWords Account?”

Because you didn’t use it!

The impending AdPurge aligns with Google’s push towards faster everything: per a recent post on the Ads Developer Blog, accounts “will be cancelled in order to speed up the AdWords experience and help users stay within the manager account limits.” Cancelled means exactly what it sounds like: all the wonderful historical data in your account will fade into the ether. Don’t be too upset, you weren’t using it anyway.

 

By scrubbing AdWords of stored data that’s gone unused for more than a year, Google can alleviate strain on the backend that can make account management and API calls—this is how software like ours interacts with the native platform—substantially faster.

If your account is among those cancelled and you happen to have left unspent, prepaid budget in your coffers, it will be refunded (thanks, Google!)

“My AdWords Account’s Been Cancelled, What Now?!”

Well, you’ve got a few options.

The first, and most obvious, step is to create a new AdWords account. If you haven’t dipped your toes into the PPC water in 15 months, this could be a better bet than reactivation. A lot has changed since 2016, and an all-out rebuild might be more valuable to your business than attempting to resuscitate an antiquated account.

That being said, if you do want to reactivate a cancelled AdWords account, just follow these steps:

In the new AdWords UI, click the tool icon at the top of the page and select “Preferences.”

 

Click the “Account Status” section…

 

If your account is deleted, there will be an option to reactivate your account here; click it and the status will kick back over to “your account is active.” Now go use it.

“I’m an agency!”

If you’re an agency, you can see the accounts in your MCC that’ve been cancelled by clicking the three vertical dots in the left-hand corner of your screen and choosing “Show Cancelled.”

 

If some of your current clients run the risk of having their accounts cancelled on March 26th, be sure to download any relevant historical data you might need (or, you know, convince them to spend some cash in the next two weeks). Just be sure that their activation doesn’t cause your MCC to exceed the manager limit, as depicted below:

 

While this change may result in a few headaches in the short-term, the prospect of improved account management thanks to a faster AdWords experience—whether you’re using the native platform or WordStream Advisor—will be well-worth it.

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9 Non-Newsletter Emails to Keep Your Subscribers Guessing

When it comes to effective marketing channels, email remains at the top of the list. In fact, email is 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers than social media.

But what happens when you’re short on ideas? Your emails aren’t going to do much of anything for you if the content inside isn’t killer. To help get your creative juices flowing, we’ve done a little brainstorming and come up with a few non-newsletter ideas you can send to your loyal subscribers to stay at the top of their inbox and to keep them engaged.

1. Progress Updates

Whether you’re a technology company, agency or nonprofit, your subscribers (and your customers) want to know about your progress. Sharing research, client successes or usage reports is a simple way to keep your contacts in the know about everything happening behind the scenes.

Givable, a nonprofit giving site, sends out a monthly impact report so users know where their donations are going and who is benefitting.

2. Holiday-Themed Emails

It’s easy to send discounts and newsletters around the big holidays (think Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc), but try highlighting lesser-known days like National Donut Day or National Dog Day to get the attention of your recipients. It’s almost guaranteed that your competitors won’t be sending out duplicate holiday content on National Talk Like a Sailor Day. You’ll have prime inbox real estate and maybe get a laugh or two.

LastPass didn’t try to sell anything in their Valentine’s Day email. Rather they used it as an opportunity to spread some love (and password security tips).

3. Worthwhile Discounts

Emphasis on the worthwhile part of that. Tiny discounts and half-hearted, desperate offers aren’t going to do anything but annoy your recipients. Five percent isn’t going to push the needle for prospective buyers. The bigger the number, the higher the incentive. If you can’t send something desirable, don’t send anything at all. As a bonus tip, if you want to create a sense of urgency with your list, make sure to put a timestamp on it such as “one day only” or “purchase by the end of the month.”

4. Content Roundups

You’re spending the time to create content that you presume will be valuable to your audiences, but are you actually sharing it with the people who need it most? Roundups are easy and helpful and will get your content more mileage.

Unsplash has a multitude of amazing, free photos that their subscribers might not even know exist. A roundup of their newest or most popular ones is an easy way to keep their contacts informed.

5. Advice and Resources

You don’t have to give away free products to entice subscribers to open your emails, but you do need to give away something of perceived value. Checklists, email templates or videos are easy-to-create resources that your subscribers will appreciate. The key is to offer something for free that your target audience will find useful.

6. Product and Service Updates

Got a new feature or service offering? Share it. Don’t assume that people already subscribed to your site or your social pages will be visiting them on the regular. You never know what a long-time reader will be most excited about or where there’s room for an upsell.

7. Personal Notes

Sometimes (see: often) an HTML email isn’t the answer. No one wants to feel like a number, and with so many emails being sent weekly, daily and hourly, it’s important to make your recipients feel important. A good old text-based email can often do the trick (even if it’s not actually a personal email). Marketing automation can help you reach anyone and everyone in a more personalized way. You’ll get more opens, and they’ll feel more indispensable.

Flywheel does a spectacular job of getting opens and keeping things interesting. Their text-based outreach feels much more personal.

8. Company Milestones

If you’ve managed to build relationships with your email subscribers, they’ll be more than happy to know what’s happening with your company. Your successes are their successes and vice versa. Share milestones, achievements, and improvements openly, and you’ll make your followers feel more like friends.

9. Surveys

Everyone wants their voice to be heard. Asking for feedback is a quick way to make your subscribers feel valued and to improve your products or processes. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.

Chargify’s email simply asks for input – nothing more, nothing less. No need to explain the survey. When you ask, you’re more likely to receive the feedback you’re seeking.

Next time you’re sending an email to your subscriber base, think outside the box. Making your contacts feel like they have a reason to stay subscribed is the easiest way to boost retention rates. Otherwise, that unsubscribe button will start getting more attention than your emails.

About the Author

Jonathan Herrick is co-founder, chief sales officer, chief marketing officer, and chief high-fiver of Hatchbuck, an all-in-one sales and marketing platform based in St. Louis. His extensive experience in digital marketing and sales strategies has been a driving factor in growing Hatchbuck’s sales by over 2,000 percent. A purpose-driven leader in all aspects, Jonathan has a passion for cultivating his team’s culture, spending time with his family, and working to make a difference in the St. Louis community.

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11 Common Mistakes We See Digital Marketing Agencies Make

WordStream Advisor: it isn’t just for advertisers.

In fact, there’s even a souped-up version built specifically for those who manage multiple accounts for other businesses. It’s called WordStream Advisor for Agencies.

It helps agencies of all sizes, from seasoned teams looking to scale their book of business to one-man bands building a PPC offering from the ground up. As such, our team is exposed to brilliant minds and the successful AdWords, Facebook, and Bing accounts they manage every minute of the workweek. Of course, they also see their fair share of tomfoolery, which tends to stem from some combination of overzealous oversight and a simple lack of PPC education. 

 

After chatting with WordStream’s best and brightest on Slack and between bites of microwaved lunches, I’ve pulled together a list of 11 common mistakes we see agencies make every day. Some may sound ludicrous to you, others will be more like light bulbs popping on atop your head.

Regardless of where you stand, don’t be embarrassed to open up your MCC or Business Manager and see if you stumble upon any of the issues that follow. Doing so is a great way to identify quick wins for your existing clients so you can spend your time pitching new ones.

#1: Multiple Clients in the Same AdWords Account

Managing multiple clients from the same account—no matter the platform—is ill-advised. You don’t want to be on the hook for prepaying ad spend and awaiting reimbursement: clawing that cash back can be a pain and the model scales horrendously. Unfortunately, a lot of fledgling agencies make this mistake.

They take on a rash of local businesses, build campaigns in a single AdWords account for the sake of “ease,” then begin running into a million issues. Account-level negatives and ad extensions gone awry. Billing conundrums. Dayparting disasters. And God forbid one of your clients gets hit with a suspension and it takes your whole account out of commission…

Save yourself the headache: Use a MCC (short for “My Client Center”) account to ensure each client you manage has their own ad account. And if you’re managing accounts across multiple channels for multiple clients, you can use a third-party tool like, oh, say, ours. The WordStream Advisor Client Center allows you to track client spend and KPIs in aggregate, eliminating single-account snafus and making it easy to track budgets at scale.

#2: An Unprofitable Pricing Structure

Having a pricing structure that isn’t profitable is a huge problem, especially for agencies pivoting towards paid search and social from another field. Website development and SEO campaigns are time-intensive. In these niches, billable hours or a flat fee make a lot of sense.

For PPC, not so much.

In fact, over the long-haul, you can end up leaving a ton of cheddar on the table if you charge by the hour for AdWords, Facebook, and Bing account management. The work is significantly frontloaded, and too much tinkering—trying to make a living when you’re paid by the hour—can even tank performance, especially when it comes to paid search. You might also charge using a results-based model, which has the potential to pay dividends or, you know, zilch.

Instead of trading your workdays for dollars or assuming unreasonable risk, you should consider charging your clients a percentage of their ad spend.

 

This model incentivizes client growth: the more efficient you can make a client’s account, the more they’ll spend, the more they’ll make, the more you make. Since you’re providing more value to the client, the percentage-of-spend model fairly compensates you while ensuring good ROI for your them. A literal win-win.

Don’t not profit when your clients are because it only takes you 20 minutes each week to hit their goals.

#3: Too Much Time Reporting, Not Enough Optimizing

Some agencies spend boatloads of time creating intricate reports, often to the detriment of account performance. In fact, according to HubSpot, “agency staffers spend around four or five hours per client each month reporting on digital.” This issue is only exacerbated as your clients grow their advertising efforts onto new channels, where KPI go together like lamb and tuna fish.

This isn’t to say that reporting is inherently bad.

Solid reporting that clearly conveys pacing towards your clients’ goals is key to presenting your impact on their businesses and, therefore, your value. But you can achieve this through some measure of automation without wasting most of your Monday morning tweaking broken Excel formulas. That’s time you could be spending helping someone grow their business (or, you know, growing your own). 

While a gyrating word cloud might be all the rage in some circles, I’ve never met a client who needed a heat map of their CTR segmented by hour of day and barometric pressure more than they needed a few dozen extra conversions. If you find reporting to be a major hurdle in your workweek, check out our customizable cross-platform Success Reports.

#4: Skipping the Search Query Report

Keywords are the backbone of any AdWords account, but what about the queries that trigger them?

Many agencies we speak to diligently sift through their clients’ keywords, adjusting bids often and synthesizing SEO research and existing account data to uncover new opportunities in PPC. This is a fantastic use of time, but shouldn’t occur at the expense of diving into the Search Terms Report at least once a week. 

The Search Terms Report is a tool in the Keywords tab in the new AdWords UI. It allows you to get an idea as to the sorts of search queries that are triggering your keywords and understand which match types are triggered by said queries (particularly important if you’re leveraging a tiered bidding structure). It also lets you add negative keywords at the ad group or campaign level, or build lists of negatives that can be added to your entire account.

Don’t stop looking at keywords in favor of panning for ludicrous search queries to Slack to your compatriots: fold the Search Term tab into your routine account maintenance to put a stopper in inefficiencies and uncover new opportunities for your clients.

#5: Hiring WAY Too Early

We get calls each month from agencies who say: “We’re taking on more and more accounts. It takes hours in AdWords to manage them. We’re going to hire a PPC coordinator.” And in some cases, this is 100% the right move.

For most though, it’s the powder keg for a fusillade of headaches and time squandered. That’s why our agency team takes pride in helping you NOT hire additional staffers.

Think about it: Employees mean overhead.

Add up the costs of salary, health insurance, paid-time off, 401(k), etc. That’s before you even begin to factor in training them and ramp-up time and the potential for silly mistakes that might cost your clients (a poorly placed negative here, an overeager bid adjustment there). 

“But I’ll hire someone experienced, someone autonomous.” Great idea, but the bread you save on training will come back to bite you in salary demands. Not to mention the fact that it’s shockingly difficult to hire top-notch PPC talent, even in a city like Boston (if you happen to be a needle in a haystack, though, drop our Managed Services team a line).

Don’t take time away from your clients to find help until you absolutely must. Software is much more affordable than a warm body and will make account management more efficient without adding headcount to your team.

#6: Missing Out On +Broad +Match +Modified

Casting a wide net inevitably dredges up a ton of junk.

This doesn’t make doing so un-valuable; it just takes some hedging. On the Search Network, broad match keywords are the wide net, and negatives are one way to mitigate the wasted spend they incur. Regular broad match keywords are the AdWords default (because, you know, Google is an ad company).

Unfortunately, if you’re not diligently checking your clients’ Search Terms reports (which, as I mentioned earlier, happens), you can end up hemorrhaging budget on irrelevant clicks. Broad match modified keywords, however, offer the same catch-all utility without as much waste by affording you some modicum of control.

To use BMM, simply place a plus sign (+) in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. The words that are preceded by a (+) sign must appear in the user’s keyword phrase exactly or as a close variation.

So, if you have a client who sells rugged, manly slippers, bidding on +mens +slippers instead of mens slippers ensures more of their budget is spent on relevant search queries (the latter would also match out to searches for slippers for women and puggles and whatnot). In addition to saving their money for high-volume, relevant(-ish) searches, BMM keywords maintain your ability to prospect for new opportunities. In most cases, these opps. take the form oflong-tail keywords.

#7: A Lack of Long-Tail Keywords

Did you just scratch your head and ask yourself “what’s a long-tail keyword”?

You’re not the only one!

Many of the AdWords and Bing accounts we analyze tend to be comprised of mostly short-tail keywords, those with a limited number of words and high search volume. This makes them expensive. Everyone in your client’s industry is bidding on those terms and most of the time, they aren’t converting with much frequency; that’s because these short keywords don’t tend to signal much commercial intent. Competition, cost, lack of conversion? Not a recipe for success.

Long-tail keywords, however, are the backbone of every great paid search account. 

These are keywords—often identified by analyzing search queries or with the help of resources like the WordStream Free Keyword Tool—made up of multiple words, often conveying some semblance of intent. This allows you to present a different offer based on what the searcher is looking for, improving the likelihood of conversion in your client’s account. And because they tend to have less volume and competition, hyper-relevant long-tail keywords can actually cost less on a per-click basis than less-relevant short-tail keywords. 

 

While uncovering and optimizing for long-tail keywords takes a fair bit of elbow grease (more granular ad groups, more specific ad copy, query fishin’), the returns they yield are too good to pass up.

#8: Fear of The F-Word

Facebook is nothing like AdWords, but it’s not a particularly scary place either.

It relies on audience definition in place of search intent and the ads are infinitely prettier, but fundamentally it’s still just a means by which to fill and nurture a sales funnel in a more effective way than can be done with bench ads and branded toothpicks. If I wanted to target you, for example, I might build an audience that looks something like this:

 

Got ‘em.

That being said, many agencies—particularly those with a clear expertise in paid search—are hesitant to expand their services to social. This is silly because offering Facebook ad management opens up additional opportunities for you to bolster spend under management without taking on new clients.

If you’ve got a hankering to add Facebook advertising to your repertoire, here’s some light reading to help you get the ball rolling:

• The Last Guide to Facebook Ad Account Structure You’ll Ever Need
• All of Facebook’s Ad Targeting Options (in One Epic Infographic)
• Facebook Relevance Score: 4 Key Facts to Know
• The Beginner’s Guide to B2B Facebook Advertising
• How to Create Amazing Facebook Audiences You Can Actually Sell To

#9: Backfilling Instead of Growing

Even the most devout practitioners among us, the true technical mavens, can find ourselves blinded by the allure of biz dev. After all, pitching new business is a helluva rush.

 

Unfortunately, it can be all too easy to focus too much on acquiring new business and neglect your existing client base. This stalls growth entirely, and you end up burning bridges with folks who should otherwise be your agency’s best evangelists.

How do you ensure that your clients are satisfied while you chase and convert prospects?

You become more efficient at doing both.

Using the power of the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule that governs our own 20-Minute Work Week) to zero in on the activities that represent the most value to your clients and completing them with haste—and accuracy—allows you to free up enough time to research and pursue great new clients without sacrificing the ones you’ve got.

#10: Ugly Ad Creative

Not everyone who can body a spreadsheet or track event-based conversions is a design wizard.

Unfortunately, clients don’t buy that as a viable reason to avoid the sale-generating value of Facebook and the GDN. At some point, you’ll need to create stunning image-based creative that people actually want to click.

Now, you can lean on resources like Fiverr or a doe-eyed intern on summer break, but those will only take you so far. You might also use the image-ad creation platform in the AdWords UI; while the tool has come a long way since its inception, it still sacrifices panache in the name of simplicity. 

WordStream’s Smart Ads technology, on the other hand, uses machine-learning to transform your clients’ existing website images into eye-catching Facebook, Instagram, and GDN-ready ads. By recognizing and zeroing in on the focal point of any image—a smiling parent, a burning house, a swollen 401k, etc.—Smart Ads can help you create compelling image-centric ad content for all of your clients: at scale.

#11: A Supreme Lack of Stickiness

The final issue we notice among online advertising agencies is going to sound counterintuitive: they lose business by doing a great job.

At a certain point, some clients decide that they can take over their own account management (usually after performance peaks and plateaus for an extended period). You obliterate CPA goals, eliminate inefficiencies, and run out of ideas to test. The client decides they can handle tweaking bids and adding negatives, so they sever ties.

In other words: you delivered on your word, you made mounds of cash for your client, but you didn’t make yourself irreplaceable.

The easiest way to become stickier—the thing that makes tools like Salesforce so indispensable—is to bake yourself into the very fabric of your client’s business model. You need to stop managing standalone marketing channels and start developing and executing on cohesive, cross-platform growth strategies. 

This means taking what you learn in AdWords to inform Facebook audience creation, using RLSA to reach top of funnel prospects first touched on Instagram later in the sales cycle: Basically, aligning goals between search and social by understanding the relationship between audience and intent for each of your clients.

***

Do that, and your agency becomes utterly indispensable.

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11 Common Mistakes We See Digital Marketing Agencies Make

WordStream Advisor: it isn’t just for advertisers.

In fact, there’s even a souped-up version built specifically for those who manage multiple accounts for other businesses. It’s called WordStream Advisor for Agencies.

It helps agencies of all sizes, from seasoned teams looking to scale their book of business to one-man bands building a PPC offering from the ground up. As such, our team is exposed to brilliant minds and the successful AdWords, Facebook, and Bing accounts they manage every minute of the workweek. Of course, they also see their fair share of tomfoolery, which tends to stem from some combination of overzealous oversight and a simple lack of PPC education. 

 

After chatting with WordStream’s best and brightest on Slack and between bites of microwaved lunches, I’ve pulled together a list of 11 common mistakes we see agencies make every day. Some may sound ludicrous to you, others will be more like light bulbs popping on atop your head.

Regardless of where you stand, don’t be embarrassed to open up your MCC or Business Manager and see if you stumble upon any of the issues that follow. Doing so is a great way to identify quick wins for your existing clients so you can spend your time pitching new ones.

#1: Multiple Clients in the Same AdWords Account

Managing multiple clients from the same account—no matter the platform—is ill-advised. You don’t want to be on the hook for prepaying ad spend and awaiting reimbursement: clawing that cash back can be a pain and the model scales horrendously. Unfortunately, a lot of fledgling agencies make this mistake.

They take on a rash of local businesses, build campaigns in a single AdWords account for the sake of “ease,” then begin running into a million issues. Account-level negatives and ad extensions gone awry. Billing conundrums. Dayparting disasters. And God forbid one of your clients gets hit with a suspension and it takes your whole account out of commission…

Save yourself the headache: Use a MCC (short for “My Client Center”) account to ensure each client you manage has their own ad account. And if you’re managing accounts across multiple channels for multiple clients, you can use a third-party tool like, oh, say, ours. The WordStream Advisor Client Center allows you to track client spend and KPIs in aggregate, eliminating single-account snafus and making it easy to track budgets at scale.

#2: An Unprofitable Pricing Structure

Having a pricing structure that isn’t profitable is a huge problem, especially for agencies pivoting towards paid search and social from another field. Website development and SEO campaigns are time-intensive. In these niches, billable hours or a flat fee make a lot of sense.

For PPC, not so much.

In fact, over the long-haul, you can end up leaving a ton of cheddar on the table if you charge by the hour for AdWords, Facebook, and Bing account management. The work is significantly frontloaded, and too much tinkering—trying to make a living when you’re paid by the hour—can even tank performance, especially when it comes to paid search. You might also charge using a results-based model, which has the potential to pay dividends or, you know, zilch.

Instead of trading your workdays for dollars or assuming unreasonable risk, you should consider charging your clients a percentage of their ad spend.

 

This model incentivizes client growth: the more efficient you can make a client’s account, the more they’ll spend, the more they’ll make, the more you make. Since you’re providing more value to the client, the percentage-of-spend model fairly compensates you while ensuring good ROI for your them. A literal win-win.

Don’t not profit when your clients are because it only takes you 20 minutes each week to hit their goals.

#3: Too Much Time Reporting, Not Enough Optimizing

Some agencies spend boatloads of time creating intricate reports, often to the detriment of account performance. In fact, according to HubSpot, “agency staffers spend around four or five hours per client each month reporting on digital.” This issue is only exacerbated as your clients grow their advertising efforts onto new channels, where KPI go together like lamb and tuna fish.

This isn’t to say that reporting is inherently bad.

Solid reporting that clearly conveys pacing towards your clients’ goals is key to presenting your impact on their businesses and, therefore, your value. But you can achieve this through some measure of automation without wasting most of your Monday morning tweaking broken Excel formulas. That’s time you could be spending helping someone grow their business (or, you know, growing your own). 

While a gyrating word cloud might be all the rage in some circles, I’ve never met a client who needed a heat map of their CTR segmented by hour of day and barometric pressure more than they needed a few dozen extra conversions. If you find reporting to be a major hurdle in your workweek, check out our customizable cross-platform Success Reports.

#4: Skipping the Search Query Report

Keywords are the backbone of any AdWords account, but what about the queries that trigger them?

Many agencies we speak to diligently sift through their clients’ keywords, adjusting bids often and synthesizing SEO research and existing account data to uncover new opportunities in PPC. This is a fantastic use of time, but shouldn’t occur at the expense of diving into the Search Terms Report at least once a week. 

The Search Terms Report is a tool in the Keywords tab in the new AdWords UI. It allows you to get an idea as to the sorts of search queries that are triggering your keywords and understand which match types are triggered by said queries (particularly important if you’re leveraging a tiered bidding structure). It also lets you add negative keywords at the ad group or campaign level, or build lists of negatives that can be added to your entire account.

Don’t stop looking at keywords in favor of panning for ludicrous search queries to Slack to your compatriots: fold the Search Term tab into your routine account maintenance to put a stopper in inefficiencies and uncover new opportunities for your clients.

#5: Hiring WAY Too Early

We get calls each month from agencies who say: “We’re taking on more and more accounts. It takes hours in AdWords to manage them. We’re going to hire a PPC coordinator.” And in some cases, this is 100% the right move.

For most though, it’s the powder keg for a fusillade of headaches and time squandered. That’s why our agency team takes pride in helping you NOT hire additional staffers.

Think about it: Employees mean overhead.

Add up the costs of salary, health insurance, paid-time off, 401(k), etc. That’s before you even begin to factor in training them and ramp-up time and the potential for silly mistakes that might cost your clients (a poorly placed negative here, an overeager bid adjustment there). 

“But I’ll hire someone experienced, someone autonomous.” Great idea, but the bread you save on training will come back to bite you in salary demands. Not to mention the fact that it’s shockingly difficult to hire top-notch PPC talent, even in a city like Boston (if you happen to be a needle in a haystack, though, drop our Managed Services team a line).

Don’t take time away from your clients to find help until you absolutely must. Software is much more affordable than a warm body and will make account management more efficient without adding headcount to your team.

#6: Missing Out On +Broad +Match +Modified

Casting a wide net inevitably dredges up a ton of junk.

This doesn’t make doing so un-valuable; it just takes some hedging. On the Search Network, broad match keywords are the wide net, and negatives are one way to mitigate the wasted spend they incur. Regular broad match keywords are the AdWords default (because, you know, Google is an ad company).

Unfortunately, if you’re not diligently checking your clients’ Search Terms reports (which, as I mentioned earlier, happens), you can end up hemorrhaging budget on irrelevant clicks. Broad match modified keywords, however, offer the same catch-all utility without as much waste by affording you some modicum of control.

To use BMM, simply place a plus sign (+) in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. The words that are preceded by a (+) sign must appear in the user’s keyword phrase exactly or as a close variation.

So, if you have a client who sells rugged, manly slippers, bidding on +mens +slippers instead of mens slippers ensures more of their budget is spent on relevant search queries (the latter would also match out to searches for slippers for women and puggles and whatnot). In addition to saving their money for high-volume, relevant(-ish) searches, BMM keywords maintain your ability to prospect for new opportunities. In most cases, these opps. take the form oflong-tail keywords.

#7: A Lack of Long-Tail Keywords

Did you just scratch your head and ask yourself “what’s a long-tail keyword”?

You’re not the only one!

Many of the AdWords and Bing accounts we analyze tend to be comprised of mostly short-tail keywords, those with a limited number of words and high search volume. This makes them expensive. Everyone in your client’s industry is bidding on those terms and most of the time, they aren’t converting with much frequency; that’s because these short keywords don’t tend to signal much commercial intent. Competition, cost, lack of conversion? Not a recipe for success.

Long-tail keywords, however, are the backbone of every great paid search account. 

These are keywords—often identified by analyzing search queries or with the help of resources like the WordStream Free Keyword Tool—made up of multiple words, often conveying some semblance of intent. This allows you to present a different offer based on what the searcher is looking for, improving the likelihood of conversion in your client’s account. And because they tend to have less volume and competition, hyper-relevant long-tail keywords can actually cost less on a per-click basis than less-relevant short-tail keywords. 

 

While uncovering and optimizing for long-tail keywords takes a fair bit of elbow grease (more granular ad groups, more specific ad copy, query fishin’), the returns they yield are too good to pass up.

#8: Fear of The F-Word

Facebook is nothing like AdWords, but it’s not a particularly scary place either.

It relies on audience definition in place of search intent and the ads are infinitely prettier, but fundamentally it’s still just a means by which to fill and nurture a sales funnel in a more effective way than can be done with bench ads and branded toothpicks. If I wanted to target you, for example, I might build an audience that looks something like this:

 

Got ‘em.

That being said, many agencies—particularly those with a clear expertise in paid search—are hesitant to expand their services to social. This is silly because offering Facebook ad management opens up additional opportunities for you to bolster spend under management without taking on new clients.

If you’ve got a hankering to add Facebook advertising to your repertoire, here’s some light reading to help you get the ball rolling:

• The Last Guide to Facebook Ad Account Structure You’ll Ever Need
• All of Facebook’s Ad Targeting Options (in One Epic Infographic)
• Facebook Relevance Score: 4 Key Facts to Know
• The Beginner’s Guide to B2B Facebook Advertising
• How to Create Amazing Facebook Audiences You Can Actually Sell To

#9: Backfilling Instead of Growing

Even the most devout practitioners among us, the true technical mavens, can find ourselves blinded by the allure of biz dev. After all, pitching new business is a helluva rush.

 

Unfortunately, it can be all too easy to focus too much on acquiring new business and neglect your existing client base. This stalls growth entirely, and you end up burning bridges with folks who should otherwise be your agency’s best evangelists.

How do you ensure that your clients are satisfied while you chase and convert prospects?

You become more efficient at doing both.

Using the power of the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule that governs our own 20-Minute Work Week) to zero in on the activities that represent the most value to your clients and completing them with haste—and accuracy—allows you to free up enough time to research and pursue great new clients without sacrificing the ones you’ve got.

#10: Ugly Ad Creative

Not everyone who can body a spreadsheet or track event-based conversions is a design wizard.

Unfortunately, clients don’t buy that as a viable reason to avoid the sale-generating value of Facebook and the GDN. At some point, you’ll need to create stunning image-based creative that people actually want to click.

Now, you can lean on resources like Fiverr or a doe-eyed intern on summer break, but those will only take you so far. You might also use the image-ad creation platform in the AdWords UI; while the tool has come a long way since its inception, it still sacrifices panache in the name of simplicity. 

WordStream’s Smart Ads technology, on the other hand, uses machine-learning to transform your clients’ existing website images into eye-catching Facebook, Instagram, and GDN-ready ads. By recognizing and zeroing in on the focal point of any image—a smiling parent, a burning house, a swollen 401k, etc.—Smart Ads can help you create compelling image-centric ad content for all of your clients: at scale.

#11: A Supreme Lack of Stickiness

The final issue we notice among online advertising agencies is going to sound counterintuitive: they lose business by doing a great job.

At a certain point, some clients decide that they can take over their own account management (usually after performance peaks and plateaus for an extended period). You obliterate CPA goals, eliminate inefficiencies, and run out of ideas to test. The client decides they can handle tweaking bids and adding negatives, so they sever ties.

In other words: you delivered on your word, you made mounds of cash for your client, but you didn’t make yourself irreplaceable.

The easiest way to become stickier—the thing that makes tools like Salesforce so indispensable—is to bake yourself into the very fabric of your client’s business model. You need to stop managing standalone marketing channels and start developing and executing on cohesive, cross-platform growth strategies. 

This means taking what you learn in AdWords to inform Facebook audience creation, using RLSA to reach top of funnel prospects first touched on Instagram later in the sales cycle: Basically, aligning goals between search and social by understanding the relationship between audience and intent for each of your clients.

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Do that, and your agency becomes utterly indispensable.

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