Thats right, I didnt miswrite the title. We were emailed today from a customer stating we were the worst PPC company in the world, and the campaigns we had set up were rubbish and didnt work.
By the end of the phone call the customer was praising us, and apologised profusely for the tone of the email they had sent earlier in the day.
Let me explain…
Rogue PPC Companies
We know for a FACT that MANY PPC companies act in a dishonest manner and steal money from their clients, they do this in a couple of ways;
- Get you more enquiries by simply upping ad spend – which in turn ups their management fee! You can get a LOT more out of a PPC campaign if its managed properly, without the need for simply increasing your spend. This is a FACT.
- Hiding behind custom interfaces – one major player in the UK uses a “custom front end” for adwords, that shows their clients what the PPC company want them to see. What it doesnt show is that only 85% of the spend is actually spent, the other 15% plus the 10% management fee on top is pocketed by the agency. This is a FACT.
- Not giving you any access at all – One of the largest PPC agencies in the UK, who are also one of the largest “Google partners” in the UK, give their clients no access to any form of interface to view progress. They simply claim stats in a monthly report. This is because they steal HUGE sums of money from the “budget” aspect of what their clients pay them, and also still charge a minimum of a 10% management fee. This is a FACT.
PPC Company Anxiety
When I received the email from my customer, I knew instantly the reasons for them sending it. They have been messed about, lied to and treated like garbage, by every digital agency they have worked with in the past. They’ve been promised the world, taken for a ride and left feeling robbed blind, many, many times. The reason for this is due to how technical our industry is, and how easy it is to baffle with BS.
We call this “Digital Agency Anxiety” or in this case “PPC Company Anxiety” as the clients finds themself not trusting any agency, assume they are all lying and are all out to steal their money.
So Why Did We Get The Email?
Due to the paranoid frame of mind the client was in, they assumed we were out to screw them over so have been frantically searching for themselves and not finding any ads. To them, that looks like we havent done what we said we would do, and that confirms their paranoid suspicions, so their knee-jerk reaction was to email us in a panic.
I calmly replied, addressing each point in their email and made them aware of a setting we had enabled in Google Ads, which ensures only the best ads show in the exact locations we tell them to show. EG if the ads were for PPC Company Nottingham, we would not show that ad at all if someone searched for it in Chesterfield as it’s not the best ad for the job. We would make a PPC Company Chesterfield ad, and target that in the Chesterfield postcodes ONLY.
Due to their previous campaigns not being set up in their best interest (see point 1 above) they’ve never had an account set up as intricately as the ones we have done for them, when I made them aware of this setting I could hear them calm down instantly on the phone. When I reminded him he had spent £20k in 3 months on CLICKS (Pay Per Click?) and could see that himself in the Google Adwords login we gave him, he completely relaxed, realised we knew what we were doing and apologised for the tone of the earlier emails.
Don’t fall victim to the rogue PPC Companies that operate around the world, if they try and sell you their services and you see things like “Custom interface” etc etc, then question why you cant see the Google Ads interface directly.
If you would like a free PPC campaign review then our PPC Specialists are on hand to help, just fill out the form below.
Leave a Reply