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chrischart

chrischart

Free Member
Oct 11, 2012
29
2
London, UK
Just had a company call me up, claiming they can keep at the top of paid search results for 5 x search phrases for £99 per month.

Anyone used this type of services before or have anything to say about it?

We're looking into adwords and were planning on using more long tail search phrases to increase chances of hitting the right people and increasing chances of conversions. But if these guys are offering a flat fee, then does that mean you could go for super competitive search phrases?

Company in question: http://www.searchengineeasy.com/

Cheers.
 
I would hazard a guess that the £99 is a management fee. They will spend as much money as they want to keep you there, which you will have to pay for in addition to your £99. The PPC agencies with any decent sort of buying power get a commission back from google on adwords client spend, so its actually in their interest for you to burn loads of cash and keep you at the top of google.
 
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Long tail keywords tend to convert better, but you'll need to have a good amount of them. I'm not sure what this company are offering but A: The most successful AdWords campaigns have keywords regularly added (including negatives) and B: the 5 keywords you "think" are the best for your business may not necessarily do you any favours.

AdWords can take a little time to get it optimised and running well (and that process never stops) and in the early days your going to get wasted clicks whilst you get enough data to work out what works and what doesn't - always follow the data.

Don't limit yourselves to just 5 keywords: I don't quite "get" what they are offering you (or how it will actually help you where AdWords is concerned)

Ref: it been in an agencies interest to spend as much as possible for them to make more money - thats rubbish. There's no advantage for an agency to get a client to spend more money just to make a %. A client will not continue to spend if they are not profitable and nor will they spend even more money on AdWords if its not profitable. Remember, the client controls the budget and unless he's nuts, he's not going to spend more without seeing a return.
 
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DPOM said:
Ref: it been in an agencies interest to spend as much as possible for them to make more money - thats rubbish. There's no advantage for an agency to get a client to spend more money just to make a %. A client will not continue to spend if they are not profitable and nor will they spend even more money on AdWords if its not profitable. Remember, the client controls the budget and unless he's nuts, he's not going to spend more without seeing a return.
Click to expand...

We've established its not a particularly good PPC offering, and so I honestly don't see those sort of offers being about building long term relationships, rightly or wrongly to me it smacks of the same old tired cold calls about SEO and PPC that are essentially grab as much cash in as short a time as possible, lure them in with a £99 offer, do as little work as possible for as much money as possible, and then manage the client out of the company when the going gets tough and they don't deliver. The 'management fee' isn't where they make their money, of that I'm sure.

I'm not saying you or anyone elses agency does this, I'm saying that is what can and does happen with ppc, seo, facebook ads etc, so I'm just saying to the OP to go into it with his eyes firmly open and if he does go down the PPC route to maybe shop around and speak to professionals independently such as yourself to get a full and rounded picture of what he can get for his money, no jump at a cold calling offer.
 
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Of course it happens, and there are lots of models that work, your right to advise the OP to look into it too.

The % model works for us (and our clients too). The only person who chooses to spend more is the client, so its in our interest to give them good performance, if the client has a positive ROI then they will want to spend more as they will make more. if we don't deliver they will spend less or stop spending = not in our interest. Of course we, as an agency want to make money, but the only way we can is if the client CHOOSES to spend more on Adwords, and the client will only do this if we give them great returns...For us, this leads to a longterm and deep partnership that rewards the client and the agency - its a great motivator for us to deliver good results as our interests are aligned.

Im not saying any other way is wrong, theres lots of different ways it can work and of course, as you say, there's lots of ways it can be abused.

Clients should always do their due diligence and make sure they go into any relationship with their eyes wide open - so we agree on that! :D:D
 
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DPOM said:
Of course it happens, and there are lots of models that work, your right to advise the OP to look into it too.

The % model works for us (and our clients too). The only person who chooses to spend more is the client, so its in our interest to give them good performance, if the client has a positive ROI then they will want to spend more as they will make more. if we don't deliver they will spend less or stop spending = not in our interest. Of course we, as an agency want to make money, but the only way we can is if the client CHOOSES to spend more on Adwords, and the client will only do this if we give them great returns...For us, this leads to a longterm and deep partnership that rewards the client and the agency - its a great motivator for us to deliver good results as our interests are aligned.

Im not saying any other way is wrong, theres lots of different ways it can work and of course, as you say, there's lots of ways it can be abused.

Clients should always do their due diligence and make sure they go into any relationship with their eyes wide open - so we agree on that! :D:D
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Absolutely the way it should be. Who knows maybe the OP will give you a call next week! :)
 
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superdooper500 said:
Absolutely the way it should be. Who knows maybe the OP will give you a call next week! :)
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Always nice but not why I posted :) Lots of disinformation about and it annoys me as much as anyone!

Its often the same, the people I speak too that say "Adwords doesn't work etc etc" are the same ones that unfortunately got bad advice from someone that doesn't really know what they are talking about - and that often starts with a cold call ;-)
 
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chrischart said:
Just had a company call me up, claiming they can keep at the top of paid search results for 5 x search phrases for £99 per month.

Anyone used this type of services before or have anything to say about it?
Click to expand...

There's a whole bunch of threads in the archives where people talk about taking up these deals and getting ripped off.

We're looking into adwords and were planning on using more long tail search phrases to increase chances of hitting the right people and increasing chances of conversions. But if these guys are offering a flat fee, then does that mean you could go for super competitive search phrases?
Click to expand...

No. The equation is this:

What you pay = what they keep + what they spend on clicks

Where none of the numbers will be negative... and it's in their interests to make the 3rd number as small as possible.

Steve
 
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Sorry, but I don't understand the percentage approach at all. I just can't get my head around it.

A service provider that is managing your email campaigns will require time to create campaign layouts, graphics, messages then arrange to deliver, measure results, feed back and then rinse lather repeat. Sure, costs go up slightly if the list size is 100,000 vs 10,000, but not much relative to the overall cost of the project. The costs certainly don't go up 10x because the list grew 10x in size.

A service provider managing paid search campaigns has to do keyword research, competitor ad/positioning analysis, ad creation, placement, monitoring, bid tweaks, budget management, measure results, feed back, then rinse lather repeat. If you've built a campaign for widgets and an ad group for blue widgets london, done all the required homework and have the ads + variations up and running under optimised budgets...

...then Mrs Site Owner desides to double her budget, there's little justification for her ppc management costs to go up by X%.

Sure, more ppc management time = more ppc management costs. You dedicate more hours to working on someone's account, it should be reflected in costs (under a 'pay for effort' approach).

But, more ppc spend != more ppc management time (logically one does not necessarily follow the other).

You can easily dial up or down a monthly budget in a matter of seconds. If your management invoice dials up or down at the same time, then effort and monthly billing are completely unrelated.

Spend more, get more. Spend less, get less. That system I can understand. The above, I just can't come to grips with for some reason.
 
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webgeek said:
Sorry, but I don't understand the percentage approach at all. I just can't get my head around it.

A service provider that is managing your email campaigns will require time to create campaign layouts, graphics, messages then arrange to deliver, measure results, feed back and then rinse lather repeat. Sure, costs go up slightly if the list size is 100,000 vs 10,000, but not much relative to the overall cost of the project. The costs certainly don't go up 10x because the list grew 10x in size.

A service provider managing paid search campaigns has to do keyword research, competitor ad/positioning analysis, ad creation, placement, monitoring, bid tweaks, budget management, measure results, feed back, then rinse lather repeat. If you've built a campaign for widgets and an ad group for blue widgets london, done all the required homework and have the ads + variations up and running under optimised budgets...

...then Mrs Site Owner desides to double her budget, there's little justification for her ppc management costs to go up by X%.

Sure, more ppc management time = more ppc management costs. You dedicate more hours to working on someone's account, it should be reflected in costs (under a 'pay for effort' approach).

But, more ppc spend != more ppc management time (logically one does not necessarily follow the other).

You can easily dial up or down a monthly budget in a matter of seconds. If your management invoice dials up or down at the same time, then effort and monthly billing are completely unrelated.

Spend more, get more. Spend less, get less. That system I can understand. The above, I just can't come to grips with for some reason.
Click to expand...

The percentage I'm talking about is the percentage kickback from google based on total adwords sales each month. So if your agency has say 10 clients who each spend say £10,000 a month on adwords, then that's £100k a month your agency is making for google. Google will pay you back a percentage commission of this figure, any management fee is just a nominal fee on top of the monthly budget.

I'm not 100% sure that google still offer commissions as I've been out of the agency game for a while, but back in 2007 they certainly did and it proved quite profitable for those agencies with a decent amount of buying power.
 
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webgeek said:
...then Mrs Site Owner desides to double her budget, there's little justification for her ppc management costs to go up by X%.
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Say a business has a PPC account where they spend £100,000 a year and generate £150,000 in net sales, leaving them with a profit.

If they could increase that return by 1%, then that would be an extra £1,500 profit per year.

So it may well be worth having someone spend a day trying to squeeze out that 1%.

On the other hand, if someone has an account where they spend £10,000 a year, then 1% is £150 - and paying a PPC person to spend a day to generate that extra £150 is probably not worth it.

Steve
 
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directmarketingadvice said:
Say a business has a PPC account where they spend £100,000 a year and generate £150,000 in net sales, leaving them with a profit.

If they could increase that return by 1%, then that would be an extra £1,500 profit per year.

So it may well be worth having someone spend a day trying to squeeze out that 1%.

On the other hand, if someone has an account where they spend £10,000 a year, then 1% is £150 - and paying a PPC person to spend a day to generate that extra £150 is probably not worth it.

Steve
Click to expand...

Buying a day of time to make more profits - that part I get. They buy a day of your time for X and see Y returns, and decide if the difference makes sense.

But if they were spending A before that day of your time, and decided to double their ad spend... A * 2 that has nothing to do with spending a day of time. That has to do with writing Google a bigger check each month.

You could spend of extra day of time irregardless of whether Google gets double their monthly check, if the client was willing to risk it. More time spent on the account is not the same as more money spent with Google.

Sorry, but I still don't get how the size of the Google check has anything to do with how much a client is billed, and why they get penalised for wanting to ramp up a campaign by having to pay more to the ppc campaign manager.

It's like apples and goldfish, the two just don't go together.
 
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Surely it's just a case of, this is our target CPA say £20. Spend as much as you can staying within the £20 CPA - if you do that then you get 10% of overall spend.

This makes you optimise the account because you want a lower CPA, a lower CPA allows more spend.
 
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webgeek said:
But if they were spending A before that day of your time, and decided to double their ad spend... A * 2 that has nothing to do with spending a day of time. That has to do with writing Google a bigger check each month.
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Where would you be getting this extra spend from where it doesn't impact on the amount of management required?

(i.e. More ad groups etc.)

I suppose if you improve QS or CTR, you could find you're getting twice as many clicks.

But, even then, that would result in you getting more data - which would mean you could make far more marketing/optimisation decisions, which would be more time spent on PPC.

You could spend of extra day of time irregardless of whether Google gets double their monthly check, if the client was willing to risk it.
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My point is that it's far more likely to be justified if the client is spending 10x as much money on clicks.

The cost of PPC management isn't just the money you pay the manager, it's also the opportunity cost of a lack of optimisation. Most people seem to overlook this when deciding how much they're willing to pay someone to optimise their PPC.

So, IMO, a fee that's correlated with the net revenues generated by the camapign makes sense.

(However, I do think the % of spend model is flawed due to conflict of interest issues.)

Steve
 
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Thanks for the responses guys.

Still sounds very dubious to me. They're due to be calling me back later this week, so I'll be sure to hit them with a few questions.

Surely they can't offer 5 x search phrases for £99pm, when they could be highly competitive ones which could be pretty damn expensive. Unless they capped it or something... Anyway.

If anyone has any questions they'd like me to ask then feel free to let me know.

Thanks again.
 
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chrischart said:
T
Surely they can't offer 5 x search phrases for £99pm, when they could be highly competitive ones which could be pretty damn expensive. Unless they capped it or something... Anyway.
Click to expand...

They are either charging you a flat fee of £99 per month PLUS the Adwords costs. In which case you will just be throwing money to Google as there will be no optimisation for that price at all.

Or they are just going to con you out of your money.

No self respecting PPC profesional would make such an offer.
 
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So I had the call with this company.

Turns out the sales girl got a bit wrong and the £99pm was for 5 x local search phrases or something.

I was put through to a "Google Specialist" where we discussed the kind of search phrases I'd be looking at, I used "video production company" as an example. They said that they'd be able to guarantee 1st page .co.uk results for this (exact) search phrase for £179 for the first month. Knowing that this is a broad and competitive search phrase, I checked it out on the Google keyword tool where it says this exact search phrase gets 3600 monthly searches at an average CPC of £5.73.

When I asked them about a rough CTR model based on searches, they said they expect 20%/25%.

So based on a 20% CTR of the 3600 searches, I could' be looking at 720 visits. At the average CPC that means I'm getting £4125.60 worth of clicks for £179???

I expect I have a fair bit of this wrong as I admit to be a PPC noob, but I just wanted to get it all down on here.

I obviously am still very dubious about this - they also make it quite clear that the £179pm is for the first month only, I guess I should check what month 2 is, incase it's a billion pounds!

No doubt they'll call back soon. Thoughts?
 
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are yous serious? you have done the maths, and it doesn't work, you think its a scam, you have been told its a scam, and you still want thoughts.

Stop thinking, oooo this looks to good to be true, and start thinking, glad i pass that one by.
 
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Of course not.

I've maintained that it sounds dodgy. I simply wanted to update this thread on the developments from our latest conversation.

The main thing I wanted from this thread is ammunition to give them some when they call up, that's all.
 
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If anyone had a deal where they could buy clicks at a fraction of the regular rate, don't you think they'd be using it for arbitrage or similar gig, profiting the difference between regular price and 'sale' price?

Hoping to get 4 grand worth of clicks for the price of a daily Starbucks for a month?

Better chance of it happening by buying scratchcard lotto tickets...
 
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Hi guys,
New here, but have a fair amount of PPC experience agency side (and now client side). No agencies get commission (or best practice funding as it was called). This stopped years ago - have worked for large agencies spending in excess of £50 million PA on Google and got zilch...

Charging £99 to manage 5 keywords is a bit of a con; this will not include the media cost (i.e. the Google charges) but will be what they offer to manage the campaign on your behalf. Who knows, they may try and build out the campaign into 500 keywords and attempt to charge you more.

However, as everyone has guessed, you get what you pay for. £99 per month buys about 2 hours of someone's time - so you're not likely to get much...
 
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