PPC Google Adwords from Yellow Pages / Yell.com / Hibu

[hargreaves56]

Has anyone been approached by ye old yellow pages about their PPC services?

I think its set up more for companies that don't have a campaign or much interest in running their own. That we are not.

The chap from hibu said he can offer us a lower ctr and save us money on our campaign. Not sure how this is possible. I explained that our campaign is pretty good (high quality scores etc etc). He mentioned something about them being such a big customer to google that they get preferential bulk buying rates.

Could be utter rubbish but potential worth a look....?

 

[JonathanSEO]

Scam sales pitch from a failing business.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...use-board-of-dereliction-of-duty-8810343.html

 

[Mystro]

Take your brand new BMW to a plumber for a service and see what happens.

Yell are a directory, that side of the business is failing so they are reinventing themselves as web marketers

Now that above statement is what is wrong with the marketing industry and gives good SEO's and marketers a bad name too many cowboys passing themselves off and screwing your business .

and you know what because for some reason Google is promoting this directory many peoples business are going to suffer as a consequence as they do not have the experience to do a really good job

Please only use a reputable, established company with experience for your marketing.

 

[Sparetoolparts]

I had just signed on the dotted line with Yell to manage to PPC, as I simply don't have the time anymore for it. I set a budget of £300 all in. And the rep told me that everything will be smooth sailing as all the need to do is copy my existing campaigns into their system and away we go, then after 3 months he envisaged that I would be happily able to move onto their top level spending bracket £700+Vat a month.

I decided to give it a go as I liked the rep, and he went away to move my campaign across. The mistakes started soon after, not only did the Manila based PPC marketers not even attempt to copy my campaigns, they created Ads that had no resemblance to what I actually do.

I sell spare parts/accessories for Powertool, they stated I repaired powertools! this mistake cost me £45 until they were able to pause the campaign.

I then got the rep back on the phone with me and advised that this was new to him that Manila handled under £700 campaigns and the level of customer service is based on price. They did promise to refund me which is ok I guess.

But when I asked about moving this forward, he said he would personally get all my details from adwords and pass them to Manila this would fix the issue and allow us to continue. So this morning I got the new campaign and again the Manila team have not copied the text and keywords correctly. Not only that, but they are now telling me that they can't track any conversions on my site either, when I asked so how do I know if the sales are coming from PPC they said well you have cost per click data and no of clicks.

The rep has advised I either up my spend to £700+Vat a month for a 6 month contract or cancel the contract altogether as I'm still in my cooling off period.

Has anyone got any good stories about Yell?

BTW

I am thinking hard about cancelling the contract

 

[fisicx]

Cancel now. No need to even think about it.

 

[Paul Norman]

Cancel now. No need to even think about it.

This.

You have been resoundingly let down.

And for others reading this (admittedly rather resurrected) thread, listen to the overwhelming advice of those of us that are in this arena, and have been for many years.

When yell/hibu ring, put the phone down. And run.

 

[HFE Signs]

I'm afraid they are clutching at straws, their business was once very good and strong, since then, times have changed, don't wast your time or money.

 

[LockMonster]

Cancel it they are a con. I never got a penny back, if any one manages to sue them let me know I will

 

[Michael Nguyen]

You're lucky if there's a cooling off period! Cancel right now. Find out how much a cost per click is, multiply by the amount of clicks you think you need to get an enquiry, then amount of enquiry to sale, then set your monthly budget from there. Allow a PPC person his fees and you should be good to go...easier said then done.

 

[Hospitality_king]

hard to believe so many still pay to be in the little yellow paper book. Think they tried to hit us with a PPC service a while back - we said no. How can a company set emselves up as resellers of abother company - does Yell take a cut for selling Google or something?

 

[Sparetoolparts]

Cancelled the contract

The rep has since come back to me an said why don't you run the campaign with their top agency staff for a 2 x Week spell and see what they can achieve in that time and if your not happy in 2 x weeks then again cancel the contract.

Only thing that has me interested is he was touting about their software making minute by minute changes to my CPC to getting me best value for money, where as most agencies I have worked with only dediate 1-2 hours a week to my account.

Would I be mental to try this for 14 working days?

 

[fisicx]

Yes. You don't want software doing anything. You need a real person making the decisions. Tell them to go away.

 

[Hospitality_king]

Yell has software that can infiltrate people's adwords accounts ? - that scares me....

 

[Online Digital Coach]

They just use cookie cutter methods and don't take your business or objectives into account.
You need a real person running it, especially in the early stages. Once you have established what works and what doesn't (this takes a few months), then you can use SOME automation, but I'd never automate everything.

With small accounts - you really don't need minute by minute CPC changes - it really is utter rubbish and there's no such thing as bulk buyer rates from Google.

I do PPC and SEO work specifically for smaller accounts and businesses so feel free to reach out.

 

[GOPANDA]

Yell listings and connect have totally let me down. I am paying around £380 a month to be top of a directory. Awful. I was promised yell's directory would always be page one of google for my search keywords. Lies. The connect product is supposed to list your information CORRECTLY across many directory sites yell listed it wrongly on most. Yell also ruined my facebook page with horrendus edits of my existing photos. Basically keep your money in your pocket and spend it on something that will bring you results. Following all these issues They offered me around £150, less than half of what I pay them monthly

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

Don't use Yell/Hibu for anything, they changed their name for a reason.

They overprice everything and make people in our trade look like money swindling jokers. It's a pitty really, people have this huge mistrust now due to people like Yell completely sucking the market dry of money and providing little-to-no return on investments.

Also the 'Googles best rates' thing is like saying 'I have a mate who works for Google'... They'll try anything though, credit to them!

 

[makeusvisible]

It is very rare that i would commend negatively on another business. However, you would better writing your business name and phone number onto £5 notes, and releasing them from a very tall building, in the hope that someone finds one and phones you.

Yell are selling Adwords, and have absolutely no expertise, they wont monitor your analytics, they wont make changes to your website, they will setup irrelevant ads, they wont monitor keywords in an ongoing basis, and they wont setup Ad extensions correctly. All of the above is because they are cheap, and simply cant afford to put trained people onto the task.

You would be better spending £200 on Adwords and Paying someone £100 to manage it, than paying £300 to Yell.

 

[Micropix]

Hi All. I am (yet) another small business owner fooled (stupid, stupid me) by the Yell sales pitch and utterly disappointed in their PPC campaign and service. I have "suspended" my DD 3 months into the 6 month contract and am trying to reason with them to simply "walk away".
We all (now) know that Yell PPC is awful but has anyone actually successfully cancelled their contract early? I presume after suspending my DD, invoices will appear, threats, debt collectors etc. I really want to take the moral high ground and fight them all the way but this is the real World! Shall I just see out the final 3 months and chalk it up to (expensive) experience? Can I refuse to pay, go to court and use my word against theirs that their salesman mis-sold the service? Thanks!

 

[fotobydan]

Just wanted to chime in with this thread.
After starting at my new job (last February) and looking at where the marketing budget went, alot went to Yell adwords. Looking at the monthly cost and the amount of clicks, the cost per click was averaging £80 per click!!!

On the plus side, they weren't performing very well so the bill wasnt as catastrophic is it could've been. I told my boss that it had to be cancelled straight away...and it was.