Page Hog !

[GEL Transport]

Just had a call from Page Hog ...


£200 for top resluts evryday ! is this too good to be true ?

Has anyone used this service ?


Good Bad or ugly ?

Sorry for all the questions just would like to know if this is a good deal !

Any comments welcome


Regards

 

[traxor]

Well, you could do what they're doing yourself, it's likely they're using pay-per click advertising through Google, which is called Google Adwords and can be found here: http://adwords.google.com/.

It's not too good to be true, they're just doing some which anyone can do. If they talk about modifying your website to do this, then that's where it's wrong, what they're doing doesn't require any modification for your site, and if they insist, then they're either using black hat methods or just making it look like they're doing something, because true search engine marketing won't allow you to improve your ranking immediately, it could take over a year.

 

[fisicx]

Ask how they intent to do this. I'll bet my mum's teeth that they geolocate. This means only people searching with 75ft of your front door will ever see your adverts.

Tell them you want to be the #1 advert for online-poker in the the whole of the UK 24/7 for £200 month.

Note that on the website you can't click on the offers to see the details but down at the bottom of the page in very faint writing they more or less tell you they are restricting your choice of keywords.

 

[GEL Transport]

So not very good then ?

 

[traxor]

Haha, I wouldn't say so. If you do want to set up something like what they're asking, then let me know and I'll give you a hand doing it, it's really quite simple, throw me an e-mail to [email protected] or send me a private message and I'll take you through it. You're guarunteed to get it for cheaper and you can set your own budgets, keywords etc (as many as you want!!).

 

[fisicx]

Very few of these 'all in for a dollar' companies are any good. The only way they make money is by setting up a bunch of cheap adverts. You as the client will see them but anyone more than a few miles away won't. They will also insist on only letting you have 'bendy pipe fitter in lower badger road smalltown' as your keywords.

Consider this. If you pay £200/month at 10p per impression that's about 70 per day which sounds good. But since only 2 people and a dog do that search each month you have paid £200 for 3 clicks, £70 per impression.

 

[GEL Transport]

Right ok ....

So whats the best way to get more clicks ?

 

[Pagehog]

Hello All,

My name is Jon. I am tasked with monitoring forums on behalf of Pagehog to ensure that we are on hand to answer queries.

Brand awareness is something we are very focused on and therefore we do like to try and take every opportunity to generate positive feedback.

Firstly in reference to the above comment relating to search radius marketing. We would not ever target a saturated market like Poker or Financial Services. We know how costly this can be, and whilst our expertise in using the Adwords system will help us ensure we will generate improved results from a clients budget, they can never fall within the standard packages that we offer to small to medium enterprises, quite simply, the budgets on those packages would not be sufficient to utilise our expertise.

Google Adwords however is one element of our product range. We also offer genuine White Hat optimisation techniques. We are able to do this very cheaply as what works for a plumber in Kent works for a plumber in Brighton therefore we can spread the cost accross our client base. Plus it doesn't take a genius to work out that once somebodies optimisation is in place for a key phrase then we can stop spending money on adwords and therefore actually make more money whilst our client benefits from unlimited enquiries from a 24 hour listing. In essence at this stage they are paying us to keep them on page 1 as opposed to get them there.

We are aware of the companies who are using search radius to misrepresent their product, however we do not class ourselves amongst them as we offer the same products and services that have been available since Google began, we simply do it on a larger scale and use internal systems to automate the process which allows us to offer budget solutions.

We do not discuss the details of our optimisation techniques unless somebody is paying us money... why would we?

So to summarise, we are offering to professionally manage a Google Adwords campaign whilst also optimising the key phrases which are proving the most lucrative. Our average client spends £194 per month with us and our retention rate stands at 84% which in the current climate we are very proud of.

WE CAN NOT HOWEVER AND DO NOT CLAIM THAT WE WILL BE ABLE TO PROVIDE A 24/7 LISTING ON PAGE 1 OF GOOGLE WHILST WE ARE USING SPONSORED LINKS. This is of course impossible.

Furthermore we also offer Direct Debit to our clients putting them in complete control and every client has their own individual Google campaign which allows us to provide completely automated reporting verified by Google Analytics.

We welcome your feedback but ask that you please do not make assumptions that we are like any other Google scams that you may have come accross,

Regards,

Jon

 

[fisicx]

Do you want more clicks or more sales?

More clicks is easy, just set up your own PPC. More sales means building an informative and interesting website that people want to visit.

If the site is optimised for PPC (rather than organic searches) then you can easily get a high percentage of conversions. A recent client picks up about £100 worth of business for every £5 spent.

 

[Pagehog]

Do you want more clicks or more sales?

More clicks is easy, just set up your own PPC. More sales means building an informative and interesting website that people want to visit.

If the site is optimised for PPC (rather than organic searches) then you can easily get a high percentage of conversions. A recent client picks up about £100 worth of business for every £5 spent.

The above is absolutely right, clicks mean nothing if it is not converting to business.

We conduct a 1 week review with all our clients to see how the campaign is going and more importantly is the phone ringing. We make recommendations on how people can improve their site to capture more leads and often build free websites for our clients to help improve their results.

One of the most alarming scams we've seen (and I won't mention company names) is a marketing company who claim they can not tell their clients what click through rate they are getting on their google campaign.

 

[fisicx]

Hi Jon (welcome to UKBF),

If you are legit then that's a refreshing change. There are far too many scammers fleecing small business with PPC deals. A good friend employed some to do just this and they set up completely daft campaigns that weren't targeted and every ad went straight to the homepage.

One question though, do you geotarget the adverts? I counldn't tell from your post if you did or not.

 

[Pagehog]

Hi Jon (welcome to UKBF),

If you are legit then that's a refreshing change. There are far too many scammers fleecing small business with PPC deals. A good friend employed some to do just this and they set up completely daft campaigns that weren't targeted and every ad went straight to the homepage.

One question though, do you geotarget the adverts? I counldn't tell from your post if you did or not.

Thanks for the welcome and comments.

In response to Geo-targeting, we only use Geo-targeting as a tool to improve a campaign, every campaign is different. If we had a plumber in Cardiff who is a one man band then we would consider Geotargeting a 20 miles radius of CF1 to ensure they are not wasting budget on enquiries they do not want. We use all the tools adwords has to offer to try and get the most out of every campaign. The initial campaign would be based on experience of working with other clients within that industry, then the 1 week review allows us an opportunity to tweak it. One thing I will clarify is that we would not use Geotargeting wihout a client being aware of what we are doing, we are totally transparent (or at least we try to be) which is the benefit of an automated system to ensure clients are prompted to contact us should their campaign not be be performing to their expectations at any time.

I suppose the bottom line is that a client whether on a £99 per month package or a £2000 per month package will not continue using us unless they are seeing sufficient returns to justify it. An example for one client is a catering company who spend £99 per month with us, they have had a free website and quote on average £1500 per week of business from our campaign, that's a great success story as it was a brand new business. Our only concern is that they appear to be making more money than we are lol

 

[david64]

It seems PageHog are being more up front than a lot of similar companies that have been discussed on here.

My advice though would be if you want PPC services to use Steve Gibbons. He's been recommended many times here at UKBF and relies on his reputation rather than cold calling to get work. You'd probably get a better service with him. He seems to be more of a strategist than a simple PPC manager.

 

[GEL Transport]

Hi Jon

Ok so what can you do for me if i were to test the water and spen £100 per month. We are currently using a flash site and want to keep it !


Regards

 

[Pagehog]

Hello Again,

Sorry for the delay in responding.

For £99 per month we offer a standard package which normally includes 5 key phrases (provided that you are not looking for a national campaign) and website optimisation around those key phrases.

If I am being honest, we only offer that product in order to be able to compete with the previously mention Google Scams that we are constantly having to quote against. The issue is that we want to educate people but at the same time so many people are driven by price that if we don't offer something similar we end up losing business.

If your site is in Flash then the optimisation at this stage to be honest would be all but pointless. Google can not read any of the text on your flash site so there is very little for them to find relevance in.
If you want to keep the site as it is then I would recomend your focus your attentions on Adwords at this stage and we can talk about optimisation once your start seeing results.

I will need to speak with you by phone to establish exactly what kind of business you want and I can then make recommendations as to how best to promote your business however from experience if you want to test it for a month then I would recommend spending £149 on a bespoke campaign and spreading the budget over other online opportunities as opposed to just Google.

From our point of you, in light of this forum we will be making an extra effort to ensure we prove ourselves in any case,

Kind Regards,

Jon Paton

 

[eventdomain]

Well, you could do what they're doing yourself, it's likely they're using pay-per click advertising through Google, which is called Google Adwords and can be found here: http://adwords.google.com/.

It's not too good to be true, they're just doing some which anyone can do. If they talk about modifying your website to do this, then that's where it's wrong, what they're doing doesn't require any modification for your site, and if they insist, then they're either using black hat methods or just making it look like they're doing something, because true search engine marketing won't allow you to improve your ranking immediately, it could take over a year.

Exactly - I really hate PPC service companies. Its such an easy thing to do yourself

 

[Pagehog]

Exactly - I really hate PPC service companies. Its such an easy thing to do yourself

I appreciate your comments but surely that depends on your background doesn't it?

 

[david64]

I appreciate your comments but surely that depends on your background doesn't it?

And more than that. I knew a guy who knew little of computers, but he just setup his AdWords, put in £2K and has been having a good return for over a year. On the other hand other people make stupid mistakes.

 

[Pagehog]

And more than that. I knew a guy who knew little of computers, but he just setup his AdWords, put in £2K and has been having a good return for over a year. On the other hand other people make stupid mistakes.

Exactly, my background is not IT it is Sales and Marketing (hope it isn't too obvious). The people who deal with our adwords campaigns are marketing professionals as opposed to (and I say this with nothing but affection) IT nerds.

An example of a common mistake is that people become obsessed with their ranking. This is massively important when looking to saturate something when you have a large budget but on the whole the majority of people have limited budgets and can benefit more from having a consultant who can think outside the box to source cheaper clicks and therefore get a better return from their budget.

Google make 9 cents every time somebody makes a search, there are 92 millions searches a day. I wonder how many of those 9 cents are spent in error because they offer their service direct to the end user who doesn't fully understand how to run a campaign. However I must say that Google do offer all the online training and support in the world to try and encourage people to become experts I just doubt many MD's or 1 man bands have the time.

 

[eventdomain]

I appreciate your comments but surely that depends on your background doesn't it?

No, it doesn't! All that's needed is a basic knowledge of what people will type into a search engine to find a certain business. And that requires specific industry knowledge, which the company doing such a campaign is an expert in anyway.

No special PPC knowledge is needed.

Oh and for any PPC Management, the managing agent would need access to the adwords account, and I don't advise letting anyone get hold of that! This isn't rocket science folks - it's so simple what they do and the consequences involved.

Never, ever, ever give anyone authorisation to any username/password protected account. Once accessed they can get your debit/credit card details, personal contact details - everything. Don't do it, no matter how hypnotic the sales pitch!

 

[debbidoo]

Exactly - I really hate PPC service companies. Its such an easy thing to do yourself

Hate is a bit of a strong word, isn't it? And such a sweeping generalisation too...

Perhaps you find PPC easy to do yourself. Fair enough - others may not. You could just as easily say that fixing cars is easy to do, so you hate mechanics. Or cleaning your house is easy to do, so you hate cleaners. Or gardening is easy, so you hate professional gardeners. And so on.

The point about taking on a PPC company - or a marketer, or a website designer, or a virtual assistant, or any B2B service provider - is that doing so saves you the bother of (a) having to learn how to perform their service yourself, as proficiently as the service provider can (and in most of the examples I've quoted, it's YEARS of training and experience that enables service providers to offer their services professionally), and (b) finding enough time in your already busy working day to carry out these tasks yourself.

Yes, to a lot of people, setting up a PPC campaign and managing it is quite easy. But if you can't spare the time to experiment with your campaign, test different keywords/landing pages/ad copy etc for best results, check through your reports to find potential negative keywords, and all the other things that go into running a PPC campaign so that it doesn't leech money out of your business and provide no return, then it makes absolute sense to outsource to a professional.


Jon, welcome to UKBF

 

[debbidoo]

No, it doesn't! All that's needed is a basic knowledge of what people will type into a search engine to find a certain business. And that requires specific industry knowledge, which the company doing such a campaign is an expert in anyway.

No special PPC knowledge is needed.

Oh and for any PPC Management, the managing agent would need access to the adwords account, and I don't advise letting anyone get hold of that! This isn't rocket science folks - it's so simple what they do and the consequences involved.

Never, ever, ever give anyone authorisation to any username/password protected account. Once accessed they can get your debit/credit card details, personal contact details - everything. Don't do it, no matter how hypnotic the sales pitch!

You're so wrong, on so many levels, I don't even know where to start...

Professional PPC managers don't necessarily need to get into your Google account. We tend to have our own separate management area, the "Google Client Center", where we can submit a request to manage a client's account. When we submit this request, a message is sent to the client, who can choose whether or not to allow us access. We can't access their card details - all we see is the last four digits.

"All that's needed is a basic knowledge of what people will type into a search engine to find a certain business" - that's a good place to start, obviously

But that's where a lot of people make mistakes, and spend far more than they need to on their AdWords campaigns.

You're completely overlooking things like keyphrase match types - for example, the exact phrase "books about dogs" which will only show your ad in searches for that exact phrase, compared to the broad phrase "books about dogs", which will show your ad if someone searches for "science fiction books" or "about how many people are there in the world?" or "how many dogs does the Queen have?"

Or, knowing that you can write different ads for different groups of keywords, making them more relevant and keeping the cost per click down. Or, knowing how to make the key phrase come up in bold in the ad copy.

These are all things that you can learn by studying Google's AdWords learning centre, but if you're busy running your business, you may not have the time.

Doing things is easy. Doing them well - not necessarily

 

[eventdomain]

You could just as easily say that fixing cars is easy to do, so you hate mechanics. Or cleaning your house is easy to do, so you hate cleaners. Or gardening is easy, so you hate professional gardeners. And so on.

I think the above is completely different, mainly as fixing cars requires a body of knowledge, and is one of the more skilled trades. PPC can be learnt in a few hours, and there's no need for keyphrases that much as most will type in keywords eg: Car Rental in Bedfordshire etc etc. And don't forget that there's limited space of 35 characters with Adwords, so keyphrases aren't the best use of available advert space.

Writing basic adwords ads give good results and it's more about choosing a half-decent headline, so the ads get clicked on. I've seen some ads at No 3 position, get higher clicks than ones at No1, and it didn't cost me £800 in 'consultancy' fees either. Oh, dang, but I made a mistake with my ad copy omg, what am I going to do now, better call in a consultant, oh hang on, but I can alter ads myself in 10 minutes using PPC, so looks like I don't need a consultant does it..... and I can keep doing exactly that until I get it perfect. Nice.

When we submit this request, a message is sent to the client, who can choose whether or not to allow us access.

yeah, like anyone in their right mind will do that - dream on.

You're completely overlooking things like keyphrase match types - for example, the exact phrase "books about dogs" which will only show your ad in searches for that exact phrase, compared to the broad phrase "books about dogs", which will show your ad if someone searches for "science fiction books"

Oh please, look - your undermining the basic premise of simplicity of PPC. You're telling me that most people that run businesses don't know the basics of how to write simple, basic adverts. But they do, anyone can type in a basic advert using adwords and its teachable in about 5 mins flat, bcos if you can use a search engine then you can write a keyword advert - I'm sorry but your making this out to be more difficult than it actually is.

I'm not some marketing expert, but I threw together a very basic advert and it got me 89 clickthroughs within a few days. So that's how I know!
It's not so much about each advert, more to do with putting more adverts out there. 3 okayish adverts will do better than a single okayish advert.

You find out what works and then roll it out on a larger scale. Or use more little adverts. Now what is so difficult about that.

(b) finding enough time in your already busy working day to carry out these tasks yourself.

Come on, noone's that busy that can't keep tabs on their own basic advertising. And if they ARE keeping watch, then they must have a fairly basic knowledge in the first place, bcos there's no way I'd just let even the most professional company run riot with my money - without knowing something about what's involved and their 'profession'. This way, I can control things more, have some idea whether what their suggesting will work or not, and thus pull out if things go pear shaped!

I wouldn't simply trust anyone based on a damn cold-call

 

[Christiane]

Come on, noone's that busy that can't keep tabs on their own basic advertising.

Some of us ARE. If you run a successful business, you simply have to delegate these things. There's only 4 of us at the moment in my company and I have to outsource my accounts, my payroll, design of all my adverts, etc.
I will take a look at the adwords report about once a week, and that's usually in the evening or at weekends, I have no time to work on it at all at the moment. You may want to sound clever but I'd rather concentrate on the sales, growing the company, and leave some things to people who do it for a living and more importantly know what they're doing.

Now coming back to Page Hog, I did get a phone call last week too. Unfortunately they were talking to a numpty (me) and confused me no ends. No offence intended BTW. I get such phone calls 2 or 3 times a month and tend to fob them off. I'd much rather find someone through referrals or UKBF.

 

[QVA - Emma]

I'm not some marketing expert, but I threw together a very basic advert and it got me 89 clickthroughs within a few days. So that's how I know!
It's not so much about each advert, more to do with putting more adverts out there. 3 okayish adverts will do better than a single okayish advert.

Sorry I am wondering how 89 click throughs in a couple of days makes your PPC campaign a success? Did those visitors convert?

Anyone can get 89 clicks in a couple of days - but what a waste of money!

The "scatter and hope" stragegy is not one anyone should recommend.

IMO you have a huge trust issue going on - why I don't know and don't wish to know - but to tar every company that offers PPC services with the same brush is quite frankly irresponsible to say the least. Why would anyone want to throw their money away getting it wrong by doing it for themselves.

Fact of the matter is you usally get a contract when signing up with these companies and above all that should be gone through with a fine toothed comb and questions should be asked if there is anything you are unhappy with.

Now if you are doing it for yourself indeed start small and look at your ads to check they are converting - do not assume that the more clicks you get the more successful your ad campaign is!

You seem to forget that not everyone has an interest in the internet and how internet marketing works therefore there is a need for others to do the work for them. My ex boss can just about manage e-mail and yet runs a successful online recruitment company and hospitality management company - how? Because he placed trust in others, if it did not work so be it you move on and try something else.

Anyway that's my tuppence

Emma

 

[eventdomain]

Sorry I am wondering how 89 click throughs in a couple of days makes your PPC campaign a success? Did those visitors convert?

None of your business.

Anyone can get 89 clicks in a couple of days - but what a waste of money!

Well, considering most advertising IS untargeted, then yes, most of it will fail. I try and target as much as possible, so my results are probably better than most.

I believe I only spent about £15 in total, and it was worth it to test the advert, which is what everyone should be doing.

The "scatter and hope" strategy is not one anyone should recommend.

Sounds like your someone with experience of that. Fortunately I don't care to dabble in blunderbuss marketing....

IMO you have a huge trust issue going on - why I don't know and don't wish to know - but to tar every company that offers PPC services with the same brush is quite frankly irresponsible to say the least. Why would anyone want to throw their money away getting it wrong by doing it for themselves.

That's fine and if you feel safe about handing over consultancy fees, then you go right ahead. It aint my money.

Whos the more foolish, the fool or the fool that follows him

Fact of the matter is you usually get a contract when signing up with these companies and above all that should be gone through with a fine toothed comb and questions should be asked if there is anything you are unhappy with.

Contracts don't mean much once a company has your money Darling. If it was all hunkydory, then there wouldn't be so many complaints on forums or Trading Standards depts would there.

Now if you are doing it for yourself indeed start small and look at your ads to check they are converting - do not assume that the more clicks you get the more successful your ad campaign is!

Oh I don't hehe Conversion is the only thing that matters

You seem to forget that not everyone has an interest in the internet and how internet marketing works therefore there is a need for others to do the work for them. My ex boss can just about manage e-mail and yet runs a successful online recruitment company and hospitality management company - how? Because he placed trust in others, if it did not work so be it you move on and try something else.

Trust yes hmmmm, just take the loss right, well, lets hope the loss is small then eh ....... hehehe. But with consultancy fees, I assure you the loss is never small!!!

 

[fisicx]

For £99 per month we offer a standard package which normally includes 5 key phrases (provided that you are not looking for a national campaign) and website optimisation around those key phrases.

This is the bit that concerns me. It indicates that you are geolocating so the homepage of your site is a bit disingenuous as it doesn't make this clear.

And if you are including optimisation for this price then I'm astounded, how on earth to you make a profit? Just getting basics in place could cost you more than £99 in wages.

 

[Pagehog]

STOP THE PRESS!

I've been converted and have a new business idea.

I am going to consult large corporations on how to save huge sums of money.

It has come to light that most large businesses with an internet presence employ in house marketing experts to run their internet marketing. It seems that some pay in excess of £60,000 per year on staff who's sole function is to ensure that their internet marketing strategy delivers.

However now I realise that this is something the MD should be doing for 5 minutes in the morning whilst he eats his cornflakes. I wonder how much he'll pay me for this business consultancy.

Sorry to be sarcastic but come on, let's just remember what this was originally about; a gentlemen entered the forum making a query to see if a company could legitimately help him generate more results. All those in this industry believe they can, this is not an opportunity to throw mud at other legitimate businesses who are trying to provide a professional service for their clients.

It seems that we see so many people at crossed purposes. We criticize people who do outbound telesales yet in the same breath people take leads from call centre's.

In this climate everybody is fighting to spend as little as possible targeted to generate the best possible return and I am sorry but the answer is not blanket advertising.

Thanks very much everybody for all your comments,

Regards,

Jon

 

[traxor]

Of course they can justify the £99, and I don't think they do SEO, it's mostly SEM, so the £99 per month would include a few keyphrases and probably a £30 PPC.

Thus, 66% of what they earn can help pay for business costs.

 

[Pagehog]

Of course they can justify the £99, and I don't think they do SEO, it's mostly SEM, so the £99 per month would include a few keyphrases and probably a £30 PPC.

Thus, 66% of what they earn can help pay for business costs.

I'm sorry but regardless of what you may think we do do SEO, however we will admit that when this is done for free the process is done on mass i.e. we perform generic tasks each month accross our entire client base. It does work but takes a little longer than if somebody employs us purely for SEO services for which we charge an up front fee and ongoing management.
By targeting the clients we choose we can spread the workload which is why we have a call centre rather than waiting for people to call us.

Thanks for letting me know what margin we work to, I was under the impression we work to a much lower margin than this but that's fantastic news for when my pay review comes due next September

Can I assume everybody else on this form works to a 66% margin too or is that only the people that you choose to comment on?

With regards the Geotargeting comment, I refer to my previous response. We will use Geotargeting (either through Googles system or imbedded in the keyphrase) if it suits that particular campaign.

An example of this would be, a mortgage broker based in Essex only wants business in Essex, odds are they are working to a budget and there are no shortage of enquiries online for mortgages. This client is best using targeted key phrases surrounding what he does in his area NOT a National campaign. It all comes down to how best to spend a clients budget to get them the enquiries they want. There are no set rules as this Forum demonstrates every business is different. WE WILL NOT CLAIM we can do a National campaign for a mortgage broker for £99 per month, it would be a waste of their money competing with the likes of HBOS and First Direct, to quote Sean Connery "Never bringing a knife to a gun fight."

We work well with SMEs as we are set up to be able to offer a budget service where freelancers and larger companies can not justify the time to do SEO and SEM. Economies of scale dictate that we can due to the fact that we have in house developers who can automate the majority of our processes through our operating systems.

 

[traxor]

There's no need to be sarcastic, I wasn't being offensive and I most certainly wasn't having a dig at your margins, a 66% margin would be fantastic news, especially on a business forum, as your prices are still reasonable in comparison to many other SEM/SEO agencies, and the way you're operating is reasonable, for £99 it's obvious you'll just do some small PPC and the SEO would be minimal.

Just because some people are being negative towards your company doesn't mean that we all are, sure the first post was a bit pessimistic from me, but I listened to your feedback and you're clearly offering a great service to individuals who can't perform the task themselves.

 

[Pagehog]

Thanks Traxor and apologies if my sarcasm was a bit offensive.

I am perhaps a bit oversensitive as we spend a lot of time on these types of forums and there are so many companies out there who are taking advantage of people.

We found one company (a plumber) dealing with a so called SEM provider who was paying £99 per month for the key phrases, Leacky Pipes Doncaster, Pipe Hole Doncaster, Find me a plumber Doncaster, The Best Plumber in Doncaster and Doncaster Leacky Pipes. He had paid a £20 set up fee even though he didn't have his own campaign (everything was being run off one campaign), we calculated the cost of his campaign could not exceed £5 per month as nobody searches for those phrases. But that is not the worst bit, the phrases were exact match phrases meaning he would not show for anything but the exact wording of the phrases and because his campaign is grouped with others, if somebody else on his campaign for example a decorater in Sheffield gets a high volume of clicks he actually comes off Page 1 even though he hasn't had any clicks or enquiries.

You may ask how was he sold this? The answer is because he was promised position 1 at the top of the page. The worst thing is that our retentions team are constantly fighting to keep business on board when they are pitched by these other companies because all they see is that position 1 is better.

Now a 95% margin would be fantastic if the client was getting business from it, sadly those kind of campaigns are destined to fail, they rely on client lathargy for retention and when the client tries to cancel ignore it and continue to take payments on their credit card until it reaches £750 so they can not be persued through small claims court. Once they have a sufficiently bad reputation they just rebrand.

We are in this industry to make money too but not to the detrement of our clients or our reputation.

Sorry again Traxor if seemed a bit confrontational.

 

[traxor]

That's fine, I was just a little shocked by your response when I was sticking up for you. I understand why you're oversensitive, this is your livelihood and in a sense you love your company and dislike slander towards it - it's natural.

Wish you all the best for your company, oh and should you need a website, let me know... haha

 

[eventdomain]

It has come to light that most large businesses with an internet presence employ in house marketing experts to run their internet marketing. It seems that some pay in excess of £60,000 per year on staff who's sole function is to ensure that their internet marketing strategy delivers.

Yes they do, and what does that tell us. It tells us that they save 20k each month on SEO consultancy fees, and in any case, if they hired a £60k marketing expert, they probably have a few SEO experts on the payroll too, so no need to outsource when its cheaper to do it all in-house.

However now I realise that this is something the MD should be doing for 5 minutes in the morning whilst he eats his cornflakes. I wonder how much he'll pay me for this business consultancy.

Oh dear

Sorry to be sarcastic but come on, let's just remember what this was originally about; a gentlemen entered the forum making a query to see if a company could legitimately help him generate more results. All those in this industry believe they can, this is not an opportunity to throw mud at other legitimate businesses who are trying to provide a professional service for their clients.

hmmm, well, if you only knew of the rediculous quotes and bs we've had from 'consultants', you'd realise that mud often sticks. Here's a story about an SEO consultant:

Some bloke rang us, and claimed amazing SEO skill, like it was some incredible science that nobody else could possibly understand. So he launches into this pitch about how we're not ranking for such and such keywords (when we clearly were), so bs aside, I asked a simple question, "how much traffic can this SEO work deliver per month" - to which he replied "oh about 4000 visitors" (in return for £800 in fees) - I tried not to laugh, when I said we were getting 10,000 plus for free and more from advertising!..... He couldn't say much to that since the height of his skill could only amount to 4000

It seems that we see so many people at crossed purposes. We criticize people who do outbound telesales yet in the same breath people take leads from call centre's.

That kind of activity is for companies with cash to blow.

In this climate everybody is fighting to spend as little as possible targeted to generate the best possible return and I am sorry but the answer is not blanket advertising.

Advertising works extremely well, and has been around for decades before the word web got invented! If it's on-target then it works, if not done well, then it will fail. I bet there are thousands out there that spend like crazy and its all on untargeted advertising - I see it every day on General portals!

If your advert/link is placed on an untargeted website, then the traffic is no good, no matter how much it sends - it won't convert.

 

[cmcp]

Good to see Pagehog on defending its service.

 

[Pagehog]

Yes they do, and what does that tell us. It tells us that they save 20k each month on SEO consultancy fees, and in any case, if they hired a £60k marketing expert, they probably have a few SEO experts on the payroll too, so no need to outsource when its cheaper to do it all in-house.

Honestly, I do not have a clue what you are saying here. Where on earth does £20,000 per month come from?
The point I was making is that people need experts to get the most from marketing online and optimizing their website which it seems you now agree with although you appear to think this costs £20,000 per month?

hmmm, well, if you only knew of the rediculous quotes and bs we've had from 'consultants', you'd realise that mud often sticks. Here's a story about an SEO consultant:

Some bloke rang us, and claimed amazing SEO skill, like it was some incredible science that nobody else could possibly understand. So he launches into this pitch about how we're not ranking for such and such keywords (when we clearly were), so bs aside, I asked a simple question, "how much traffic can this SEO work deliver per month" - to which he replied "oh about 4000 visitors" (in return for £800 in fees) - I tried not to laugh, when I said we were getting 10,000 plus for free and more from advertising!..... He couldn't say much to that since the height of his skill could only amount to 4000

So you are obviously doing a good job yourself, well done. I am pleased for you that you feel that you are self sufficient where marketing is concerned and do not feel the need to out source. I can assure you, you are in the minority and I have no doubt that this will help to ensure you are a complete success.
Please do not however assume that everybody else is in the same position, they are not, nor are they in a position to employ somebody (and how would they know whether they were doing a good job or not) to put down an entire industry because you don't need their services is preposterous not to mention unfair on the people who are trying to get a realistic gauge as to whether people like us can improve their business.

That kind of activity is for companies with cash to blow.

Or for companies that do not have the expertise or resource to start their own call centre and need to take pro active sales action.

Advertising works extremely well, and has been around for decades before the word web got invented! If it's on-target then it works, if not done well, then it will fail. I bet there are thousands out there that spend like crazy and its all on untargeted advertising - I see it every day on General portals!

If your advert/link is placed on an un-targeted website, then the traffic is no good, no matter how much it sends - it won't convert.

I agree 100% portals and directories are cheap blanket advertising and very rarely perform.
I also agree that the internet is not the only way to advertise your business.
However you can not dispute it has revolutionised the way companies advertise on the simple basis that done right you can put yourself in front of your client when he wants your services.
Your argument for un-targeted and targeted advertising is the same as ours and what we have been defending, the only difference is we help people achieve it and you are expert enough to do it in house yourself.

I don't disagree with anything you say, it just seems that you want to try and put a negative spin on it toward companies like us when in fact we all want the same thing. Do you not agree that this is a fair comment?

P.S. as I am new to the forum I may well have messed up the quotes bit here so please let me off.

 

[eventdomain]

I don't disagree with anything you say, it just seems that you want to try and put a negative spin on it toward companies like us when in fact we all want the same thing. Do you not agree that this is a fair comment?

No its unfair, bcos these companies are asking outrageous fees for simple SEO work that any decent web designer will do for free as part of the cost for web design project. And they claim their work can somehow fool the search engines or guarantee xxxx position - usually it's No1, or a first page ranking..

I've seen and heard the pitches eg: "Now this is a keyword and it does this" or "Your keywords can't be found - and your company will crumble without our help"

not a great representation for the seo industry is it, and you wonder why people complain. Adwords and PPC is so so simple eg: the more you bid, the higher your position - just say what you do and sell that a bit, it's not rocket science. Most of it is a numbers game anyway, sure the advert needs to work on a couple of keywords, but keyword stuffing or using keywords that nobody will type in, just won't work.

 

[cmcp]

Event Domain I think you're way off the mark with your opinons, to the point they've turned from ignorant to outright dumb.

I've nothing new to add without repeating Debbidoo over and over.

Hate is a bit of a strong word, isn't it? And such a sweeping generalisation too...

Perhaps you find PPC easy to do yourself. Fair enough - others may not. You could just as easily say that fixing cars is easy to do, so you hate mechanics. Or cleaning your house is easy to do, so you hate cleaners. Or gardening is easy, so you hate professional gardeners. And so on.

The point about taking on a PPC company - or a marketer, or a website designer, or a virtual assistant, or any B2B service provider - is that doing so saves you the bother of (a) having to learn how to perform their service yourself, as proficiently as the service provider can (and in most of the examples I've quoted, it's YEARS of training and experience that enables service providers to offer their services professionally), and (b) finding enough time in your already busy working day to carry out these tasks yourself.

Yes, to a lot of people, setting up a PPC campaign and managing it is quite easy. But if you can't spare the time to experiment with your campaign, test different keywords/landing pages/ad copy etc for best results, check through your reports to find potential negative keywords, and all the other things that go into running a PPC campaign so that it doesn't leech money out of your business and provide no return, then it makes absolute sense to outsource to a professional.


Jon, welcome to UKBF

 

[debbidoo]

Adwords and PPC is so so simple eg: the more you bid, the higher your position - just say what you do and sell that a bit, it's not rocket science.

True, you can bid more for a higher position, if you really want to. That works. But an experienced PPC practitioner will work to reduce the cost you pay for each click - sometimes drastically - without negatively affecting the ad's position on the page. So instead of paying £5 for one click (for very competitive keywords), you could be paying £5 for 10 clicks, or 50, or 100. Doesn't that make good commercial sense?

For example, during November/December last year I had a total AdWords budget of £45 for my Christmas website, and still managed to bring in over 1500 visitors through that campaign - on an average CPC of 3p. If I'd gone with your methods, I'd have exhausted my budget within a couple of weeks. Christmas related keywords are typically expensive in Nov/Dec, but that wasn't a barrier in this case because I've spent time learning how to use AdWords effectively.

I appreciate you've had bad experiences with consultants, and rightly, that is going to put you off. But you can't tar all SEOs/PPC practitioners with the same brush - it's just silly

 

[Pagehog]

Event Domain,

All I can say is (and I say this with the greatest of respect), if you are doing anything for any business, whether your own or anybody else's, anywhere in the known Universe that involves spending money with Google Adwords for the love of God please pass it to Debbydee.

She can save you an absolute fortune!!!

Oh and give us a bell if your optimisation techniques fail.

I came on originally to just ensure that Pagehog didn't get tarred with the same brush as other optimisation companies or any of the numerous Google scams out there as we do have a call centre and are aware this can leave us open to critisism and assumption.

I thank you all for your positive feedback (and that includes you EventDomain it hasn't been all bad) and look forwards to future debates,

Let's see how long I can resist putting my twopennethworth back in,

Kind Regards,

Jon