Is paying a buy out fee for previous 'Pay Per Click' expert work normal?

[stormy3000]

We're considering having a Pay Per Click expert work on our Google AdWords (and Bing ads) campaigns. Which I've done myself to date, it's worked ok but could be much better.

On the phone the expert company we're in talks with is polite, professional and understand what our goals are.

I've no doubt they can do the work needed.

They will be charging a monthly fee (£200). With a 3 month rolling contract. i.e. every 3 months it is extended by another 3 unless we end the contract in writing.

Going by their terms, they will then remove the work completed. Or we can pay a buyout fee of (4* the monthly rate) to hold onto the work already paid for.

Is this normal practice?

I appreciate they're perhaps investing more time at the start of a campaign so need the work to go on for some time or receive the payout fee to make it worth their while.

I'm happy to pay for good work but want to ensure I'm not signing us up to undue costs later on.

 

[AllUpHere]

Seems fair enough to me. It doesn't really matter what the norm is; if what they do actually works judge the contract on its own merits. I do wonder how much time anyone would actually bother working on it for, for a couple of hundred quid per month though.

 

[Newchodge]

Effectively you must pay for a minimum of 7 months, even if you only get 3 months work?

Or pay 15 months, while getting 12 months' work?

Does this buyout fee last forever, or does it taper off after time - I see your point about additional work at the beginning of a campaign, perhaps, but surely there should be a drop off point.

Also, what if they have effectively done nothing constructive, which is why you want to cancel. Yet you still have to pay for a further 4 months?

I don't know if this is industry standard, but I would want to see some protection for yourself in that contract.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

It is their terms so for you it is take it or leave it really.

Two scenarios.

1. they are rubbish, after 3 months you say 'goodbye & take your failed campaigns with you) no cost.

2. they are descent and after time you can see not much work being done, so say 'bye bye, here a few months money.

 

[Erno Horvath]

One thing is the campaign structure & settings and another thing is the data in it.
One can easily setup a new campaign for you if you have the 'search term report' for example.

The search term report is the list of terms your ad appeared and got clicked. But I bet you won't see this either. This kind of protection seems pretty obsolete for me, however larger agencies are still doing the same.

Create a campaign is hard and if you leave too soon many hours of work will be unpaid.

I think it's a better option to pay a setup fee + monthly management, but you have full access to your campaigns and every data/setting etc in the account is yours when you leave.

 

[Tony Kelly]

I think it's a better option to pay a setup fee + monthly management, but you have full access to your campaigns and every data/setting etc in the account is yours when you leave.

What he said.

Depending on what shape your account is in currently will normally dictate how much work it will take up front to whip into shape. When that is done, it will be a constant process of tweaking and optimising to pick up small wins along the way.

It's absolutely fair for a company to ask for an up front review of your account and then come back with an initial charge and then monthly retainer fee. Potentially a higher retainer fee with no initial charge for a set period of time, but more than likely the former.

For £200 per month I would guess you may get around 4-5 hours work per month on your account from the agency. Sometimes that will be enough to optimise and make the necessary tweaks to improve and maintain performance - will vary from account to account.

Either way, you are making an investment in your account by employing their services. I don't think it should ever be on the table that they will remove any changes from your account if you decide to cancel (or pay extra to cancel - unless you have agreed to the higher retainer fee with no initial up front cost for X months and you haven't reached X months yet).

 

[stormy3000]

Thanks everyone for the replies... Lot's of good points...

I've discussed it with the agency, plus I pointed out that we'd be happy to commit to 6 months work but the buyout fee was trickier for us to say yes to. Our monthly AdWords spend is relatively small and so the size of the buyout was making us unduly wary of signing. We've agreed to 6 months work (which is what we'd hoped to go for anyway as I know these things take a time to fine tune). They've happily agreed to waive the buyout fee in return. Everyone's a winner.

Many thanks Jon

 

[fisicx]

Going by their terms, they will then remove the work completed.

This is the bit that doesn't seem right.

If they set up a campaign on your adwords account then once you have paid you can then manage it yourself.

Are they building all the landing pages to go with the adverts? If not then what exactly are you paying them for? The reason I ask is because none of the pages I can see on your site are good adwords landing page. If they are hidden then all is good.

 

[stormy3000]

Hi fisicx, they've not started work yet. They won't be creating any landing pages, though that's something they could certainly advise on later in the year. For £200 a month I wouldn't expect them to create the landing pages as well.

Initially, they'll just be tidying up my somewhat messy AdWords campaign, then rewrite ad copy and take a professional (well reasoned) approach to the ad campaign / campaigns. Eventually creating/advising on image-based ads and hopefully increasing overall click through rates.

You're correct in that once the campaign is setup on my own adwords account I could technically manage it myself (which we may well want to do eventually, depending on our working budgets which is why I questioned the buyout fee). They had terms stating you would not duplicate the content, or change the password to the account. All is ok now though as they've agreed to waive the buyout fee.

 

[fisicx]

They won't be creating any landing pages....

In which case there is no point in them doing anything at all. The landing page is on of the most crucial parts of an adwords campaign. Get this wrong and you will just burn money. A good set of landing page will boost your adwords score and more importantly get you more conversions. I tend to work with different landing pages for each adwords group - that way you can finely tune the keyword > adverts > sales pitch.

 

[stormy3000]

As I said.... 'They won't be creating any landing pages, though that's something they could certainly advise on later in the year.'

The current adwords campaign has still worked well enough to cover the cost of the adwords to date. Of course all areas of marketing and advertising need improvement and always will. No doubt landing pages will get tackled eventually. At the moment I handle the website design plus most other areas of the business. Paying someone to improve the adwords campaign approach is just an early tentative step towards sharing out the business workload which to date I've managed. Now we've got substantially busier it's time to share.

 

[webgeek]

Don't walk, run!

This type of holding your account data for ransom is utter theft, sugar coated to try and sound reasonable. It may not legally be considered theft, but you're about to be robbed.

If it's your Google account, your website, your ads, your ad groups, your campaigns, your keywords, your landing pages. What part of 'their' property comes into play? Absolutely none.

Do not give credence to this type of corporate accountnapping, akin to kidnapping, but your account is held hostage.

Find a reputable individual, reputable company, and tell these a$$hat$ not to let the door hit their backside on the way out.

Buyout clauses have no place in PPC account management, especially where there are 90 days terms to protect them from hit and run anyway.

 

[fisicx]

No doubt landing pages will get tackled eventually.

Noooooo!

Landing pages get done first. And other approach is going about it all wrong. For the company you are working with to suggest anything else demonstrates they don't know what they are talking about. Cancel the contract and talk to Steve Gibson: http://www.bothsidesoftheclick.co.uk/

And he won't hold you to ransom either. You just pay for the services you want.

 

[webgeek]

One advert, one keyword, one ad group, one landing page - gets the best cost per click possible.

Put them in a campaign you've first run branded only terms against (high CTR, low CPC) and you'll get the best cost per click imaginable.

This assumes someone has laser targeted the page to max.

There's products like SpeedPPC (I think is the name) that do this en masse, or a bit of scripting/Excel munging and the Adwords client software running on a PC - in tandem with page creation, and you've got a winner.

As fisicx points out - you have arguably better options out there, regular contributors here who have tons of people that can vouch for their abilities. Aim twice, fire once. Erm, measure twice, cut once. Erm, {insert witty cliche here}.

 

[fisicx]

People clicking on adverts already know what they want. They have got their credit card ready and want to make a purchase. It follows therefore that you need a landing page that ticks all their boxes and allows them to complete the conversion. None of the pages on your site do that. They are all sales pitches aimed at those who don't yet know what they want. This is why the company you have contracted will fail to deliver.

I'm sure you will get sufficient sales to cover the cost of the clicks and their admin fee but if they did the job properly you could get far more leads for the same amount. I site I used to look after had highly targeted landing pages and was earning £600 on a £50 adwords spend. Before we created the landing pages they were only getting around £170 for the same spend.

 

[stormy3000]

Thanks for the replies and concern on the 'landing page' front.

I contacted the PPC expert we'll be working with to double check and they've said.

'Once we have completed the initial re-structure and workload I’ll provide some feedback on landing pages, and potentially a new “squeeze/conversion” page.'

 

[webgeek]

One landing page with many different keywords in 2+ ad groups?

You're already paying too much per click, because your quality score is going to be mediocre on most of the keywords.

I'm not trying to sell you PPC services - I don't offer that. I'm just trying to help you see that the approach is sub-optimal, in case you hadn't noticed that from what others have said.

One organic landing page for a tightly grouped pattern of words (semantically related) makes sense. Do the same for PPC and you're throwing money away because someone either doesn't understand the importance of laser targeted alignment or isn't planning on investing their time on your project to get you the best deal possible (ppc prices at minimum).

 

[stormy3000]

Thanks webgeek...

I think all is in hand, they're starting the work tomorrow.

 

[Deleted member 69011]

It all sounds pretty reasonable to be honest. What you want to make sure is that manage the account as an agency so that you don't lose any access or credits for your spend from adwords.
As long as you have quite niche ad groups (i.e. quite a lot) then it should be good. Also, it sounds like you have done it before yourself so will totally know what to look for.
I hope it's a roaring success for you!

 

[Alan]

For £200 per month I would guess you may get around 4-5 hours work per month on your account from the agency.

Hmmm 1 to 2 hours if they are any good.

The problem with Adwords and monthly fees is all the work is upfront, in the first month or two, setting up the campaign, ad copy, a b testing, key word mining etc. And this can easily be 10 hours work even on a simple account, so I can understand why a low cost monthly fee has a lock in / buy out.

We started our 'digital' business as a Adwords PPC Agency and we got burnt badly by not creating lock-ins or charging a set up fee, where clients would take back the account and self manage it after 2 to 3 months.

The 'honest' way to charge is to charge a set up fee, in this case lets say £1,000 and then a maintenance fee say £100 - however most small businesses don't like the big upfront payment.

However, at these rates I would worry about quality of service as they are quite low each account specialist would need to be servicing around at least 50 clients to be a viable agency.

 

[yourmoneytree.co.uk]

I'd urge caution with the people that have made you any deal for £200 a month.

£200 wouldn't even cover the business rates the way this government is going so I think your work will most likely be outsourced to a lower wage country if you're going to get 4-5 hours a month for that.

I have my own teams running PPC campaigns and even for the very smallest, without even trying to sell those services on £200 just wouldn't cut it.

The amount of research and data analysis that needs to be done amounts to 10's of hours a month at the start. Sure maybe 6 months in you can get away with 5 hours a month at a push, but not from the beginning.

Anyone that thinks it takes 3 months to sort a campaign out is also naive. We launched a campaign in January and it's still improving - the first 3 months were the worst! Month one was terrible, because you have no quality rating etc.

As these people are selling to you though, I would say they aren't naive and they are playing the odds. They take on 10 clients, 4 leave after 3 months... 3 see some improvement and stay a bit longer and the rest see great improvement simply because their campaigns were so poor it was hard not to improve.

Ultimately then with these guys I'd say you're just a number and I would be wary of what ever work they tell you they are doing.

 

[fisicx]

The problem is that @stormy3000 was committed to contracting this company despite all the warnings that it would end in tears. The site needs a lot of work before it's even close to being ready for PPC and as others have said, £200/per month just isn't enough to cover all the research let alone the campaign management.

 

[Chris Needham]

One of the golden rules is for you to set up all of the marketing elements yourself. There is nothing stopping you setting up your own google adwords account and then giving them access. If they tell you differently they are lying.