How to Find a PPC Agency Specializing in Multi-Channel Advertising

The vetting advice is settled. Check the certifications on each platform. Read case studies from more than one channel. Ask who runs each account day to day. Then find out what the reporting looks like before anybody signs.

All of it is sound. Every piece is written up properly elsewhere, so none of it gets repeated here. Pricing too, since what a PPC agency charges has a page of its own.

Only one thing about the multi-channel version never turns up on that list.

Every Channel Has an Owner. The Space Between Them Does Not.

Hire a specialist for Google Ads. Somebody now owns that account. They read the search terms. Then they cut whatever wastes money. Something breaks on a Tuesday and you know who to phone.

Then hire a second specialist for paid social. Same arrangement. Second account.

Both do the work well. Say they do it very well indeed. Every question inside either account has a name attached to it.

Now put a different question on the table. Should this much money be going to social at all?

That one belongs to nobody.

It sits at the edge of two accounts, and an edge is nobody’s. Neither specialist was hired to answer it. They are not well placed to, either. One version of the answer is that their own account gets handed less next quarter.

What a Multi-Channel PPC Agency Actually Sells

The pitch is usually about breadth. More platforms. A wider bench. One team who can run everything.

Breadth is the easy part, though. Running a campaign on a second platform is a skill, and skills can be hired.

Look instead at what changes the moment every channel sits with one agency. One person is finally allowed to move the money.

That is the product. Not more channels. Rather somebody permitted to decide how much each gets, and expected to revisit it.

Notice what that requires. Whoever makes the call has to be indifferent about which channel wins. Two separate specialists are not positioned to be, through no fault of their own. Each one’s account is their own account.

Do You Run All These Channels Is a Useless Question

It is the question nearly everybody asks first. Yet the answer comes back yes from nearly everybody.

The answer settles nothing, because running the channels was never the difficult half.

A better question is uncomfortable to ask, which is rather why it works. Who here is permitted to recommend cutting a channel, and when did they last do it?

An agency that has done it will tell you about it. There is usually a story attached. A quarter where paid social went quiet. The money went back to search. Somebody had to explain why.

An agency that has never done it may still be excellent at all of them. Only nobody there has been doing the job you thought you were buying.

Somebody Will Say the Specialists Can Talk to Each Other

They can. Plenty do, and it often goes well.

Only look at what that conversation is. Two people, each paid to run one channel, agreeing on how to divide a budget between them.

That is a negotiation. It is not an analysis.

Now and then a specialist does recommend cutting their own channel. Those people exist, and they are worth keeping. Only that is somebody behaving well. It was never the arrangement doing it for you.

Nobody in that conversation is neutral about the outcome. Neither one’s job includes shrinking their own account. Often what comes out is the current split, defended twice.

Which is not a criticism of either specialist. It is a fact about where they are standing.

Read the Reporting, Not the Pitch

The tell sits in a document you can ask for before hiring anybody. Ask for a sample monthly report.

Then count the sections.

One section per channel is the usual shape. Each one gets its own numbers. Every number in there is true, and every one of them is about a single account.

Now hunt for the section comparing them. Not a chart with every channel on it. The paragraph recommending a move, and naming what pays for it.

Often there isn’t one.

A report built one channel at a time has no home for the between question. That holds whoever you hired, and whether the channels sit with one agency or four.

When One Channel Specialist Beats a Multi-Channel Agency

None of this makes multi-channel the better purchase. It makes it the answer to a particular question. Plenty of businesses do not have that question.

Look at where the budget goes now. Say ninety percent of the spend runs through search, and the rest is a small experiment nobody is agonizing over. The budget split is not live. Nothing is really being traded against anything.

A specialist wins there, and often wins comfortably. Depth in one channel beats coverage across four whenever three of them barely matter.

Multi-channel starts paying once the channels genuinely compete for the same money. Two real budgets. A number that could sensibly move either way. Somebody wondering, twice a year, whether the balance is right.

Where the Multi-Channel PPC Agency Argument Stops

Being allowed to move money is not the same as spending it well. An agency can hold every channel and own the split cleanly. Then write weak ads on all of them. The ordinary vetting still has to happen, which is why it is covered elsewhere.

Nor does any of this touch how the fee gets set. Fee models shape incentives, and that comparison belongs to the pricing page.

The claim here is narrower than it sounds. One decision in multi-channel advertising has no natural owner. Buying the channels together is what makes an owner possible. It does not appoint one. Starting a PPC agency raises this same custody question long before multi-channel buying enters the picture. A fuller treatment of PPC agency incentives sits elsewhere, closer to the fee question than this page. A definition of choosing a PPC agency helps before you weigh the channel ownership question at all.

Working With SEO Company To-The-TOP!

A shortlist of PPC agencies turns up here often enough, most of them promising the same list of platforms. Often the useful hour goes on a different question. Which channels are genuinely in play for this business, and who has been deciding the balance so far.

For a good many Calgary businesses the answer comes back smaller than expected. One channel is doing nearly all the work. To-The-TOP! has been doing this since 2007. A Google Ads campaign pointed properly at the right searches tends to outperform a wider spread run thinly.

Paid search and search engine optimization answer different questions, and both get run here directly. No guarantees. Client work never gets handed to a junior. The portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached.

Ask To-The-TOP! what to cut before you ask anybody what to add. How PPC agencies get priced often ties back to which channels they actually end up owning.

Common Questions About Multi-Channel PPC Agencies

Is a multi-channel PPC agency better than two specialists?

Not automatically. Two specialists frequently do better work inside their own accounts. What one agency can do is decide the balance between them, which neither specialist is positioned to do. Whether that decision is worth anything depends on how much money genuinely moves.

How do I check whether an agency really runs every channel?

Ask which channel they run least often, then when they last recommended it to somebody. A PPC agency running all of them properly will name one without hesitating. Vagueness there tends to mean the platform sits on the website and nowhere else.

Who should decide how much goes to each channel?

Somebody with no stake in the outcome, which frequently means you. Handing it to an agency is reasonable. The arrangement has to make clear they are expected to shrink a channel whenever the numbers say so.

How often should the split get reviewed?

Less often than the question suggests. Quarterly suits a small budget well enough, since a month is short enough that ordinary noise reads like a trend. The thing to avoid is a split nobody has looked at since it was set.

Does a smaller business need multi-channel advertising at all?

Often not. One channel run properly beats four run thinly. The second channel earns its place only once the first has been pushed as far as it goes. Adding channels because a proposal listed them is how a modest budget gets divided into pieces too small to work.