Did you ever take on a project that you didn’t know how to do?
We were in this predicament several months ago, when our agency got our first Google AdWords client. We had helped this client with their website and search engine optimization. However, they also wanted us to take care of their pay-per-click campaign. We explained that we didn’t know how to do PPC advertising, but that we were willing to learn.
The Chavez Web Design, LLC team
After several weeks of watching many YouTube tutorials, we completed our first project. We had no idea what to charge our first client, so we charged them a one-time fee of $200. We were curious what other agencies were charging, so we went to Google and typed “How much to charge for PPC?” We found a YouTube video about creating a profitable PPC agency and how to price your services, by WordStream. We later went to wordstream.com and clicked on the orange button that says Get Your Free Report Today.
We were in for a big surprise when we saw all of the errors we had made on our client’s campaign. The next day we got a call from WordStream, and they showed us a demo on how their software works. We were blown away at how easy they made it for us to do our campaigns and to do maintenance on our clients’ accounts.
Thanks to WordStream, we’ve come a long way, and recently we were able to become a Google Partner. Here are the top six ways WordStream helped our agency reach this level of success.
2 Hours vs. 20 Minutes
We really like the 20-Minute Work Week feature in WordStream Advisor. This feature has helped our agency become more profitable and achieve a high customer retention rate. It allows us to quickly make decisions and take action on negative keywords, costly keywords, duplicates, bid adjustments based on device, splitting ad groups, and several other best practices.
This means it takes less time to train our AdWords assistants and less time to complete the overall maintenance on each account. The labor savings have allowed us to re-allocate our money towards more marketing – thus, helping us get more clients.
We normally like to do quarterly in-person updates and show our clients how we help keep their accounts optimized with WordStream. We’ve tried doing similar in-person updates directly from Google AdWords, but most clients have a difficult time understanding what exactly we do for maintenance. WordStream’s 20-Minute Work Week feature makes it simple to understand what is happening in their accounts, thus increasing our clients’ overall satisfaction.
Clients like to see results and transparency in the services they purchase. The simplicity of the 20-Minute Work Week helps us be more transparent by showing them exactly what we do to optimize their accounts every week. We have gotten excellent feedback on how transparent we are with our services. I believe our transparency and the excellent results we get our clients are a big part of what allows us to maintain a 96% retention rate with our AdWords clients.
Excellent Start-Up Training
When we first started, our knowledge of paid search advertising was very limited. Thankfully, the team at WordStream was there to help and had several virtual meetings with us. This initial training saved us a lot of time and energy. There is nothing like having live training sessions and support from a team of experts that really want to see your agency succeed.
Knowledge Pays the Best Interest
We like the articles that the team at WordStream writes, because they go into full detail of an idea or strategy based on large amounts of data. Benjamin Franklin used to say, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” The knowledge that WordStream shares through their ongoing webinars, tutorials, and white papers is full of gold nuggets based on real data and not just theory. Moreover, they do an excellent job in keeping up to date with the latest and greatest that PPC has to offer. WordStream has by far the most in-depth articles and webinars I’ve seen to date when it comes to pay-per-click advertising.
Ongoing Support You Can Count On
In the past I would search endlessly online to find an answer to a problem. However, I now just call, email, or live chat with WordStream when I have an issue I can’t figure out. For example, one time we had trouble adding a conversion tag on a WordPress website. For some strange reason this website was distorting the code. WordStream helped us find the perfect plugin that would read the JavaScript code that Google provided. As a result, we were able to add the conversion tag correctly and provide more conversion reporting to our client.
Crystal-Clear Reporting
Clients like to see easy-to-read reports. The reports that Google AdWords provide can be difficult to understand for people who aren’t PPC-literate. However, WordStream reports are easy to understand and visually appealing. As a result, our clients can clearly see their click-through rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, weighted quality score, updates we have done, top performing keywords, and top performing ads. This has allowed us to provide more transparency to our clients; thus, increasing our overall client retention.
Phone Call Reporting
We recently had a client that did not want to leave their existing PPC agency, because they were able to do something we didn’t know how to do. Our competitor was able to record phone calls and create reports that included the name and full phone number of the leads that called from the paid search ads. I explained to WordStream the problem I was having with acquiring this client. They explained that we could also provide recorded phone calls and detailed reporting on the phone numbers through WordStream’s call tracking system. Once we showed our potential client how much more transparent we were than the competition and that we could also provide this type of reporting, then they were comfortable canceling the service with the previous agency and decided to hire us to do their pay-per-click advertising.
The Sky’s the Limit
One year ago, we didn’t know the difference between a negative keyword and a positive keyword, because our PPC knowledge was extremely limited. The training and software that WordStream offers has allowed us to save a lot of time and energy. My only regret is not starting this journey sooner. Thanks to WordStream’s software, training, and ongoing support we have been able to add another residual stream of income to our business and become a Google Partner in one year.
About Luis Chavez
Luis Chavez graduated from California State University Northridge in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. Soon after graduating he got a job with Enterprise Rent-A-Car and worked there for several years as a branch manager. However, the success his wife was having with the web design business gave him the courage to join the family business. He has completed over 1000 hours and 25 courses in HTML, WordPress, e-commerce, pay per click, social media, and graphic design. Luis also enjoys spending time with his wife and two kids. In his free time, he also likes to play the piano, basketball, tennis, chess, and practice kung fu.
About Chavez Web Design, LLC
Chavez Web Design, LLC was started on a dare! We took on that challenge in 2008 and have helped over 500 businesses with their websites and online marketing. Our passion is web design, but our obsession is online marketing. What is the most effective way to help you get more quality clients? We think about that night and day! This is why we have invested over 2000 hours combined trying to answer that question through multiple training programs. Our commitment to our clients is what has made us a top-rated web design and digital marketing agency in California’s central valley.