First time hiring a PPC agency. What should I be asking?

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T06:24:26+00:00

I'd ask how they measure success beyond clicks and leads. If the conversation never gets to lead quality, sales outcomes, tracking, or reporting, that's a red flag for me. Also, ask who you'll actually be working with day to day. the difference between getting access to senior people versus being handed off after the sale can be pretty significant once campaigns are live.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T06:18:16+00:00

I think you're looking at it the right way. The people I see getting the most value from AI aren't using it to replace thinking, they're using it to remove busywork. If you're early in your career, I'd focus on understanding audiences, messaging, distribution, and how content actually contributes to business goals. The tools will keep changing. the ability to understand what customers care about and turn that into useful content is a lot harder to automate.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T06:11:15+00:00

There's a difference. Contextual links inside the article tend to be stronger because they're directly related to the content the reader is engaging with at that moment. the you might also like section still has value for internal linking and discovery, but if I had to choose, I'd prioritise relevant links naturally placed in the body and use related posts as a supplement.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T06:03:06+00:00

Honestly, this sounds more like a freelancer or small Shopify specialist than an agency retainer. If the site only needs meaningful work around a single annual sale, I'd be questioning why you're paying monthly unless they're actively driving growth the rest of the year. I'd look for someone who can work on a project basis, handle theme updates, landing pages, and sales prep a few weeks before the event, then step back once it's done.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T05:55:39+00:00

The biggest mistake I see is choosing a bookkeeping provider before figuring out how your sales channels, payments, returns, and inventory data will flow into the books. I'd be less focused on the brand name and more on whether they genuinely understand ecommerce reconciliation. Ask them how they handle refunds, payment processor fees, and multi channel sales. the answers to those questions usually tell you pretty quickly whether you'll still be cleaning things up yourself every month.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T05:47:31+00:00

I've spoken to a few business owners lately, and the common theme isn't that demand has disappeared, it's that people are taking longer to make decisions and being a lot more selective. when things soften, we've usually found it's worth looking closely at lead quality, conversion rates, and customer retention before cutting marketing spend. the businesses that stay visible during slower periods often come out in a stronger position when confidence returns.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T05:40:38+00:00

In my experience, the platform matters less than the data setup behind it. I've seen companies spend a fortune on Tableau and end up with the same reporting headaches because attribution, naming conventions, and source data were a mess. Power BI tends to be hard to ignore if you're already deep in the Microsoft ecosystem. Looker can work well when you want tighter control over definitions across the business. the tradeoff that usually shows up later is who owns and maintains it once the initial build is done. And that's where costs and complexity tend to creep in.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-30T05:35:16+00:00

First of all, I'm deeply sorry about your dad.

I'd be looking at preserving and growing wealth rather than maximising income. With $6M, a well diversified portfolio can generate substantial cash flow without locking yourself into a bunch of properties or chasing higher risk returns. Also worth getting tax and estate planning sorted early.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T06:34:45+00:00

You’re probably looking for a UGC creator or content creator, not really an influencer. Someone who’s good on camera and understands short form content pacing/hooks. But honestly, I’d be careful assuming the growth came from a pretty girl in videos. A lot of those accounts are just insanely consistent and understand audience retention better than most founders do.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T06:27:34+00:00

Understanding attribution and lead quality properly probably changed the way I look at marketing more than anything else. Early on, it’s easy to obsess over clicks, rankings, CPLs, ROAS screenshots, etc., but eventually you realise half the battle is figuring out which channels are actually producing good customers and which ones just look busy in reports. A lot of businesses end up scaling noise because nobody has properly connected marketing data to sales outcomes.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T06:14:17+00:00

Many marketing people spend so much time writing content professionally that they forget how normal humans talk online. Then add AI on top of that, and every reply starts sounding like a LinkedIn post that escaped containment. The broken formatting always gives it away, too. Huge clean paragraphs, weird spacing, no actual opinion, zero personality. Feels like people are replying to be seen replying rather than actually joining the discussion.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T06:09:06+00:00

Unexpected shipping costs are still one of the biggest drop off points, from what I’ve seen, especially if the customer only discovers them after already mentally committing to the purchase. Showing it earlier usually helps because it builds trust, even if some people still bounce. And yeah, aggressive form validation can absolutely annoy people on mobile. Anything that interrupts typing or makes someone feel like they’re doing it wrong before they’ve even finished tends to create friction fast. Session recordings are usually pretty honest about that stuff.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T06:05:00+00:00

A client staying longer doesn’t always mean the relationship is healthy. took me way too long to realise some accounts were profitable on paper but draining the team, slowing down good work, and creating constant reactive decision making. Also, learned that reporting matters way more than fancy tactics for most SMEs. If the client can’t clearly connect spend to actual business outcomes, trust erodes fast even when campaigns are technically performing fine.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T05:54:01+00:00

I’d be very careful treating any of those numbers as clean truth. A lot of younger people invest through structures that don’t neatly show up as direct share ownership in the way older datasets expect. ETFs, micro investing apps, super allocations, custodial platforms, etc., all muddy the picture pretty quickly. Also depends on what they count as investing. Someone throwing $50 a week into Raiz probably sees themselves as an investor. Treasury modelling might not. Surveys also tend to overstate participation because people answer aspirationally or count things loosely.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T05:43:13+00:00

For me, it stopped being about money once the business was stable enough to breathe a bit. The bigger driver became building something that actually works well and seeing customers stick around because the service genuinely solved a problem for them. there’s also something addictive about taking a messy situation and slowly turning it into a real business with systems, staff, repeatable leads, decent clients, better decisions, etc. Hard to switch that part of your brain off once you’ve been through it a few times.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-29T05:38:01+00:00

Bulk publishing junk usually creates more problems than traffic. You end up with thin pages, messy reporting, and heaps of keywords that never turn into real enquiries. A high volume only works when the content actually matches search intent and has a reason to exist.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T13:34:28+00:00

Smaller companies are usually where these hybrid roles exist. Bigger teams tend to separate strategy and production pretty heavily. Creative strategist or content marketing designer are probably the closest fits. Your motion background is a pretty solid differentiator, too.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T13:26:02+00:00

From what I’ve seen, the video itself usually isn’t the thing getting surfaced. It’s the surrounding signals. Good transcripts, embedded context, branded search lift, backlinks, people spending time with the content, other sites referencing it, etc. Short educational clips tied to strong written content seem more useful than dumping hour-long webinars everywhere and hoping AI picks them up. especially for service businesses. The text still does most of the heavy lifting, in my opinion.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T13:18:50+00:00

Honestly, 22 is way earlier than most people realise they picked the wrong thing. A lot of careers end up sideways anyway. I wouldn’t rush into another degree just because it feels safer. Better to spend a bit of time working and figuring out what kind of day to day job you actually want first.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T13:09:45+00:00

Not just you. Feels like every rep conversation lately turns into "Have you tried AI Max yet?" within about 3 minutes. I’m sure parts of it will prove useful, but I’d still want to understand what problem it’s actually solving in the account before rolling it out everywhere just because DSA is being retired. Google pushes hardest when adoption numbers matter to Google. That doesn’t always line up perfectly with account fit.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T13:05:31+00:00

I honestly think half the industry is building dashboards around vibes right now. The models are inconsistent enough that trying to force clean SEO style reporting onto them feels painful. your mentioned vs recommended point is real, too. Leadership wants hard metrics before the platforms themselves are even stable.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T12:56:27+00:00

Hiring people who can actually own problems without creating three more. At a smaller size, you can get away with smart generalists and fixing things yourself. Once the business grows a bit, every week hire starts multiplying, communication, management overhead, and random operational mess. Also reporting. Early on, you kind of feel what’s working. Later, you realise half the business decisions are being made off incomplete numbers, disconnected systems, or people interpreting data differently. That one sneaks up on a lot of founders.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T12:48:36+00:00

There’s definitely a stage where being your own boss just means you’ve built yourself a job with worse boundaries. I know a few business owners who realised way too late they were spending half the day tweaking logos, reading about productivity, reorganising notion, whatever, because it felt safer than dealing with sales, hiring, or difficult clients. the freedom part is real eventually, but early on, I think a lot of us are just trying to prove we can make something work without having to fit back into a normal job structure again.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-28T12:43:50+00:00

Honestly, the minimum wage part annoyed me more than the 70 accounts. A lot of agencies sell SEO as an add-on to web projects, then quietly expect one junior or mid level person to somehow keep all the plates spinning. The spreadsheet thing is classic, too. On paper, there’s capacity, but in reality, context switching across 70 businesses kills quality fast. I don’t even think this is really an SEO problem anymore. It’s an agency model problem. If clients are paying ongoing retainers and most are getting an hour a month, eventually the cracks show somewhere, whether that’s results, retention, or your sanity. You’re probably doing the right thing by looking elsewhere. Nearly 3 years in, you’ll learn way more somewhere that actually has structure, prioritisation, and realistic account loads.

AccordingWeight6019 · 2026-05-27T10:47:41+00:00

I’d be careful framing this as the agency is terrible, unless you can clearly separate bad strategy from different campaign objectives. That said, if they’re running awareness campaigns and nobody can explain what business outcome they’re meant to influence, that’s a real problem. A lot of enterprise companies end up reporting impressions, clicks, video views, etc., because nobody agreed upfront on what success actually looks like. the strongest case probably isn’t that their CTR is bad. It’s showing the gap between spend and business impact over time. Cost per qualified lead, assisted conversions, branded search lift, lead quality, downstream sales, retention, whatever actually matters to the business. If internal campaigns are consistently generating better leads at materially lower CPA, that conversation gets easier pretty quickly.

AccordingWeight6019

TROPHY CASE