[dangerface]

Op had some good tactics but an ass backwards strategy. Should have let the agency do the thing they where paid to do.

> Lesson #1: Test and trim keywords sets before hiring an agency to scale things

This isn't how agencies work. You did the keyword research and testing yourself and then paid some one else to do it again.

I work in an agency, I won't work with you if you do this, because you will get the same results and blame me.

> Lesson #2: Focus on page quality and CTR when doing paid tests

Nope don't do this. When testing ads you should focus on the ads you are testing.

Make as many as you can, test, review and reduce to the winning ads then repeat. When you have found the ads with good CTR it's time to start working on page quality (making your page relevant to the ad).

> Lesson #3: Stick to keywords that you have landing pages and content for

Again no don't do this, write ads to test your keywords build pages for the ads that work, not the other way around this isn't SEO.

> Lesson #4: Don’t assume organic conversion rate will hold true for paid

Different ads target customers at different stages of the buying journey, ads don't dump to the top of your funnel they dump to landing pages designed to convert that demographic.

> Lesson #5: Analytics will save (some of) your bacon > Lesson #6: Revisit your awareness ladder often to validate and update it

Winner winner chicken dinner, some good advice.

[dhimes]

> Lesson #1: Test and trim keywords sets before hiring an agency to scale things

This isn't how agencies work. You did the keyword research and testing yourself and then paid some one else to do it again.

Unless I misunderstand you, you misunderstood them. They are saying that they didn't test and trim first and paid a lot of money to the agency that they didn't need to. They should have started with a smaller set.

> Lesson #4: Don’t assume organic conversion rate will hold true for paid

Different ads target customers at different stages of the buying journey, ads don't dump to the top of your funnel they dump to landing pages designed to convert that demographic.

So do organic searches. The initial Google hypothesis was that if someone was searching they would be interested in buying, and showing them an ad right then would be optimal because they are interested in buying (or else they wouldn't click it).

The idea that conversion is better with organic than ad does indeed seem to falsify that hypothesis. But maybe not. There could be click-fraud involved, too, which can dramatically drop the conversion rate.

[dangerface]

The first point I was being too hard on them.

The agency will add 20% on the spend because they can get better results than the client doing keyword research, writing ads and testing them.

The client did the hard work for the agency basically made the campaign themselves and then paid the agency 20% to set it live.

They should have done it the other way around get the agency to setup the campaign and then "scale" it themselves and they would have been able to an extra 20% ad spend for nothing.

The second point you are right again. I mean more that the funnel should start at the point of contact with the end user (the ad) and the landing page should be built for that ad, they seem to have tried to do it the other way around.

They obviously know what they are doing as far as tactics, it looks like they learned it from SEO, but I think they have tried to apply an SEO strategy of content first to their ad campaign and it didn't work.

You can't change advertising channels so you need to change your content to fit the channel not the other way around.

[davedx]

Some great advice here, thanks for posting it.

Regarding this:

> ads don't dump to the top of your funnel they dump to landing pages designed to convert that demographic.

What do you mean exactly? Isn't a landing page the top of the funnel by definition?

[lmkg]

From the user's perspective, the funnel can have several stages before they even arrive at your website. E.g. becoming aware they have a problem, researching the problem in general and what approaches have been tried, deciding which type of approach is applicable them, comparing different products. An organic search is likely to be in one of the earlier phases, but a paid search campaign can target keywords indicative of later phases, as well as different value propositions.

This user-centric idea of a funnel is different than the website-centric view of the funnel where you start with a landing page and end with a lead form or purchase. The phrase "Customer Journey" usually gets bandied about to refer to the former, although it also often gets bandied about without referring to anything at all.

[danvoell]

I like this discussion more than the article. Someone should do a follow-up. We wasted $50K and then we wasted a write-up of our learnings, so you don't have to.

[getlawgdon]

Ok, but would you outline the "whys" for your corrections to approach?