The 5 most common questions from clients to digital agencies

On a daily basis in agency work, we encounter many questions from clients. Some of them are repeated many times and concern budget, planning, settings of the campaign itself, optimization, or results and reporting. I thought it would be a good time to collect these questions and answer them in a nutshell, but at the same time, supposedly the best questions are the ones that the agency asks first, right?”

What should be the budget?

The old school of marketing says that to set a budget we should have at least:

• clearly defined goals
• placed in time
• optional history of past activities to more accurately make estimates

A simple example might be a goal like generating 100 leads in 3 months. Another strictly marketing goal could be, for example, generating 10,000 users from a campaign or 1,000,000 reach. Of course, it goes on to specify target groups, expected reactions, etc. On the subject of determining the optimal budget for an online campaign, Krystian has already written. 

So how to answer the budget question? The budget should be such that it assumes positive implementation of your goals. If you don’t have specific goals, you will never know if a certain level of spending is effective. The budget question should always be a question about goals.

What target group should we reach?

Questioning the target audience has always been one of the most important elements of an advertising brief. In the age of automation and smart bidding models, in my opinion, it has less and less importance. The same is true of creating personas – they look good in presentations, but real use of them is currently impossible. 

As a customer you should ask yourself questions:

• who buys from me most often?
• or who orders services?
• are there significant differences in the value of contracts?
• what does the margin look like?
• what characteristics does the best customer have in terms of: location, age, gender, behavior, mode of communication?
• on the other hand: what characteristics does the most problematic customer have?

It is important not only to determine characteristics and behaviors, but also to have the data to confirm this. This data can, for example, be used to analyze target groups and feed into advertising systems for better targeting.

Targeting.

The target group is the starting point for planning advertising channels, as well as further for setting up campaigns and optimizing them. Currently, very small, limited target groups are not a recommended approach. It is definitely more effective to think broadly, segment the data and get effective outreach using the capabilities of algorithms.

What does our competition do?

This question arises in most cases as a natural stage of interest – if they’re doing it, so should we, because it’s probably effective (otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it, right?). Winning in the market is precisely about looking for asymmetry. If you want to be the best you can’t follow the market. You have to look for something more.

This does not mean that the competitive analysis stage should not be done. You need to be aware of what your competitors are doing, how they are communicating, what budgets they are spending. Even if you will run similar campaigns in the search results you may find some asymmetry e.g. different bidding strategy, different keywords, distinctive communication etc.

Also keep in mind that competitors in PPC are not always the same as market competitors. These are the companies you are directly bidding against for the attention and clicks of your target customer. This data is important for making estimates and finding less competitive areas, for example. You can use the Auction Insights tool to see how your competitors are bidding for the same keywords. You can also find other technologies on the market for competitive analysis like semrush or similarweb.

Should we focus on serving current customers or acquire new ones?

Over time, ROAS-type metrics will make it difficult for you to scale. You will quickly reach a point where you face a wall. Any increase in budget will result in a significant decrease in ROAS. This is how the market works. Advertising systems like to take advantage of existing customers because they generate turnover. So if you’re using a bidding strategy based on ROAS, you’ll notice that a significant portion are existing customers. If you want to keep growing you need to start focusing on attracting new ones.

This is usually the most difficult stage in business growth, which is very hard to break through. You need to forget about ROAS metrics for a while, and focus on reaching new audiences, such as using brand awareness-building campaigns.Your future key metric from now on will be the cost of acquiring a new customer (CAC), which will ultimately translate into long-term revenue (LTV) from that customer.

Google Ads has recently introduced the ability to set rates with new customers in mind, which can be used with Performance Max campaigns. This is a step toward greater opportunities to reach a new group of customers.

Entering new markets. Is it possible, where and when?

Entering new markets has never been easier than it is today. We have more and more tools, technologies to estimate entry thresholds, analyze legal issues or outsource shipments.

But first and foremost, it is worth examining the demand: is there a number of searches or a large enough target audience? If not, how can I create that demand? 

• How will shipping change? Their costs and service?
• Can you keep your promises on service dates?
• Do I have the resources to maintain service levels?
• Can you keep up with increased production needs?

In entering a new market, you can also use a strategy used in mobile application marketing called soft-launch. It involves test-launching a service/product into a given market and collecting data, which allows you to examine needs and identify initial problems to be solved.

A Google Market Finder can help in this regard. All you need to do is provide some information, the URL of the site, and you will get basic directions. In addition, digital agencies with Google Ads Premium support have access to more accurate data, metrics and benchmarks in other markets.

What new media, channels or ads can we use?”

This is a very important step in developing the structure of your marketing efforts. If you do not look for it, sooner or later you will fall behind the competition, and new opportunities in the market will regularly appear a lot. 

1. You can, for example, use Spark Ads in your Tik Tok activities. This format is unique and allows you to promote organic influencer posts giving you incredible effectiveness.
2. Test ad extensions in search results on Bing. Advertising on Bing is a new potential and traffic source for your site.
3. Use ChatGPT to optimize Facebook Ads This will help you design ads faster and bring automation to your campaigns.
4. Develop your Facebook ads with Advantage+ products to get better results.
5. For generating new customers, test the format under conversion in Linkedin Ads

Also pay attention to the social channels gaining popularity like Twitter or Snapchat.

What tests should we run?

Testing is a natural process of getting better and better. However, you need to keep in mind that most tests end negatively i.e. the tested variant does not achieve a statistically better result. Head from data at Ogilvy says that testing should produce at least 70% negative results Just achieve 10-20-30% positive results and your organization, sales, processes will get the necessary catalyst for growth.

What is important when testing?

• Be sure to test and learn – record results, share conclusions!
• Pace of implementation and regularity
• Create channels/meetings where you bring together people from different departments, with different priorities and outlooks on an area
• Intensive use of analytics: everything you do needs to be data-driven, and analytics help you determine what provides the best return on investment
• Visualization – create a place where test results are shown clearly, simply and pleasing to the eye

Remember that testing processes are not only campaign settings (copy, ads, creatives, rates, etc.), but also the website (ux, elements, shopping process, product images), mobile app, as well as the product itself, pricing policy, etc.

Summary: what customers-agents-marketing-online-are-asking?

The most common questions are those related to budget, effectiveness, competition and performance. On the other hand, an important task for digital agencies is to convince clients of new marketing metrics like CAC/LTV, which will primarily take care of business scalability in the long run. The role of marketing agencies will also be to take care of support in finding new markets, laying out processes for testing and introducing new media.