Why Using Yell for AdWords Should Come with a Health Risk
Yell used to be one of the best options to advertise your business with back in the 80s and 90s with their Yellow Pages. The big yellow book was the first stop when people where looking for businesses.
The internet exploded out of the traps in the early 2000s and the Yellow Pages began to lose out to cheaper, measurable online marketing. They ‘adapted’ by realising they needed to move online with their own business directory Yell.com. They also started offering PPC (pay-per-click) advertising as a ‘service’ using Google AdWords.
This may seem like a natural progression for a company like Yell to offer online advertising listings – though it doesn’t mean they’re any good at it!
Lack of transparency
Yell.com may claim that PPC is a great way for them to drive business to your website. However, not only are they in full control of the wheel – you’re not even allowed in the vehicle!
In my experience Yell don’t let you see the search terms that you are paying for clicks on or how much they bid on the keywords. It’s valuable to consult with a client regularly on many of these matters to find out more about their business for better targeting of campaigns. This may result in wasted clicks and drives up the cost for you as their client.
Without full access to the AdWords account you sign up without being totally aware where your money is being allocated. Believe it or not you actually risk your money being wasted on Yell’s admin costs! That’s right. We have encountered Yell accounts that had as much as 40% of their budget spend going directly to Yell. 40% of monthly spend when it’s a small campaign that is set up on autopilot is excessive.
All about the sales – and not much else
Yell are a business and like many businesses, sales are vital for success. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, running effective Google AdWords campaigns as a service requires bespoke ongoing work to set proper targeting and use features like negative keyword lists to get the client best value for money.
Yell own the account, not you
Even though you’re paying for it – Yell own the AdWords account. They host it and run it themselves. If you want to cut your ties and move to another AdWords consultant, as far as I’m aware you don’t get any of your campaign data to take with you. All the historical data and reports is lost. It is held on to by Yell and not released to you. This data can be valuable to learn from when you test new campaigns.
Answered the ‘yell’ for help – how we saved clients from Yell
We have rescued clients from their poor experience of Yell PPC in the past. In one case we saved a client who was spending around £16,000 on their PPC campaigns with Yell and were able to recover an annual saving of £10,000 from improving the execution of their ad campaigns. We were also able to increase their inbound calls and leads at the same time.
If you have poor experience with Yell or other AdWords service providers, please contact us today and we can discuss how best to help you recover and to take control of your own Google AdWords account.
