If you hire a search agency to manage a pay-per-click campaign (Google AdWords, Yahoo Paid Search, etc.), you may have a serious problem. Here are two things to watch out for:
1. Your search agency may also be representing your competitors, and artificially inflating click through rates (and increasing its own profit) at your expense.
2. Your account may be managed by a young, inexperienced person using a very formulaic approach.
The first situation results from what we (Work Media) consider unethical behavior, which is representing multiple clients who are direct competitors. How can a search agency honestly represent a company and manage its pay-per-click marketing campaign as aggressively and efficiently as possible when it also represents competitors?
We recently had discussions with a law firm in California paying unusually high click-through rates in its pay-per-click campaign. This firm and one other firm seemed to be in a bidding war for the top spot. The third spot for the same search phrase was much more reasonably priced. As it turns out, the two firms competing for the top spot, and running up exhorbitant rates, were represented by the...