In my humble experience, any type of PPC platform, but particularly Adwords, is a complete and utter fraud and disservice. I am radically floored that no intervention has been conspired by Government on what is evident to be a scheme that bilks millions from consumers. Rarely, does a client/customer of Adwords see a return on investment. And throw in a 3% click-fraud issue, combined with zero human support from Google, what you have is a class action suit waiting to happen. I will never use PPC, nor will I recommend it. Would love to hear other radical views. Thanks!
Actually, there's thousands of companies and agencies who manage hundreds of thousands of companies who get good ROI form Adwords - I'd class myself in the former. True, not every business model can work on Adwords- but that's the same as every other form of advertising where you have to spend first to find out. Added to this is the fact that most people fail through no fault of Google's, but because their campaigns just aren't good enough - this can be solved by hiring a PPC manager or learning more yourself
they give u what u pay for. I don't see why u call it a fraud. if ur aren't getting a return on ur investment, u need to consider some other advertising method but, that doesn't mean adwords is to blame. Click fraud does exist and every one needs to factor that in when they bid for keywords (and I'm sure people do) but, as u mentioned at 3% its hardly a major issue.
"Hardly a major issue"? That's a ridiculous statement. How many clients spend $5000 - $15,000 a month or more on PPC? Do the math. Sure, if you're Madoff I guess 3% isn't relevant to you, because it isn't your money. But what fool do you know doesn't care about losing their own money? Exactly. @JHardy_WV, that's exactly the crutch isn't it? If you want to be effective on Adwords, you have to hire an outside company to manage your assets. Now, not only do you have to have a marketing budget set aside for your campaigns, but you also have to pay someone to manage them! Compound the issue with morons who drive click-through rates through the roof because they think "the more money I dump into this, the more money I spend, the greater the yield/results/performance". So as the rates get driven up, so does the payout for the management company. Case and point: It's a fraudulent system.
@JHardy_WV would you mind sharing some ROI %'s with me? Be fair... I don't want your highest yield customer, I want to see %'s on everyday run-of-the-mill customers looking to truly get a leg up on their competition. I'm truly curious (and skeptical) as to a plausible ROI.
As I said I am sure people factor in click fraud. If a click is worth 50 cents to u, u can always play 3% less (48.5 cents). Its a demand based system. If another person is willing to pay more to display his ad, his ad is one that should be shown. Whats fraudulent about it ?
I don't know of any advertising channel that guarantees sales. The channel puts the ad out, people may or may not like the ad, they may or may not like the product. And as for needing an outside company - well, if you want to book a TV ad you'll do it through a media planning agency - likewise press and magazines - if you're doing more than just a couple of local titles, you'll need a media agency to book it for you.
I'm not agency based anymore - I wanted to really 'get my teeth' into a campaign properly so I went client-side a year ago. Currently in the travel sector. Last month's ROI was 201.99% (and that's in October, so pretty good really). In all honesty you don't need to hire an agency - either get someone in house - in which case you'll have to budget for salary, or learn it yourself and put the hours in. Personally I'd recommend an agency until you can afford to get someone in house - then you'll do really well as you'll have someone dedicated to just your account and can respond more quickly to new tools (e.g. Google contacted us last week - they are using us a case study into how to use the new Bid Simulator tool as we've been VERY successful with it). Onto this point though : "Now, not only do you have to have a marketing budget set aside for your campaigns, but you also have to pay someone to manage them!" - this is the same as EVERY other form of advertising, you either learn the best ways to do it yourself, or you pay someone to do it for you - the only difference with Adwords though is that you have got to have a pretty steep learning curve to avoid losing too much money, but the payoff to this is that when it's working well you have that much high quality traffic available that ROI / profits can be very good
JHardy said it best. Adwords is advertising. Nothing more. Google provides the platform, self-serve I might ad. Therefore, you are in control of getting the visitors. If you do this wrong, you only have yourself to blame. There's no guarantee you will make sales from the visitors you get from Adwords, even if you do that first part right. Again, you are in control of your site and how well it converts. As for 3% fraudulent click rate where did you get that number from? Sure, even a 0.3% fraud rate is not desirable but I don't see 3% in the accounts I manage. You don't need to hire a manager. You just have to educate yourself better. Too many believe it's easy. It's not. It takes knowledge. None of my clients had that knowledge but were humble enough to realize it and get someone who did. I think you meant "drive costs through the roof", not click rates. That's part of the problem too. WE are the ones driving up the prices. Goes back to knowledge of the system. You ask for ROI figures. Here's my own before and after stats (ads created by client vs mine): CTR: up 23.2% Conversion rates: up 102.7% Cost per conversion: down 40.5% This is data for the last five years. The last two years are even better with 2009 better still (all clients averaging a conversion rate of 5.84% vs 2.47% last year). Yeah, I think a good manager can make a difference and worth the investment.
I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you have jumped into adwords with out doing any research and have lost a lot of money.
You can assume that I am dweeb with minimal understanding, but just like I have my opinion on PPC, you evidently have yours of me. And I won't fault you for it. Actually, I have worked with agencies and handled the accounts personally. In the years I have worked on this marketing platform, rarely have my clients become profitable,from this channel. Other channels, absolutely, but not this one. Naturally, anyone working as a PPC acct. mgr. or tangible position is going to harp at the top of their lungs that this it works and that its profitable, but deep in the pit of your soul, you know that the ROI is not satisfactory. You collect your flat-fee rate or percentage on that customers budget and blindly move forward.
SIGH- I tell you my ROI, which is pretty good and you just ignore - I was willing to have a proper discussion but you don't seem to be. Although ROI is less than a lot of other channels (e.g. SEO) a lot of people still use Adwords as it makes them a lot of money- the company I work for is most definitely included in that - we had a profit of almost exactly £40k last month through PPC - in any estimation that is not a channel which could be classified as a fraud or disservice
Adwords is absolutely fantastic! I get a really great R.O.I sometimes as high as 20:1 I have had campaigns where I would spend $2000 in a week and bring in $14000 in business and this is my own money that I'm using. To be fair I have spend a lot of time and money learning how to use PPC and it makes a real difference now, then when I tried it a few years ago.
Right, a bloke who makes $80k US/month on Adwords alone and another who makes $12k US a week on Adwords alone. Sorry folks, I missed the boat on this one. I really do appreciate all the commentary and positive feedback. Appears this is a touchy subject for those in the field. May you continue to bilk the system.
Im sure that if this whole system was easy, and that anybody could make it work, then everybody would be doing it, right? nobody would have any real jobs because evrybody would be making money easily through Google. Of course it is difficult, but that's what makes it fun. It's not a fraud, it's a genuine way to run a business, if you know how, and you have a bit of luck of course.
It's been my experience that every one who tried PPC and could not make a profit suffered from one or more of the following: 1. Not learning and understanding the system. They usually have a certain "idea" of how they want it to work but they don't realize it's the wrong approach. You see it all the time with ads that are totally unrelated to your search term and poor ads. 2. They see PPC as the solution when it is only the first part of that solution. The second part is the converting which happens on your site. This is a problem many SEO people have too. This is not Field of Dreams. They may come but they won't necessarily buy. Think more like another Costner baseball movie, Bull Durham: throw the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball. My PPC analogy: show them a good carrot (your ad), make them excited about your product (your site), see them take out their credit card. 3. Not all products will sell on the Internet. Some sell very well, others not at all. Some people are trying to sell something that is useless or nobody wants. Sometimes, people want it but they'll buy locally. Milk and bread will never sell on the web. A good wine will.
I still don't get why Adwords is a fraud That means the $22 billion (yes, 22 billion dollars) per year Google is made by somehow fooling millions of people to place ads and get no sales Where else can you get 100% totally focused customer that want exactly want you're selling. You have to tell us what your experience was or what you were doing so maybe you can pick up some pointers and turn all the negativity into a learning experience. No one wins 100% of the time, but if you don't get up to bat and take a swing at the ball you will never learn (hey, that's some good baseball analogy stuff ) tic toc ... tick tock Do you know what that is? It's less that 24 hours when I basically give away an internet business for a fraction of what it's worth ... maybe this is for you? | | | V
I'm not sure I agree. Sure, when I started in PPC, I lost my shirt (probably two, actually ). But I've been making decent money with it. Not all the time, but most of the time.