Andy Black
Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
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Start with one site? Build others if there's a business case from the real live data from the campaigns to the initial one site?Do I make separate properties for each combo of vertical/location?
ex: "qualitybostonroofers.com", "hudsonpoolcontractors.com", "brooklyndogsitters.com"
Or do I make one big "goodservices.com" and silo it out into "goodservices.com/us/ma/boston/roofers"
I'm basically asking what the pros and cons are for having multiple different web properties. I'll start with maybe 3 landers, get them profitable and then move onto more.
So, one site or many?
Caveat... you might run better with one site per vertical, then create separate location specific ones out of it.
I had goodservices.ie (not real name) and ran some plumbing campaigns to it for my Dublin Plumber at goodservices.ie/dublin-plumbing
I saw his ad CTR was cr@p compared to my other plumbing clients, so we built goodplumbing.ie/dublin-plumbing (not real name) and he got more volume.
I've not created gooddublinplumbing.ie (yet?). I'll probably stick with growing goodplumbing.ie.
A pro of having gooddublinplumbing.ie as well as goodplumbing.ie is that I could potentially run two ads at the same time, so long as the offer and landing page are sufficiently different that I'm not "double serving".
Do I charge per lead, or per month?
Do I charge per lead or do I rent the page out for a monthly fee?
I like the monthly fee because once I have some data, I can give them an estimate of how any leads they can get for several different packages: $500, $1000, $2500, $5000, etc.
Plus "per-lead" brings up all sorts of arguments about what a lead is and isn't. All that really matters is that they make more than they spend. If they spend $2k with me and make $6k, then they should be happy (if they know how to track...).
Also, I can collect up front instead of running the campaign out of pocket and then selling each individual lead. Say I collected $2k. I'd give them an estimate of leads for the month, I'd take my cut (let's say 40%) and then I'd run campaigns with $1200.
If I see room for growth (there's more impression share to grab), then I can upsell on the next package and take a smaller cut to give them a tiny boost in leads/$ ratio. They're already gonna get more leads, but why not increase the ratio and provide more value? It won't really take me any more effort to change the spend...
I can set packages something like this:
$1000 package -> 50% goes to spend ($500)
$2000 package -> 60% goes to spend ($1200)
$5000 package -> 70% goes to spend ($3500)
Also, monthly is consistent. They get used to the bill and there's no sorcery or magic behind it. There's nothing to dispute or ponder about really. It's simple.
I prefer monthly flat fee for the campaign and landing page rental, and they pay the ad spend direct to Google. Some of the clients prefer it too (they're used to flat monthly fee with The Yellow Pages for example). I can also make it a plus point that the can see full transparency over how much is spent with Google on ads.
I don't want to go down the route of arguing over what's a lead and what's not. We're dealing with phone calls here, and some will be clients ringing back about the ongoing job, or maybe even their mum who's trying to get hold of them because they don't pick up their personal phone.
I think @MJ DeMarco had it that limo drivers were notified of a lead and the first to buy it got the details. I think this is smart, because it ensures the limo drivers who are most responsive at that time will get the lead, and therefore the consumer gets a callback quicker. I'm sure this was good for the limos.com brand.
I mention to clients that there's a sliding scale for the management fee, that it's based on ad spend, and that we'd agree beforehand if they're going to go into a new band.
I hear you, it can be frustrating. Figure out how to come from a place of serving people.Rant:
I like this lead gen method as well because I own the campaigns. I have more leverage/control and I can even run thousands of $$$ on a credit card with benefits and collect miles and whatnot.
I'll stress again - I have more leverage/control with this model as opposed to being an AdWords specialist. This is probably the most important thing to me. If I learned a single thing from 4+ years of freelancing, it's that the "service" relationship is automatically skewed you in a position of weakness. You allow people to ask too many questions and have too much say in things that they don't understand at all. I will never show a client any metrics besides cost.
I'm like a scientist; I mix dangerous chemicals you don't understand, and if you touch them, your hand will melt off. But if you let me do my thing, I'll present you with your Money Goo that you want so badly. I don't care if you just found out about "Enhanced Cost Per Click" on some blog - do you want 3x ROI or not? There's a whole lot of roofers out there that would love what you have...
I like the whole rent thing because it's more of a "business/customer" relationship, with me being the business. I'm like a landlord. I own a valuable asset and the biz understands that, and that's why you pay for it. Let me work!
If I sound bitter towards freelancing and small biz owners, it's because I am. Sorry for the rant.
"We've charged anywhere from €2,500/mth to €5,000/mth to build and manage these sorts of campaigns for companies. We've developed my own processes and IP. If we were to do it in our accounts though then we'd charge you €250/mth or €500/mth."
Also... an aha moment I had a few months ago is that I'm not trying to "own the assets" (the client's will always see you as an agency for Google Ads and some will begrudge you owning the account). Instead of owning the assets, own the marketing channel itself. Don't be an agency for Google Ads, but be another channel that a plumber can get leads from. Think limos dot com, booking dot com, etc.
"Where do you get your leads from Bob?"
"Oh, from Google, Yelp, and GoodPlumbers."
Also... if I own goodplumbers.ie then I can start doing SEO, Facebook Ads, etc for that domain. In which case getting paid per lead starts making more sense.
I laughed when I saw this last night. I was on my phone so waited till today to get on the PC and answer better.I can see @Andy Black stepping into this thread in 3, 2, 1 ...
As for payment - I started with pay per sale. I was listening to a lot of the calls and getting frustrated with the way they were getting handled. After some more frustration we ended up switching to a set payment per month and it's less stressful for both of us. I still push the buyer to make the most of the leads because its in my interest that he keeps buying them but it seems to be going ok for the last few months.
Yep. Someone kept telling me I was leaving money on the table by charging a flat monthly fee and not per-lead. A year later he switched to flat-monthly because he had less headaches. If it's per-sale then I'm dependent on them picking up the phone, and being able to close worth a damn. Oh, and telling me they made a sale. Sure, it can be done, but I do like simple.
EDIT: Most of our clients have landing pages on their domain that we create for them. e.g. contact.theirdomain.com. I'm slowly working/transitioning to "building a marketing channel".
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