Guidelines For Transitioning A Paid Search Account

Winning new business is always exciting. But when taking over a new paid search account from a previous agency, you never know what you are getting into. It could range from one word ad groups, to ad groups containing 500 broad match keywords.

To ensure you are able to kick things off on the right foot for your new client, you’ll want to make sure you get all of the information you need to manage the campaign successfully. Before you get started on the transition, one of the first things you will want to accomplish is to define success for your client.

When transitioning an account on from another agency, here are a few of the main topics you will want to cover before the transition takes place:

• Campaign Goals: What was the account being optimized toward? Sales, registrations, e-mail news letter signs-ups?
• Brand Strategy Documents: Paid search is most likely one of the many things a brand is doing to grow their business. Having a deep understanding of their plans and value proposition value can help your paid search efforts support the bigger goal.
• Optimization and Performance Insights: Detailed analysis of previous optimization efforts and executed tests. Highlighting is any major shifts in strategy occurred and the results they generated.
• Previous Reporting Efforts: Whether it was weekly, monthly or quarterly, previous reporting efforts can provide additional insight into some of the items listed above. They also can provide insight into what type of information and data your client is used to seeing.
• Analytics and Tracking: You will want to make sure you have a deep understanding of what analytics platform is being utilized as well as how and what on the site is tagged. As with any paid media effort, you’ll want to ensure URL parameters are properly set up or if they need to be stripped to whatever new platform will be utilized.

As you take on a new client, focusing on the most important things as part of the transition will ensure you and your client are set up for success. Making sure you can get as much of the information mentioned above from the incumbent agency will surely help achieve this. By doing this in advance of the transition deadline, you can make sure you have the critical details and analysis available.

Homepage image via Shutterstock