Nonfictional stories about advertising budgets

The first story. We begin negotiations
"The site must be present in the first positions of the search results ALWAYS!"

The management sets such a task quite often to managers of marketing departments, while allocating the conditional 100,000 rubles a month for everything. The chances of meeting the designated amount in contextual advertising today are negligible when it comes to competent advertising campaigns.
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What happens next? If the company does not have a full-time internet marketer, the search and negotiations with the future contractor begin. Which rest, as always, in the budget.

The customer does not want to pay in excess of the comfortable amount for him for what he does not see here and now and cannot “touch” - we are talking about the results of the advertising campaign. The contractor is not in a hurry to make commitments and promise what the client wants to hear. The customer does not "hear" the justification for increasing the cost of advertising on the Internet, the contractor does not want to work for free.

How wishes sound in the language of the customer:
• Increase in calls / leads / sales
• Fulfillment, better fulfillment of sales plan
• Presence always and in high positions
• Optimization of advertising costs

What is your sales plan? What are the costs of advertising and their payback at the moment? How many incoming calls per day are received? Unity can immediately and clearly answer these questions. Of course, the more the better. Calls, like money, do not happen much.

Then on the basis of what tasks are set and budgets are determined for their implementation? Who and how determined that the achievement of goals is possible by precisely these means? Someone conducted research on this subject or the tasks are set on the basis of the "helpers" or "sensations"?
Alas, in reality, most often there is no causal relationship between the setting of tasks and approval of budgets.

In fact, everything would be much simpler and more comfortable (and for both sides) if the logical chain were this: measuring the current situation - the task - the budget.

The second story. Fakap or negative experience - also experience
The classic situation that we consider above, when a client wants an effective advertising campaign, but does not want to pay in excess of the comfortable amount, can receive such a continuation.
When, under the pressure of the agency's arguments in favor of an optimal budget, the client’s arguments end, he goes into a counter-offensive. The phrase sounds: “You are experts, prove that you can work an order of magnitude more efficiently”. It is perceived as a challenge and seems to be ready to prove to the whole world what we are worth! In no case can not respond to such statements. Even indirectly. The client hears what he wants to hear, like many of us, which is really cunning here.
Contractor: "We promise nothing, but we will try to do everything we can." The client hears: "Of course, we promise everything will be as you wish." The plot for the collage "Waiting and Reality."

But seriously, we came across this bait several times. Perhaps you should not explain how these stories end. And no matter how much you tell later, neither prove, nor explain that everything has been done in the best possible way, but the fact will remain a fact - WHERE it has not happened. Also, long-term and fruitful relations did not happen, and the customer is likely to remain for a long time with the opinion that not only in this agency, but generally in the market, some @ udaki work. After all, there is nothing worse than disappointment and deceived hopes.

Conclusion for customers: stop believing in miracles. The instant "miracle" in our experience happened several times when the customer came with an advertising campaign that was very badly tuned. We set up well, and it was not a miracle that happened at all, but simply the result of quality work. In other cases, it takes a couple of months to configure, optimize and work on achieving KPI, ideally, in a constructive dialogue with the customer.

Conclusion for contractors: do not get fooled by provocations from the “are you weak?” Series, do not subscribe to the plans offered by the customer, without a test period and study advertising in the industry with a specific example.

The third story. Perfect
“We have the following tasks for this month,” says the customer. “We need to increase sales of these items. The season begins on the following directions, but on these demand is not expected until next year. Based on this, please suggest a budget with a rationale, ”he adds.
The agency studies the factors of growth and risk, offers specific numbers in various sections. “Let's try, in the course of the placement, to observe, adjust and discuss,” says the contractor. Perfect! And this is not a sweet dream or an impossible dream, but the very constructive dialogue between customers and the contractor.

So, how to determine the optimal budget?

Customer actions:
1. Clearly formulate tasks
2. Understand or define how the result will be measured.
3. We set the task for the contractor

Contractor actions:
1. We think over strategy, we count the budget
2. We evaluate the risks
3. Determine the correctness of the evaluation of future results.
4. We make proposals for both budget and future strategy.

Joint actions:
1. We pronounce the key points and stages of cooperation.
2. We discuss controversial issues and adjust the strategy together.

Fourth story. Keep the negotiations, remember the goal
And again: a situation of which there are hundreds. The customer organizes a tender for the selection of a company to which he will be ready to fully outsource Internet promotion. As usual, chooses from several and the best on the market.

The task initially sets for all the same. Why solutions do not converge?
Agency "Mimosa" counted 500,000, equally Yandex and Google
Agency "Penguin" 330 000, 80% Yandex, 20% Google
And the agency "Hurricane" 120 000 only on Yandex.

Not the fact that they are trying to deceive you. Someone did not understand the task, someone took into account / did not take into account seasonality, someone thought out a different strategy.
The calculations are based on the forecast data on the popularity of requests in different regions, the average cost of a click on the desired position and the average clickability, an amendment is made taking into account expert judgment. You can check the correctness of the calculations, having expert experience behind you, and even in this case, the probability of a discrepancy with the real accommodation indicators will be great.

In most cases, negotiations at this stage end. A customer representative needs to quickly finish with a choice, management requires, deadlines are tight, communication is already pretty tired. He compares the offers and makes the choice almost at random. Well, or guided by the regalia of applicants, the life of the company and other secondary criteria.
He makes a strategic mistake, which in some cases will cost time, nerves, merged budgets, lost profits.

Receiving proposals is not the end, but the beginning of negotiations. The task of the customer at this stage is not to choose the most comfortable budget proposal, but to conduct a series of negotiations in order to understand how each contractor justifies the amount, understands the task and plans the strategy. Comparing and asking questions, analyze what and how you are answered. Yes, it requires a significant investment of time and effort. If at this point you have doubts about the need for negotiations, read our articles on the choice of agency and the quality of communications.

Look for communication with the agency due level of communication, but not the cost of services convenient for you. Why? Choosing a comfortable price, you lose sight of efficiency as a goal, forget about your tasks. Many understand this in theory, but from time to time they stray from the course.

The fifth story. Trust but check
Once a new client came to us and shared his suspicions. Something is amiss in the advertising campaign launched by a third-party contractor. Ads that are on the search, they are not. But reports are regularly sent! Do not forget to issue invoices, and we pay everything on time.
We start requesting passwords — no customer access to campaigns! How so? We ask for access to the site analytics, we begin to look at the report on advertising sources. And there - an oil painting. Neither give nor take Aivazovsky's "Ninth Wave". In one week, a wave of traffic, two weeks lull, then a smaller wave, again silence. Google AdWords was a couple of months ago, for three days there was traffic with exorbitant refusal - and it disappeared. And this picture is not comparable with the amounts and regularity of the bills.

Money in an advertising campaign flows like sand through fingers. You may not know the specifics of advertising campaigns, but you know how to count money and keep track of their expenses? How? We repeat, you must have access to your personal account!

What can and should be done with access:
• compare the approved budget and the actual expenditure (take into account VAT)
• monitor the relative stability of costs (fluctuations will be, but not sharp)
• ask questions to the contractor if something is not clear

Unfortunately, our client was deceived: one budget was claimed, and in fact much smaller was spent. To prove the guilt and bring to justice in this case, if not impossible, then it is extremely difficult and certainly not in our competence.

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Why these five stories? We believe that advertisers find it interesting to look behind the scenes of an advertising agency experience in communicating with customers. It would be great if we warn someone, and to someone we ease the difficulties of choice.