Anyone using a company for Google AdWords? - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

Home Services · 05-19-2009, 05:38 AM

Are any of you using an "hired" company to write and/or place your Google AdWords?

If yes, can you give me the good, bad & the ugly? Thanks

Darwin · 05-19-2009, 08:21 AM

I would never pay a company to place Google Adwords for my biz. It's just way too easy to do yourself. Just make sure when writing your ad, put every first word in Capital Letters. Simple:http://www.google.com/accounts/Servi...e%26ugl%3Dtrue

kirbymurphy · 05-19-2009, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Home Services

Are any of you using an "hired" company to write and/or place your Google AdWords?

If yes, can you give me the good, bad & the ugly? Thanks

If you can find the "right" company it doesn't cost extra at all. By "right" I mean one that really knows SEO. They make their money the same as advertising firms. You pay full-price for the Google purchase and they get a discount of 15% or so for the effort.

There are many scammers out there so choose wisely.

One company that I considered selling for is http://rtrk.com/

I'm not recommending them since this was 5 years ago, but they're still in business. Here's a bit from their web site:

Call Tracking
We provide you with tracking phone numbers in order to report on the number of phone calls your online marketing generates.

E-Mail Tracking
We provide you with tracking e-mail addresses in order to report on the number of e-mails your internet advertising generates.

Customizable Website Event Tracking
We track visits to important pages on your website — registration or appointment forms, shopping cart or payment confirmation pages — in order to report on the online activity generated by your marketing

http://searchenginewatch.com/ is a good resource for SEO.

HPE · 05-19-2009, 02:55 PM

Put your money in an SEO firm, not wasting money on PPC (AdWords). Organic links are clicked 900% more frequently and cost nothing, and last for as long as you maintain the rankings. PPC has low conversion, is subject to common click fraud, and has no recurring value. I've managed PPC accounts for my company, and I'm saying it's one of the worst investments you can make.

George Z · 05-19-2009, 08:23 PM

We rank amazing for SEO on any desirable keyword
and PPC is still a great option!
Good luck with SEO, you might do well, likely not.

The problem with companies that track your results is they use what they call" proxy pages"
They eventually get spiderd by Google and they can hurt your SEO efforts.

Why? I don't know why, some people said so and I believe them.

rbsremodeling · 05-19-2009, 08:28 PM

PPC is not easy for the average guy. In fact you will spend more money learning to do it yourself. But once you get the hang of it. It is priceless

Most PPC companies have no clue how contractors qualify a lead they will waste even more of your money

George Z · 05-19-2009, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HPE

Put your money in an SEO firm, not wasting money on PPC (AdWords). Organic links are clicked 900% more frequently and cost nothing, and last for as long as you maintain the rankings. PPC has low conversion, is subject to common click fraud, and has no recurring value. I've managed PPC accounts for my company, and I'm saying it's one of the worst investments you can make.

Not 900%. 70% organic, 30% PPC
Get the invalid click report from Google and a good web stat program
and you don't have a click fraud problem.
Conversion depends on many things, like your site, landing pages etc.
I think it is a great investment, my numbers say so for 3-4 years.

PPC works for thousands, if not millions of people, sorry it did't work for you.

nlgutters · 05-19-2009, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by George Z

Not 900%. 70% organic, 30% PPC
Get the invalid click report from Google and a good web stat program
and you don't have a click fraud problem.
Conversion depends on many things, like your site, landing pages etc.
I think it is a great investment, my numbers say so for 3-4 years.

PPC works for thousands, if not millions of people, sorry it did't work for you.

Works great for me

silvertree · 05-19-2009, 09:12 PM

Whats reasonable to try PPC on a monthly. Looking for 50K monthly sales, that's 3 to 5 refacing jobs, or 1 kitchen a month. I would need 15 refacing leads or 3 kitchen leads.
So with a conversion rate of 2% (I have no idea about conversion). I would need what. 1500 visits or clicks. Is there a simple answer to my questions?

rbsremodeling · 05-19-2009, 09:53 PM

Do you need help
with Twitter, Google,
and other online
sales tools?

By 2010 over 70% off all construction and home improvement sales will begin online.

Are you ready?

You'll learn the
secret to using:

and MORE!

You're invited to attend one of our most powerful and valuable e-courses for commercial and home improvement contractors at no cost courtesy of our sponsor Domestic Bank.

That means YOU attend FREE in YOUR OWN HOME or OFFICE!

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Jesse "J" Strup - The Halos Marketing Group

Pick from any of these available dates

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Wednesday, May 20, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
Thursday, May 21, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
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Wednesday, May 27, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
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Register before classes fill:
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The Halos Marketing Group | 1176 Jamestown Road, Suite A, Williamsburg, VA 23185 | Call us at (866) 796-8806

Mike Finley · 05-19-2009, 10:03 PM

Hmmm....

Quote:

By 2003 70% of all porn will be exist only on the internet

Well, if that's not even true let's use all our little pea brains to make the logical conclusion that this

Quote:

By 2010 70% of all home improvement sales will begin on line

Is ridiculous.

Jordy3738 · 05-19-2009, 10:05 PM

Check out PPC Classroom, I got in on a 30 day trial for less than ten dollars. That is an amazing program. I learned how to launch massive Adwords campaigns in a couple of days.

The best combination is free search traffic and PPC working together.

HomerJ · 05-19-2009, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbsremodeling

Do you need help

with Twitter, Google,
and other online
sales tools?

By 2010 over 70% off all construction and home improvement sales will begin online.

Are you ready?

You'll learn the

secret to using:

and MORE!

You're invited to attend one of our most powerful and valuable e-courses for commercial and home improvement contractors at no cost courtesy of our sponsor Domestic Bank.

That means YOU attend FREE in YOUR OWN HOME or OFFICE!

The Secrets to Spending LESS, but getting MORE on Marketing

Jesse "J" Strup - The Halos Marketing Group

Pick from any of these available dates

Tuesday, May 19, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT

Wednesday, May 20, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
Thursday, May 21, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
Tuesday, May 26, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
Wednesday, May 27, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT
Thursday, May 28, 1:00-2:30 PM EDT

Register before classes fill:

www.RemodelingWebinars.com

"This class taught us how to start tapping into about a dozen qualified leads a month. We're closing about 70% of them so it's safe to say 8 jobs each month can be attributed to what we learned in Jesse's webcast."

Doug McKenzie - Quality Home Exteriors

The Halos Marketing Group | 1176 Jamestown Road, Suite A, Williamsburg, VA 23185 | Call us at (866) 796-8806

This looks interesting. Is anyone signing up for one of these classes? If so, which date?

ticktock · 05-19-2009, 11:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbsremodeling

By 2010 over 70% off all construction and home improvement sales will begin online.

I seriously doubt it. Try this:
Got nothing going on, this costs you nothing. Park your (empty) truck/signage in a neighborhood in a high visibility spot. Get it there REALLY early and leave it, 5am till 9am, and again at 6pm thru 8pm. If your phone number is on the side you'll get the next call the next time somebody needs XYZ done by the XYZ'er. Also, use your signage on the owners property whenever you can.

Online will be big - but it will only be big for the lowballers and HD contractors.

Home Services · 05-20-2009, 05:58 AM

Jordy - where did you find this "PPC Classroom"?

Michael Olding · 05-20-2009, 08:08 PM

Silvertree - What is your current marketing cost per dollar of revenue? Try that amount and see how it works. So let's say you're looking for a 4-1 return on advertising dollars then $50K would require an investment of $12,500 but you will need to have a strong back end to really make it profitable.

PPC is like any advertising. Yes you can do it cheap. If you run an ad in a cheap shopper will get you a particular type of client or if you run an ad in a slick City Monthly you will get another type of client. The same is true in PPC as well.

If you want the high end client then you have to go to where they hang out on on-line. That's not as easy as opening a Google account and flopping down a grand on a few keywords and letting it fly! (I wish it was lol).

It takes a little searching and thinking and strategizing to figure out the most cost effective approach, the best offer at the right time to present to your audience.

rbsremodeling · 05-20-2009, 08:12 PM

I don't know about anywhere else I would say its about 50% here

karunnt · 05-20-2009, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by George Z

Good luck with SEO, you might do well, likely not.

Why so negative?

Of course they can make it with SEO. It's not hard.
In the long run it is more cost effective.

PPC results end when you stop paying.
So use PPC to get immediate results but don't ever stop SEO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by George Z

The problem with companies that track your results is they use what they call" proxy pages"
They eventually get spiderd by Google and they can hurt your SEO efforts.

Not really. These landing pages as just so that they can track and measure results. They have nothing to do with your website even if they link to you. Your site cannot be hurt by a disreputable site linking to you.

Clancy@SS · 05-21-2009, 01:59 PM

Hi Contractors -- I am viewing this forum as a B2B guy -- But part of my job is maintaining our AdWords campaign. We do pretty well with Adwords, our conversions (people who sign up) are about half and half PPC vs. organic. Ditto for our overall Google traffic. About 4-5% of our overall website traffic converts.

Best bet is to buy a book on PPC/Web Analytics and go slow. If you have a website, and you're not promoting and monitoring it, you are only doing half the job!

For those who ARE using PPC I wanna drop a tip. We were running AdWords for a couple years with about a 1% or less conversion rate. Once I got ahold of the account, I didn some research and canceled the Content Network (which is where Google displays you in places they think are appropriate but don't necessarily match your terms - REALLY low clickthru rates!) and surprise, ALL of our PPC traffic disappeared! Turns out the Google Auto-tagging was not working, or at least not reporting. Turned off auto-tagging and manually built tagged URL's for our ads, and boom, they popped up, finally correct!

Summary -- your adwords campaign may be only reporting the (less than optimal) content network! This can obviously confuse your efforts if you are trying to optimize your campaign, so IMO, turn OFF your content network and tag your own URLs -- I bet your conversion rate goes up!

Clancy

and by the way, if anyone has questions about this stuff, I know a few great blogs and books I can point you to - PM me!

**Ed the Roofer** · 05-21-2009, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Home Services

Jordy - where did you find this "PPC Classroom"?

http://tinyurl.com/r2yuyr

Ed