3 Simple PPC Account Manager Practices to Make Clients Happy

Some love it and some dread it. For many it comes naturally and for others it feels awkwardly forced. But for almost all of those fulfilling work on their clients PPC accounts, they also are the one speaking directly with the client.

In this blog post, I hope to give you some extra help and confidence, dealing with your clients and hints to help build a better relationship while making your job easier.

1 – Over Communicate

When you drop your hard earned cash on a new toy from Amazon.com, we all know that for the next 5-7 days you’ll be checking UPS’s package tracking online to know exactly where your package is!

You will do this, even though it almost always arrives on the day that Amazon says it will. It’s okay, we all do it. But why? Because knowing exactly where our package is in the country gives us warm fuzzies, that’s why.

Just like we all want to know exactly where our Amazon package is, our clients want to know what’s going on with their account. Even when you’ve been exceeding their PPC dreams, make sure you keep them in the “know”.

Here’s a quick thought. Through the week keep track of all the work you’ve been doing on their account, and I mean write it down, because if you’re anything like me, you will forget.

Then. at the end of the week, or beginning of the next week, send them a quick email update of what you worked on and why. It doesn’t have to be long or in-depth, just a quick update of “here is what I did this week”.

When you check the shipping status of your package on UPS’s site, all you look to see is where it is and if it’s still on time to be delivered. Keep your update the same way, just give your clients a quick “status” of where their work is on their account, and they will love you for it!

2 – Stay Ahead of the Client

I think we’ve all had a call or email from a client who’s reaching out to us to let us know that something is wrong with their AdWords account. “Blake, my ads are disapproved, we need to fix them asap!”

We know how it feels when our client’s have caught something before we do. No one likes feeling like their clients are more up to date on their accounts than we are.

That being said, none of us can be in AdWords 24/7 monitoring what’s is going on in our accounts. Hopefully all of you are doing this anyway, but if not, here is one quick remedy to help you stay on top of your account activity.

Start by setting up alerts and notifications on your accounts. Let AdWords do some of the leg work for you. Now when you get a notification from AdWords, that your ads have been disapproved you can send a quick email to your client and let them know you aware and working on fixing the problem.

If you do this I promise you will become their hero.

Also, don’t feel like you have to get the issue resolved before you let them know there is an issue. We all love telling them it’s fixed before they even know it’s broke, but based on my own experience it’s best just to let them know when it’s broke right away rather than letting them find out before you have fixed it.

Doing this will continue to give your clients more warm fuzzies and they will know their account is in the right hands.

3 – Be Totally Honest

Now I’m not going to rebuke anyone for lying to his or her clients. I don’t believe I’ve met a PPC account manager out there that would blatantly lie to their clients. All that I’m suggesting is that we own our mistakes and be transparent in our communication and reporting.

We all feel the pressure to get the job done and to do it well, and no one really likes being wrong or admitting they’ve made a mistake. We don’t want to disappoint our clients.

Remember when you were young and your parents would catch you sneaking some ice cream out of the freezer before dinner or getting goodies out of the secret candy stash when you weren’t supposed to?

I remember those times when I would get caught. I was always pretty good at coming up with some elaborate story of why I had to get into the secret candy stash.

Obviously I was just trying to avoid getting in trouble and disappointing my parents. But what was more disappointing to my parents was that I had made up some story to get out of trouble.

Sometimes we will miss deadlines, our planned strategy doesn’t go as well as we thought, or we just plain forget to do something. Unfortunately being human means we will make mistakes. But we do have control no how we handle our mistakes.

No one ever likes telling their client about failures, but telling them about it is better than trying to avoid or cover it up.

“Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained. Loyalty is returned.” – unknown

Letting my clients know when I’ve made mistakes was never fun, but being honest has what has keep them with me over time. They know they can trust my work and me. My clients also know they can trust that I will let them know when I’ve made mistakes.

Stay focused and do the little things, your clients will be much happier with their experience if you follow these 3-practices. I would love to hear others thoughts and experiences. Please share some of the simple things you’ve done as a PPC account manager that you’ve found helped you be successful in what you do.