What if I told you that you could have infinite website visitors a month for just £500? How about guaranteed position 1 ads for your five top keywords? How about promising XX amount of visitors per month who would buy from you? I may even tell you that I’ll handle all payments to Google on your behalf so you never have to worry about any setup fees or hassle. What if I said “Sign this agreement today and you can forget all about any of the hassle with Adwords” – I will simply manage the account for you and leave you free to make money / sell your products / provide services to the THOUSANDS of visitors you’ll be getting?
It would probably sound too good to be true. Because it would be a bunch of baloney.
Desperate to Make the Sale
I’ve blogged about this subject before but it’s one that irks me so much that I will blog about it again: Be very careful what you wish for and sign up to, as I hear PPC-related horror stories every single day.
As Google Partners we manage a huge number of Google Adwords accounts across a great many industries, some of which are brand new Adwords Accounts, others are existing accounts that we take over but the stories are always the same. All kinds of promises and outrageous claims are made before a client signs up with an agency for their PPC Management Services… Guarantees about positions of ads, visitor numbers, conversions etc: Stats that simply cannot be predicted without actually running the campaign.
Once a client is signed up, all those promises are forgotten, accounts are often neglected and no straight answers are given. The bottom line should always be a return of investment but none of that matters when you’ve committed to 6 months or a year of payment for what essentially becomes a non-service. It’s seems so morally wrong that it’s not feasible but it’s a common practice for many businesses.
The Bigger They Are, The Harder… It is to Believe.
You might expect this from a little cowboy outfit or one man band who is not actually a qualified Google Partner but we’ve seen it recently from a VERY large UK-based company.
A recent new client of ours was working with an Adwords management company who are well known in the industry. The client in question was not happy with her results and decided to look elsewhere… And found us. We helped guide her through a list of issues before we began working on the account, a few highlights follow:
- The ‘large unnamed company’ had been taking payments for well over a year but stopped working on the account after 6 months.
- They had used an umbrella account rather than the Google’s My Client Centre and set her up a campaign meaning the data could not be relinquished to the client after the contract expired – They should use an MCC account but they did not.
- They’d take a set fee and told the client they were paying for the ads from that fee – The ads had been paused so they were effectively pocketing the cash.
- When confronted by the client they decided to present them with legal documentation requesting payment of £900 to close the contract and an NDA demanding the client never leave a bad review or comment on the company online or the client would be liable. (YES. REALLY.)
After numerous phone calls, letters and chasing around, the Client eventually got a refund for the work she had paid for and not received but to say the client jumped through hoops to get to this point would be an understatement. We put her in touch with a Google Account manager who was incredibly helpful.
We were quite frankly flabbergasted. Thanks to the efforts of the client they got some justice and closure but it’s unlikely to always be the case. But why are companies operating like this how do these events escalate to this point?
Find out… In part 2 of this blog!
