There are two type of Adwords Certification.

-          An Individual Adwords certification.

-          A company Adwords Certification.

Google Adwords Certification Exam Format.

-          Passing Score 85 %.

-          No of Questions 113.

-          No Negative Marking.

-          Exam Completion time 2 hours and once you start the exam you will not be able to pause the exam

and come back later.

-          You can retake the exam once per 7 days, for a $ 50 fee each time.

-          Providing the tester with a review button, which you can click to skip a question and come back to

it at the end of the exam (time permitting).

Here are some tips to pass the Exam.

-          Get familiar with the all the topic covered inAdwordsLearningCenter.

-          Understand in depth the difference in content and search targeting.

-          Understand where to find the information and reports within the different tabs.

-          Have a solid grasp on the latest Adwords Editor.

-          Read the Adwords Editorial guidelines.

-          There is little check box at the top right of the exam page which allow you to mark a question for

later review.  Make sure to check it, otherwise you will never make it back the beginning questions

before times runs out.

-          Focus more on small detail of Google Adwords rather than broad scale ideas.

Focus on My Client center uses and benefits.

Suppose a client is in a contract with an agency to deliver around 5000 leads a month at $10 each. In a given month, the client asks for 10000 leads.

Assuming that the agency is delivering the cheapest possible leads, the cost of every additional lead will lead to the average cost of acquisition for the agency to increase. This will lead to a squeeze of margins, to the extent where the marginal profit per lead is negative.

Have a look at the table below.

Case 1

As the volume increases, the agency profits increases, then stays constant and then actually falls. What if the client has asked for as many leads as possible for $10?

From the example above, the agency would try to hover around its profit maximization point and send only between 7000 and 9000 leads. This is dissonance.

What if the client recognizes this problem and then lets the agency charge a higher cost per lead as volume increases. Have a look at the table below.

Case 2

*Agency’s cost to generate a lead

+Agency’s selling price for a lead

In the above table, the agency is happy with the increasing profits.

Below is a summary of lead cost for the client and the agency in the two cases:

In this case, the objectives are aligned. The client is happy with more leads and the agency with more profits.

The trick here would be to decide on the slabs and the cost of a lead paid by the client.

Usually in negotiations, the level of transparency is very low, because of which arriving at a well aligned cost ladder like the one above will be difficult.

How about a solution which goes like this?

Have 100% transparency in the cost of a lead and pay a fixed commission per lead which is between 3-6% depending upon spend levels (the higher the spend, lower the commission). All incentives are aligned – the client spends more when the agency is able to keep costs low and deliver higher volumes and the agency has to work hard to ensure the same.

This is what we propose to our clients in situations like this.

There are a few billing models in play for paid marketing. You have a commission percentage of the media spend, a fixed Cost per click, fixed cost per booking, fixed percentage of revenue generated are some of the popular ones.

We would like to put in our two bits about these models. Only those models will work long term which align the interests of the agency with that of the client. In quite a few cases, we think that the client interests can be easily compromised. In a tenancy or fixed CPC contracts, such cases are more common than in others.

No matter which model, the client should have an idea of the cost at a unit level. For example, a marketing manager should be able to ask – what is the cost of generating a valid customer lead from the internet using agency A doing activity X and compare it with agency B doing activity Y. Such a question will cut across pricing models and the answer will compare the financial effectiveness of the agencies and/or the activities.

The agency should strive for such a question to be answered. It does work in our interest. If an agency is favourably placed in terms of financial effectiveness, the onus suddenly is with the client to try and drive more and more business through this agency. For example, if a marketing manager finds out that an agency is able to generate leads for him at a cost which his 30% lower than his next best channel, he would ensure that he spends as much as possible with the agency before allocating budgets to other channels.

This is the sweet spot we aim for in all of us client engagements.