Beware: Dodgy Web Marketing Companies Want Your Money
Don’t Hire: Web Marketing Companies who Cold Call! 
I firmly believe no one should hire an SEO / PPC / SEM company that contacts them first. This includes those companies that choose to contact you by either email, letter or by telephone. The bane of my husband’s life (he owns a bouncy castle company) is those telemarketers who seem to believe web directories should be used as a cold calling database.
I’m sorry, but my belief is that any web marketing company worth their salt should be able to acquire customers from legitimate methods such as their OWN web marketing and referrals from happy customers .
In my opinion, the worst offenders are those that try and sell you a method of PPC which includes a certain number of keyphrases for a set fee per month. They take your credit card number, bill you monthly, and refuse to accept notice. Worst case scenario you may end up court!
How are they able to do it? They choose a handful of keyphrases that are cheap in price (sometimes as little as £0.05 per click) and set a tiny daily budget such as £0.50 per day. In some cases after just 1 click, your daily budget may have expired. Your contract with them states only that you appear on the front page once per day – so you have will have no comeback here!
So if you’re choosing a web marketing company? Ask fellow business owners for referrals along with why they would recommend them.
Take a look at their website.
- Is it clear and easy to understand?
- Is there a clear pricing structure?
When you contact them, this is what I believe you should be asking:
- How long do your clients remain with you, on average?
- Can I speak to some of your clients for a reference?
- How do you receive your leads?
- How do you track these leads?
- How will you help me track my leads?
- How much do YOU spend on web marketing?
- What is YOUR conversion rate?
- How will you help ME improve my conversion rate?
If they won’t answer these questions – move on the next provider.
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11 Responses to Beware: Dodgy Web Marketing Companies Want Your Money
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Ah Claire… I am in a ranty mood today and this has set me off again
We have these on the phone all day long, I am thinking of getting a number just for them to call me on, that I would answer when I wanted to argue with someone…
They say things like “do you have enough work?” if you say yes they call you a liar and if you say no they tell you they can cure it. They used be a very aggressive company called Ufindus or something similar, calling courier companies all day long, and then at night we would read the sort of things they would say to the businesses – almost entirely identical. I totalled up one day 45 couriers all promised front page listings for just 10 places – like you mention they do this in other ways.
Ok, rant semi over…. *breathes out*
I think there should be a law against calling people from directories and spouting crap…
*breathes again*
Gosh, the thought of actually getting into a dialogue with them, Sarah! You ARE brave. My automatic reaction is to tell them I’m not interested, thank you and just keep repeating that until they get the message. Once I’ve said it three times, I feel they have fair warning that I’m about to put the phone down on them.
This is great advice. Can I recommend searching for mentions of them on social media, if someone has a gripe, you’ll probably learn more about how they deal with customer’s complaint than anyone they provide as a reference.
The one i had on the phone ten minutes ago claimed to be google local.I thought maybe wrongly google did not have a human sales team.The sad thing is the more you improve your rankins or the nearer the top you get the more calls you get.Maybe we should all have a day when we keep them on the phone for as long as possible
Sounds like a good plan Paul, we also have people saying they are calling from google and from BT and heaps of other places all trying to sell us a rubbish product. If it worked, we’d be there already
I’m told the best thing to do is to let them get started and then wander off (leaving the phone off the hook) to make a cup of tea and maybe talk to someone in the office. After about 10 minutes, they might grasp that no-one is listening to them. And if they don’t, well it’s their phone bill not yours…
Fantastic Advice Claire. My way of dealing with such companies is adding them to the SPAM box!
Great tips and good questions to ask. They may think that calling you can add to their list of prospects but it’s really annoying honestly.
The ones who cold call you several times per day are the worst! They will NEVER listen if you ask them to remove you from their database…
Wish I had read your article a year ago. Got drawn in just by a little hesitation on my part and that was enough. They wore me down calling and promising. Caught us at a low ebb when the business was stagnant and we believed the hype.
Hah! we certainly didnt know enough about SEO in the first place let alone enough to weed out the goodies and baddies.
I wouldnt touch one now with a barge pole!