Do you want to work with an external Google Ads agency to manage your campaigns? To ensure that everything runs smoothly, you should prepare a comprehensive briefing that answers all important questions. This will help the agency understand your company and prevent any misunderstandings.
The following questions should be included in your agency briefing for the Google Ads campaign:
1. What is the starting situation?
First explain whether you need a completely new campaign or whether a campaign already exists that needs to be optimised or extended.
2. What is the goal of the Google Ads campaign? What are the KPIs?
A Google Ads campaign always has a goal. This can be for example a sale in an online shop or the generation of a contact request. Be as precise as possible when specifying the target and also define how you want to measure the success.
3. What are the sales targets?
Often behind Google Ads budgets there are concrete sales targets in companies. Inform your agency about these goals, so that the agency can evaluate whether the goals can be achieved in terms of potential, but also in terms of budget. It is also beneficial if you involve your Google Ads agency early in the annual marketing plan creation phase.
4. How much may a conversion (e.g. acquisition, purchase, registration, etc.) with Google Ads cost at most?
It is also extremely important to inform the Google Ads agency about the maximum cost per conversion (purchase, download, contact request, etc.). This enables the agency to evaluate which campaign strategy is best suited for your company to achieve your goal. But it does not always have to be a fixed value. For example, you are welcome to specify that a maximum of 20% of the order value may be invested as advertising costs for an online order.
5. Which website should be advertised with the Google Ads campaign? Which products?
The website itself also plays a major role in Google Ads campaigns. User guidance and offer are decisive for the success of the campaign. A good Google Ads agency will analyse whether the website has the prerequisites for a successful campaign or whether any adaptations need to be made.
You should also communicate the specific products you want to advertise in your Google Ads briefing, as the agency can then align the strategy with these.
6 Which products are particularly important to you?
For the strategy development, but also for the later optimisation of a Google Ads campaign, it is important that the agency knows the products or services that are particularly important to you, whether for economic reasons (e.g. high profit margin) or strategic reasons (e.g. company wants to grow in a segment).
7. Who is the target group?
It is not always possible for an external consultant to see exactly what the target group looks like. Therefore you should provide your agency with as much information as possible about the target group. This way the agency will later have an ideal basis for designing the campaign and can also exclude unwanted target groups.
8. In which region do you want to advertise with Google Ads?
For companies with a strong local focus (e.g. courier service, pizza service, etc.) it makes little sense to run a national Google Ads campaign. On the other hand, for a management consultancy or an industrial company, a worldwide campaign may be necessary. Therefore define the geographical areas in which you want to advertise in the Google Ads briefing.
9. What tasks should the agency fulfil, what tasks do you take on?
In the briefing you should clearly describe to your Google Ads agency which tasks are to be taken over by the agency and which tasks you or other external partners are to take on. Frequent tasks within the scope of a Google Ads campaign are for example campaign setup, account optimisation, reporting, web analysis, copywriting of ads, carrying out translations, creation of PowerPoint presentations with the most important insights.
10. How often and in what form do you need Google Ads reporting?
When it comes to reporting, you should tell your agency how often and in what form you need a report, as this has a great influence on the effort involved. If, for example, you need a detailed campaign evaluation including a PowerPoint presentation on a weekly basis, this is far more time-consuming than having a rough summary sent to you once a month.
11. What support is needed?
The higher the importance of Google Ads to a company, the higher the level of support required from the Google Ads agency. Clarify with your agency in advance how long the maximum response time to requests should be and how often you probably need to send requests.
12. Are there special offers that need to be updated regularly?
If you are an online retailer, you may have a dynamic pricing strategy for your products with regularly changing offers. Offers are also important in Google Ads campaigns, as they can help you gain a competitive edge. Therefore, you should inform the agency about how often and to what extent there are new offers, so that they can calculate the effort required to update the ads.
13 What is the budget available for Google Ads?
A Google Ads campaign generally pursues an economic goal and must therefore be economical in itself. In order for an agency to provide you with the best possible support, the agency must also know the budget framework. For example, if you invest a 5-digit amount per month, the effort that has to be invested in the campaign is many times higher than if you only invest 100 € per month.
14 Which search queries / topics do you not want to appear in?
As a company you should also think about whether there are topics or search queries where you explicitly do not want to appear and describe these in the briefing. For a premium manufacturer of sports cars, for example, it can be important not to appear in the “family van” environment. On the other hand, a manufacturer of high-quality watches may not want to appear in the search query “cheap sports watch”.
15. What should be considered when writing the ads?
Companies often have guidelines for external communication which must be observed in advertising. You should definitely pass these on to the Google Ads agency in the briefing so that there are no misunderstandings and your Google Ads agency aligns with your overall communication approach.
16. Who are the competitors?
Also give your agency information about your competitors. This helps the agency understand the market better and develop more targeted strategies. In addition to the competitors you know, there will certainly be other market participants you have not yet identified, but who market products and services via Google Ads. A good agency will inform you about this as part of a campaign or even beforehand.
17. When should the collaboration start?
Last but not least you should also tell your agency when the collaboration and campaign will start.
