I Raised the Flag of PPC Fraud
TweetA client recently contacted me because they were concerned that their former PPC bid management company overcharged them for their services and inflated bid costs. Since I’ve been managing their PPC accounts over the past 6 months, they have reduced costs by over 45%, increased their clickthrough rate by 30%, and increased their conversion rate by over 4 times – all while growing revenue by 37%. Before I took over the account, I was able to get a keyword report from the company that I stole the business from. Their report was full of over-priced and under-performing keywords. It was a classic case of a PPC management company just paying for position and not worrying about ROI. They carelessly spent 10’s of thousands of dollars of my client’s money on poor keywords. By focusing on conversion and ROI, I have made such huge improvements to their PPC accounts that my client is actually auditing their former PPC manager. They feel that the company must have been inflating bid cost and passing the cost along to them. I really hope that they don’t find fraud, because the poor bidding job they did in the past was bad enough. What’s the takeaway? Make sure you hire someone that will care about your profitability. Also make sure they are open with their information. No one should be denying you access to your own AdWords account; that’s where bid inflation can easily be hidden. Finally, the number one easiest way to avoid bid inflation is to use your own credit card and don’t let the company invoice you for the click spend. There is nothing more legit than a charge straight from Google. Happy...
Read MoreEmotional PPC Bidding
TweetEmotions tend to run high when involved with any type of bidding. Be it a fine piece of art, classic car, or a keyword. Many people cannot let go of the human emotion when they are trying to outbid the person next to them. All common sense is out of the door. They turn the bidding into a full out competition. Winning is the only option their ego will allow. This is a very well known phenomenon in the auction house and eBay setting. How many advertising professionals realize that they are partaking in the same type of competition? The advertiser is not always the one to blame. If you have the luxury of working in an organization with a big online marketing team, then perhaps the individual is responsible for her own accounts. Blame away! But, in many cases there is one person in the company who controls all PPC and online marketing. If this person was in control 100% of the time, emotional bidding could be blamed on him as well. However, in many of my experiences there is an outside influence…coming from the inside…from behind a nice desk….in the largest office in the building. Yes, it is our beloved CEO / business owner. This woman built the company from scratch and knows the product inside out. When she searches Google for a product that she sells, she wants (needs) her company to show up before all of her competitors. She’s invested too much time and energy to be “beat” by her competitors in the PPC game. It’s purely an emotional ad position competition. Fact: An ad in the number one position does not necessarily mean it’s the number one performing ad. The next step our CEO takes is walking down to the one man team that manages her company’s PPC bids. She will demand that her company is in the number one position for all of her favorite keywords. Some PPC managers will listen and do whatever their boss says and blindly raise bids; others may put up a fight. I’m telling you now, put up a fight. How to fight the CEO and not lose your job: Bidding for position is important. And testing the number one position should be part of your everyday practice. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it’s a hole in your wallet. You won’t know what works if you don’t...
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