Which type of agency should you be working with, a full-service, or specialist agency?
Did you know that in the UK alone, there are more than 25,000 marketing agencies? All of which range from full-service agencies covering a multitude of marketing disciplines, to often smaller, more niche agencies specialising in specific areas of marketing.
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that businesses find it so difficult to make a confident decision on the agency that they want to work with. On top of the sheer amount of marketing agencies out there, it’s also important for businesses to consider their needs, budget, capabilities, and in turn, whether they want to work with a full-service, or specialist agency.
What is a full-service agency?
Full-service agencies offer management across a range of marketing disciplines, from social media and content marketing, to influencer and email marketing.
What is a specialist agency?
Specialist agencies, on the other hand, focus on the management of a specific service, where they have developed and honed their expertise as an agency, and, in turn, have become experts in that particular discipline.
For example, here at Circus PPC – as you might have been able to tell by our name – we are a PPC agency, and focus on delivering expert account management for PPC alone.
Anna Wood, Client Services Manager at Circus PPC, talked about the reception from the clients we work with:
“The feedback I quite often hear from clients is that they love working with Circus because of the level of expertise our account managers are able to provide and the insights we receive from Google – a more premium standard of PPC delivery that you may not receive from full-service agencies.”
So, which kind of agency is REALLY the best? Full-service, or specialist?
One thing we know for sure about working with an agency, is that there are management fees involved, so it’s important for businesses to be well-informed and aware of their own business needs before making a decision.
Like with most things, there are pros and cons to both full-service and specialist agencies, all of which should be taken into account by businesses when deciding on who they should work with. Now, to avoid bias, let’s discuss the benefits of full-service agencies first:
Consistency
If an agency is working across more than one aspect of your marketing strategy, remaining on brand across all marketing channels and campaigns might be easier, creating multi-use content and assets that can work beneficially and simultaneously in a number of different ways.
Communication
Working with a full-service agency removes the need for you to act as the middleman across a number of different third-parties, and rather, provides you and your business with a trusted account manager to communicate effectively on behalf of the agency and all of the disciplines involved.
Naturally, the more third parties that are involved, the more complicated keeping on top of communication could become difficult and overwhelming, so having one point of contact for all marketing needs can save time, effort, and resources.
Transparency
Working across different marketing disciplines gives full-service agencies an insight across a businesses’ wider marketing strategy, so can understand how different aspects of marketing are performing and where budget can be best allocated.
Specialist agencies also possess many benefits and characteristics that can help businesses to reach their business goals and objectives:
Specialism
Like it says on the tin, specialist agencies specialise in a certain marketing discipline, which mean that they’ve honed their expertise and have a breadth of knowledge in their respective discipline – whether an SEO, PR, or PPC agency. For businesses that know exactly what they need and the results they want to work towards, a specialist agency can help look at that single area and help strategically drive businesses towards their goals.
Clarity
Specialist agencies, due to working across only one marketing discipline, have much more clarity and understanding as to where success can be attributed. If something isn’t working, it’s clearer where changes need to be made, whereas with full-service agencies, it’s much more difficult to see what the problem might be if measuring success across a range of disciplines, rather than individually.
Expertise
Specialist agencies understand what they’re good at, and won’t try to upsell you with a service that they don’t even offer. Specialising in a single discipline also means that agencies are more likely to develop relationships with other specialist agencies, who they can refer clients to if their require extra services across other disciplines.
Rick Tobin, Managing Director at Circus PPC, talked about how he navigates relationships with partner agencies:
“We’re a PPC agency, and we don’t try to do anything else. We know what we’re good at, and what we’ve spent the past 12 years understanding and gaining experience in – why would we try to do anything else? We’re also totally upfront with clients when they do ask us about potential other services, and we’ve developed plenty of relationships with trusted partners across a range of marketing disciplines that we happily refer our clients to. After all, we’d much rather know that our clients’ marketing activity is being dealt with by other agencies that we know are experts in what they do.”
What’s the verdict?
Realistically, there’s no ‘better’ type of agency, and rather, making a decision around the agency to work with when it comes to your company’s marketing strategy comes down to your own business goals, needs, and capabilities.
If you want less hands-on, full-service management that works across a range of marketing activity, then looking into a full-service agency might be the best thing for you. However, if you are more certain on the marketing needs of your business, and only require a certain aspect of marketing, seeking out a specialist agency could be the ideal solution to help you to reach your business goals and objectives.
No matter your decision, before making one, it’s important to thoroughly analyse and confirm exactly what you need, in order to best allocate budget and reap the results you want from investing in working with an agency.
Circus PPC Ranked In Prolific North’s Top Digital Agencies
Circus PPC has been ranked 33rd in Prolific North’s Top 50 Digital Agencies 2022.
After hitting a number of exciting, growth-focussed milestones last year, including their first £1m month and £10m year, the agency moved to headquarters in Leeds City Centre at the beginning of the year, showing themselves as serious competitors amongst fellow digital agencies as they sit in the heart of the Leeds digital landscape.
Founder and Managing Director, Rick Tobin, said of the ranking:
“It feels great to know that our hard work is paying off, and that we’re being recognised by our industry peers as ones to watch in the digital landscape. We’ve made, and are continuing to make, big moves in the agency this year, which we hope will allow us to replicate and exceed the success of 2021.”
Circus PPC Hosts ‘The Ultimate Games Night’ Celebrating New Leeds City Centre Location
Last week, we hosted ‘The Ultimate Games Night’ at our brand new offices in Leeds… and it was a roaring success!
Event management agency, The Secret Event Service, came to us with the idea of hosting ‘The Ultimate Games Night’, which we knew would appeal to our clients, suppliers and partners, industry friends and of course, our fantastic team.
Our new office spaces were completely transformed into games haven – with beer pong, VR provided by Bryght, activities provided by JC Events, Mario Kart, a DJ and saxophonist duo provided by Jonny Ross Music, and fantastic magician, Alex Sladman, entertaining guests throughout the night.
Guests enjoyed an open cocktail bar manned by the brilliant Oskar and LJ – both fantastic mixologists working at prestigious Leeds establishments – and delicious vegan food provided by Honest Supper Club and Doboy Donuts.
The night continued at the new Roxy Lanes venue at The Light in Leeds, where the ‘games night’ theme carried on as attendees took part in bowling, ice-free ice curling, shuffleboard, and pool.
Managing Director, Rick Tobin, said:
“We want to thank all attendees again for coming along to celebrate our new offices spaces with us – it was great to share such a fun and exciting experience with those that have all been so integral to the success of Circus, and who we’ll continue to work with as we become BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER and STRONGER.”
Here’s to more opportunities to share and celebrate our successes as we grow the agency and continue to deliver outstanding results for our clients 🚀
Meet The Team – Steph
Steph is our Brand Communications Manager and joined the Circus PPC Team back in November 2021. Read on to get to know her better…
Name: Steph
Date Started at Circus: November 2021
What first made you want to work at Circus?
The company culture massively stood out to me, and after hearing about the plans for the business and what my role would entail, I couldn’t say no to such a great opportunity at a brilliant agency.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Circus?
The people – I’ve never worked for a company where I’ve felt so valued and supported. I look forward to work every single day, which is a blessing that I’m extremely grateful for!
Who is your dream client?
I think it’d be super cool for us to work with someone like Bloom & Wild – I use them so much myself for gifts, and love what they do!
What’s your dream holiday destination?
I’d love to island-hop around the different Greek islands, but I’d also love to do the West Cost of America! Me and my partner did the East Coast back in 2019 and it was amazing!
What would your desert island meal be?
Spicy ramen with a crispy fried egg, sriracha, and lots of coriander! Oh, and some sushi to start.
Tell us something about you that might surprise people.
I’m a complete klutz. I once fell down the stairs on Christmas Day and an ambulance had to be called. And no, I wasn’t drunk!
If you could guest star on a TV show, which one would it be and why?
Naked Attraction… joking! I have a lot of comfort TV shows that I’d like to star on just to meet my favourite characters, but I’m torn between Grey’s Anatomy, Gilmore Girls and Schitt’s Creek.
Home or Office?
Both have their upsides but if I had to choose, it would be office – I like being surrounded by people and bouncing ideas around.
Morning or Evening?
Evening – I love my bed too much to be a morning person.
Dog or Cat?
It’s a close call but I love cats – they’re cute but not as hard work as dogs!
Countryside or City?
Countryside. I love working from our office in the city centre but at the weekends, you’ll find me at home or exploring a cute little countryside town.
Spender or Saver?
Neither – I’m a very happy medium I think!
Coffee or Tea?
Coffee – iced coffee on a hot summers day is elite.
Summer or Winter?
Summer… see above comment – ice-cold drinks, lighter nights, beer gardens. What’s not to love?
Circus PPC Named as Top UK B2B Company
There are many companies that have been utilising digital marketing to boost their online presence, drive sales, improve conversion rates, and more. Thanks to constantly advancing and varying technologies and tools, it has been easier to execute digital marketing techniques to reach specific business goals and objectives.
For those that don’t know where to start, we’re here to help!
We are a dedicated PPC agency based in Leeds, focused on driving growth and reducing budget wastage for clients across a range of industries.
We’ve worked with countless clients and delivered successful campaigns in the past, often exceeding goals and expectations, and helping them to drive the business growth they desired. Today, we are celebrating our hard work and dedication to what we do and are proud to announce that we’ve been recently named as a top UK B2B company by Clutch.
Clutch is a B2B ratings and reviews platform based in Washington, DC. They evaluate technology service and solutions companies based on quality of work, thought leadership, and client reviews.
This is an incredible award and we’re extremely proud of our team for giving their all and providing the best services through their PPC expertise and experience. Thank you to Clutch and their team for recognizing our talents and naming us as one of the 2022 leaders in the PPC industry.
Our Commercial Director, Ahmed Chopdat, said:
“We are thrilled to have been recognised as a top UK B2B company by Clutch! It is such a great milestone for us and we are very proud to share this with our clients and partners.”
Talk to us about your business goals and objectives today – our talented and dedicated team of PPC experts will look analyse your business and look at how we can use PPC to implement changes that lead to results!
Circus PPC celebrates £10m year!
Leeds agency, Circus PPC, have revealed that 2021, despite the challenges of the pandemic, saw business growth of 70% as they celebrate their first £10m year.
The agency, founded in 2009, racked up a number of wins throughout the year, including onboarding 13 new clients, securing a brand new office in Leeds City Centre, hitting their first £1m month, and being shortlisted as finalists in the Digiday Marketing & Advertising Awards.
Managing Director and Founder, Rick Tobin, said:
“The Circus PPC motto for last year was to be bigger, better, faster and stronger. And we exceeded all of the expectations we had in place.
The team worked incredibly hard, and it paid off – we achieved more than we anticipated, and our expertise shone through when helping our clients grow as well as onboarding some new and exciting clients.
2021 has set us up perfectly for another – what we hope to be – award-winning, record-breaking year with massive growth and lots of brand new talent.
We may be a small agency, but we’re positioning ourselves as worthy competitors in the Leeds digital landscape.”
The agency plans to move to their new office space this month, and continues their recruitment drive with hopes to double the size of the workforce by the end of 2022.
Festive PPC: is it different than ‘regular’ PPC?
As PPC experts, we’re fully aware of the peaks and troughs that can be experienced throughout the year – dependent on what’s going on, such as holidays, and what type of product/service is being advertised. In the case of Christmas, it’s important to look at festive ppc and how it might differ from ‘regular’ ppc!
Often, Christmas sees a huge uplift and improvement in account performance, due to higher shopper intent and willingness/preparedness to spend. However, this doesn’t mean that PPC experts should be sitting back and just observing how their accounts might change, but rather, implementing best practices that can help to enhance performance during these periods.
In the spirit of Christmas and festive PPC, we’ve put together our ’12 days of Pay-Per-Clickmas’ to help you to make informed decisions around your campaigns and how they run:
Beware of budget caps
We’re not sure there’s anything that could kill the festive spirit of PPC campaigns more than restrictive budget caps!
Prior to the Christmas period, ensure you’re aware of any budget restrictions and plan with these in mind. If a budget does look set to run out, create an ad rule that notifies you so you can sort as quickly as possible.
Specify your keywords
Keywords are important for PPC year-round, however, at Christmas, shopper intent changes and therefore some keywords become more, or temporarily popular. Christmas-themed keywords with high search intent around the Christmas period can be used within your campaigns to better position them and increase the chance of click-throughs during the festive season.
Back up your payment card
Ensuring that you have backup payment method on your ads account will ensure that you’re not surprised with scheduled ads not going ahead due to budgets running low or payment cards defaulting.
This will give you the peace of mind that your campaigns can run seamlessly over the Christmas period.
Make use of historical data
Previous data patterns can be a huge indicator of what your account performance could look like during similar time periods during the year. Assessing historical data and recognising the patterns and trends that appeared throughout the year and during seasonal events, can help you to better understand how your accounts work, and how to successfully improve them.
Know your audience
Understanding your audience, and how they shop, will help you to best optimise your ads and ensure that they are set up for success – no matter how your target audience decide to shop. For example, popularity in mobile shopping has skyrocketed, so ensuring that your website is optimised to suit a range of devices is essential to reach your intended audience and drive sales during the festive period.
Ensure your client has considered stock levels
It’s extremely important, when it comes to online shopping, to ensure that your client remains on top of stock levels, and informs you when something does go out of stock so that you can update your ads.
Despite it being an indication that your ads are working, having too many orders, and too little stock, could be a recipe for a Christmas disaster!
Create seasonal landing pages
PPC landing pages can work well when tweaked to align with particular events – such as Black Friday, or in this case, Christmas. Just like ads, ad copy and keywords are changed or updated to fit in with the season, it’s important that your landing pages reflect this, to remain consistent and meet the expectations of customers clicking onto your ads.
Automate your ad rules
Automation is becoming more and more of a must-have for PPC experts, especially during busy seasons that might mean that you are dealing with more than one account looking to do something a little different with their ads during the festive season.
One of biggest benefits is how much time it can save, with the potential for time spent setting up and managing campaigns to be reduced, whilst continuing to improve results and meet objectives.
Be wary of delivery times
Businesses, over the festive period, need to be aware of how delivery times could affect their customers, and PPC experts, need to know how to focus and when to focus budget to ensure that it’s best used to enhance your Christmas campaigns.
Usually, businesses have a ‘cut-off point’ for delivery, advising customers to order by a certain date in order to receive their orders before Christmas. Being aware of this way in advance can help you to plan for budget allocation prior to Christmas, and give you a head start on making sure that your Christmas campaigns are successful.
Create Christmas ad copy
Promoting your products in a way that stands out from competition can be difficult at the best of times, never mind during a period of higher shopper intent. Including chosen festive keywords within ad copy can help to position shopping and search ads in the intended way, and drive more click-throughs during the festive season.
Use a countdown
There’s already a pretty high sense of urgency when it comes to shopping throughout the festive period – we’ve all experienced the mad Friday rush and last-minute Christmas Eve gift shopping. However, using a little booster in your ad copy is a great way to remind people of said urgency, and even promote Christmas sales to drive more leads.
Target high intent phrases
This is a rule that doesn’t just work for Christmas, but year-round, but nailing down your strategy and making sure you have high intent phrases covered in your campaigns could make a lot of difference when it comes to your Christmas campaigns.
As an example, high intent keywords can be related to shopping, location, or both. Think words such as ‘buy,’ ‘get,’ ‘nearby,’ or ‘local.’ For example, during the Christmas period, a high intent phrase during the festive season might be, ‘visit santa near me.’
There you have it! Our 12 days, or festive tips, of ‘Pay-Per-Clickmas.’ Feeling festive yet?
Most of all, we want to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year – see you in 2022!
Is Black Friday essential for PPC campaigns?
For many retail and eCommerce businesses, Black Friday is one of the biggest days of the year, and has become a culturally significant event in the Western world that encourages people to spend in the weeks leading up to Christmas – and in America, following Thanksgiving.
Our PPC expert, Slava, discusses how it can affect PPC account performance.
For any business that uses PPC as a way to generate leads and improve sales, Black Friday is definitely worth utilising as a tool to improve PPC account performance and product sales.
During the Black Friday weekend, if you have a solid PPC strategy, there are plenty of positive outcomes that can benefit your account performance and sales. Due to the popularity of Black Friday weekend, people generally have a high buying intent – even non-discounted items due to already having an urge to spend. Using PPC during this time is also great for brand awareness and could lead to a surge in account performance and sales.
There are also some things to keep an eye out for and take into consideration, as despite the benefits that Black Friday might bring, it isn’t completely free of potential issues.
Some of these issues include an increase in traffic causing both your website to crash and false indications of sales due to a build-up of traffic prior to Black Friday, a higher spend, and improved account performance being temporary. However, this shouldn’t deter you from taking advantage of the huge changes and enhancements that Black Friday can add to your account performance.
In addition to being aware of the potential issues that could affect account performance, it’s also a good idea to make sure you’re aware of the expectations you should have when it comes to PPC and Black Friday. There are three big things to expect, which are:
- Spending more money than usual due to higher volume and traffic.
- Being busier and more alert in order to continuously monitor your account.
- Preparing for technical issues such as scheduled ads not going live.
Being aware of these things will put you in a better position to successfully and carefully consider the most suitable actions to best improve PPC account performance.
So, in conclusion, Black Friday can make a huge, positive difference to PPC accounts, providing businesses with a boost in sales that can help towards year-end goals and KPIs. However, the downside of a (potentially temporary) surge in account performance, is the return to a much more ‘normal’ paced account performance in the days and weeks following.
P.S. Be kind to your PPC analyst – they are under tons of pressure over this period! Even if you don’t cash as much revenue as you had expected it doesn’t mean they didn’t do a good job or didn’t work hard enough. It could be down to your competitors having better sales or higher budgets allocated for Black Friday.
P.P.S. To PPC’ers out there: Don’t forget to pause your ads after the sale is over.
In addition to Black Friday, it’s important to take into consideration Prime Day – which we looked at recently and you can find out more about here.
Client wins for Circus this November!
We’re excited to welcome onboard a number of new clients including Cheesegeek, 4×4 Tyres, and Everly Wellness. The client wins come as we begin plans to continue growth and double our workforce in 2022.
Circus Founder and MD, Rick Tobin, said:
“We’re extremely happy to be welcoming new and exciting clients to our existing and constantly growing list of businesses that are realising the potential of well-managed PPC accounts.
“Our continuous growth and success, along with our latest client wins, means that our plans to double the workforce by next year are well and truly underway, and our new city centre location will provide us with more and more opportunities to connect with new and existing clients, and continue to expand in a thriving digital city.”
Rich Simpson, Chief Operating Officer at Cheesegeek, online cheesemongers selling craft and artisan cheeses, said of the new partnership:
“Circus PPC put together a thorough proposal that really impressed. Key for us was their small team of focused PPC specialists and the number of clients each of the team worked on. It was also refreshing to see commitment behind the projections they gave us – this has given us the confidence that we can achieve big things together over the next 3 months.”
Fancy joining the Circus?
Right now, we’re looking for PPC experts to join our consistently growing and talented team, to help continue to deliver exceptional results to our clients, meeting their business objectives and driving growth along the way.
So, what might a day in the life of a Circus PPC expert look like? PPC Account Manager, Meg, talks us through a day in her working life:
9.00AM
Usually I’m already sat at my desk, with a cup of tea to hand, catching up with emails and checking over my client accounts.
10.00AM
There’s not many days that go by without a meeting either internally or with clients over Zoom – so it’s time to top up my tea and head into one of our meeting rooms.
11.00AM
One of my clients is launching a new product, so I’m setting up a new campaign. To do this, I first turn to the Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords to bid on and their associated search volumes, which I then arranged into tightly themed ad groups. After this, it’s time to begin the first draft of the ad copy!
12.30PM
Our Brand Communications Manager, Steph, pre-warned me that she’d need to me to pose for some photos for social media today, which I wouldn’t mind, but it was raining when I ran from the car to the office this morning, and my hair didn’t quite survive the journey 😣
1.00PM
Lunchtime and no more photos! If I’ve not brought my lunch in with me, I’ll most likely be heading over to The Springs – a nearby shopping centre – to grab some lunch. My go-to is either a Boots meal deal or if I fancy a treat, a pitta from Humpit!
2.00PM
I make a post-lunch cuppa and get ready to concentrate! Growth is really important to our clients, and one of the ways we assist with this is by forecasting the level of investment required to help hit business goals. For the next couple of hours, I’m preparing a 6-month projection for one of my clients so that they can plan how much of their marketing budget to allocate to PPC.
4.00PM
The final hour of the day, for me, is usually spent wrapping up anything I’ve not had time to do yet, but at the moment, I’m assisting with recruitment, so myself and Will, the PPC Operations Director, will sit down and have a catch-up around interviews for people who’ve showed an in, admin and all things Circus! Of course, none of this happens without a cup of tea to hand ☕
5.00PM
Time to head off, but not before saying bye to Teddy, the office dog AKA Rick, our MD’s dog 🐶
Are you a PPC expert looking for a new challenge?
Or enthusiastic, willing to learn, and ready to pursue a career in PPC?
The business is currently going through a period of exciting growth and we’re looking for new team members to join us on the journey. If you’re up for the challenge and fancy joining the Circus 🎪, email careers@circusppc.com and let us know why you’d be the perfect addition to our growing team.