An Honest PPC Company: How to Spot & Stop SEO & SEM Waste & Fraud (PART 13)

An Honest PPC Company: How to Spot & Stop SEO & SEM Waste & Fraud (PART 13)

TRANSCRIPT: All right, here’s another worst practice. This is where your vendor wants to co-mingle their organic and paid search results together. Now, website companies that are selling you SEO and SEM, they’re famous for showing you one report that combines your organic traffic with your paid traffic. This is a gigantic red flag and it’s the number one reason I recommend you not buy PPC from your website provider. Let me say that again. Don’t buy PPC from your website provider. If they cannot provide you accurate understandable reports that separate the performance of each channel, organic and paid, then it’s time to run.

Now, of course, all of this is easy if they properly configure your Google Analytics and your AdWords accounts. There’s no real mystery in not getting taken by an unscrupulous PPC company. The only mystery is why are 90% of the dealers I encounter still being taken? It’s not complicated. It means verifying and asking questions. Again, it means paying people directly.

Let me give you a few final wants for your SEM provider and give you the one that I recommend. Listen, if I’m buying pay per click SEM, I want someone with actual car dealer experience. I don’t want a set it and forget it vendor, okay? Here’s the reason. If they’ve got real car dealer experience, they can help me with aged inventory, for example. Right? We can use pay per click to drive down my aged inventory. I want the same rep month after month. I want to be able to speak to the same PPC rep month after month. I want access to the CEO or founder of the company. I don’t need a gigantic company buying me pay per click. The bid management tools that are out there and the software that’s out there, they’re inexpensive. Again, no one has a secret sauce, just like SEO. I want full transparency with 100% accountability.

Now, Venture Automotive is the one company that I know, that provides all of this and everything that we’ve discussed so far. There are two other companies, that I’m familiar with, that let you pay Google directly, as part of their setup. Seek them out, if you want. That’s the first question that you’re going to ask your SEO provider. But, I can’t recommend them today for two reasons. I want you to understand this. The only reason I only recommend Venture right now, is I don’t work with any of the dealers who use them. While I’ve interviewed these two vendors and I’ve looked at their product, I don’t work with any dealers who actually use them so, I can’t verify their results. I can’t actually do a true deep dive down into what the dealer is actually getting.

Plus, both of these vendors want to sell you way more than digital market. I’m not a fan of bundling. I’m not a fan of bundling since this makes it easier to hide fraud and waste. Again, I don’t think either of those companies are fraudulent, but I know Venture Automotive is a truly honest SEM company. But, here’s the deal, when we get OEM co-op, if we use the OEM recommended providers, for most of you this practice costs you more than you get back from co-op. Hidden fees, bad keyword purchases, and a whole lot more. Plus, if you buy the OEM’s program then it gives the OEM control over your future. That said, if you pay Google directly, your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts are linked, and your goals are properly set up, then all you have to do is be NGROI.

All right, but what about click fraud? We had that question come up earlier. Brian was asking about it. Listen, let’s relax about click fraud. Although click fraud is real and it costs billions every single year, a reputable SEM provider will worry about this so you don’t have to. See? So long as you’re doing all the other best practices, paying Google directly, connecting the accounts, tracking and measuring, click fraud is not your concern.it’s their concern. The real ROI measurements, they take care of click fraud issues because you simply will stop doing business with an SEM that provides a bad return on investment. Right? Therefore, good SEM is going to do everything they can to combat this.