Murphy’s Van hire get a call off Matchmaker Marketing
Ad words is a good tool, it enables companies to get quality enquiries and with a bit of luck some paying customers at the end of the day. As any business owner who is running a campaign on ad words, it can get pretty expensive. The real cost of ad words comes from competition, different companies wish their ad to rank high for particular keywords and the cost of these keywords is auction based. So with an unlimited budget you could rank first on all your keywords, however depending on the industry it can cost a fortune.
Our area obviously is van and truck hire, specifically the Dublin and surrounding regions. We have ran ad words campaigns for around 5 years and know the system pretty well. We also know how much it can cost and the type of ads to chase. There does reach a point when certain phrases just are not worth the cpc ( cost per click) and you either ration your allocation of funds to the phrase or stop using it altogether.
Well all our worries seem to have been solved and for only 20 Euro per keyword!!, yes that’s right, for a measly 20 Euro per phrase per month you can have the first sponsored listing in Google with unlimited clicks. Sounds great, sign me up.
This was the pitch I received last week from an English outfit called Matchmaker Marketing.
The sales person blathered on about how unique their product was and their affiliation with Google. Bottom line was that Google supposedly sell their ads in bulk to matchmaker at a fraction of the open selling price, matchmaker than sells these on to customers. Sounds fine, until you think about it. Google could sell these terms for thousands directly to businesses, so why sell to matchmaker for less than £20. Bottom line is that they don’t.
I was rather sceptical on the phone and asked pretty much every question I could think of, the sales person sounded rather offended that I questioned the worth of their product.
Anyway, I settled on two keywords “Van hire” and “Van rental” limited to Dublin searches. The monthly cost £40 payable to Matchmaker. Not a lot of money, but the rational side took over, its far too little. These terms would cost in the region of £1000 for top spot for a month, so why would matchmaker marketing sell them for £40.
Matchmaker ; “can you give me your credit card details now?”
Murphy’s “ well, I haven’t decided to go with you yet”
Matchmaker “we only get one allocation per sector per industry and one of your competitors is thinking about it”
Murphy’s “Its Friday afternoon and I’m not going to make a decision now, send me through a mail with your terms and conditions and I’ll look at it Monday”
Matchmaker “The spot will be gone by then, you have to take it now”
Murphy’s “well if its gone its gone, I’m not making a decision based on what a competitor may do”
Matchmaker “Just give us your credit card details and the spot will be held for you”
Murphy’s (getting a little Irate) “ Its Friday afternoon and I’ve better things to be doing , Goodbye”
I did a quick bit of research into this company, they also refer to themselves as Zenith Marketing. They have been actively targeting Irish companies, particularly those listed on whatshat.ie .
