PPC – No Guarantees

There are lots of companies out there cold calling businesses at the moment offering packages for £100 per month to manage PPC for them. What people don’t realise is that in the majority of cases they bid against keyphrases that have low volume search traffic. This means that your budget doesn’t get used up each month and the company managing this for you pocket the difference. They will also often tie you into long term contracts that are then very difficult to get out of. I have come across cases where the management company is earning up to £80 per month whilst only £20 is actually being spent on PPC. Make sure you understand where your money is going and ask for access to your reporting so you can keep an eye on how it is going.

So how do they get away with it?

Well they prey on business owners who do not have the relevant knowledge about how PPC works or how to work out which keyphrases to go after, or indeed whether PPC will work for their business in the first place. If you are currently caught up in one of these schemes, push them to keep you informed of what is being spent where and keep pushing for improved results. One of the ways to measure it’s success is through your website analytics, this should tell you where traffic has come to your website as a result of PPC. If you do not have analytics on your website, then simply find out how everyone that calls/emails you found out about your business, keep a record of this and at the end of every month you should have enough information to decide if the investment is giving you a good return.