Have you considered buying a bucket of clicks from Dex One for your online marketing? If you have, or if you are currently buying “Clicks programs” from Dex, you might want to read this entire article.
Most yellow pages companies, Dex included, sign the business to a year contract and generally never talk about the program again until it’s time to renew. The customer has an idea of the search engine(s) that they could be marketed on, and a number of guaranteed clicks, but that is about the limits. You can see, from their own site, they are intentionally vague, and they don’t even guarantee that you will even appear up on Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
- Click to enlarge image.
Link to dex : http://www.dexoneadvertising.com/our_products/top_local_search_sites
The one thing people don’t understand about PPC programs is cost. Search Engine Marketing is a true form of capitalism, every keyword is acquired through a bid process. Dex doesn’t receive discounts from the engines that are not available to everyone through quality score incentives. Dex clicks programs are sold on tier 1 search engines, but fills their clicks programs from other sources as well. The customer pays the same rate regardless if the click comes from Google, or is self fulfilled from dexknows.com, and not all clicks convert at the same rate. Some simple research through Google’s adwords tool on your industry, and a calculator will quickly provide you the simple truth…The information that doesn’t add up.
The reason it doesn’t add up is because, if all clicks were filled from tier 1 engines only, Dex couldn’t set the rate for the packages so low and still make any money. They fill their programs from other sources that charge, as low as 10 cents a click, and Dex in turn sells the clicks at a higher rate. It’s a great strategy, except that 10 cent off topic clicks don’t convert in to customers at the same rate as a search result generated clicks from a tier 1 engine. The best way to describe the difference between the two is the difference between an active buyer (tier 1 engine) and someone that is doing research (tier 2 or 3 source). Sure you are getting the traffic to tour digital storefront but lots are not buyers.
[gradient_divider]Reporting
The reporting leaves the customer missing the major information on the performance such as:
- What the bounce rate looks like.
- The cost of the click.
- The source of the click.
- The quality of the click.
- If the click converted into a sale.
- The quality of the call.
- The keyword list.
- The click through rate.
- The ad content.
- Etc.
Search Engine Results Page.
This morning I stumbled across the best demonstration of what Online Marketing Looks like to DEX, you should click on the image below and pay attention to the right (paid) side of the search results page.
Every ad on the right side of the page is a DEX clicks ad. If you notice that every ad is similar, with the only element that changes being the phone number, address, and web address. Every Dex rep will talk with you about the importance of the R.A.S.C.I.L. factors in advertising.
- Reliability (Quality dentistry since 1982)
- Authorized Brands (Invisalign Orthodontic)
- Specialized Services (IV Sedation, Nitrous Oxide sedation)
- Completeness of line (In office X-Rays)
- Illustrations (not relevant in this case)
- Location (area served, or location of office)
Yet every ad in the results page has the exact same attention line, not much sets one advertiser apart from the others. Dex has always been very successful in setting customers apart from each other in print media, but the search engine result page above shows that running an online media program is not their specialty.
[gradient_divider]Dexknows.com Site Performance:
Look at the performance of their own website, below you can see overall global traffic to dexknows.com since 2007, and dexonline.com since 2004 according to Google Trends. Dex made a shift in the URL in 2007, dexonline.com will still get you to dexknows.com but you can see that the traffic to their own site has fallen bellow levels of 2004.
Now that we have a basic understanding of the data above, lets talk about how that traffic is currently generated. Dex uses a landing page, (digital storefronts) for all “Clicks” program they run, and you, the customer, don’t even get to use your website. All “Digital Storefronts” are retained on the dexknows.com domain, so all traffic through a “Clicks” program credits the dexknows.com domain with the traffic.
With this process, dexknows.com gets to take “Traffic Credit” for every “Clicks” program they run, and the number you see in the graph above is achieved on the back of every paying “Clicks” customer they have. The concern then becomes, if Dex allowed their “clicks” programs to drive traffic to the customers real website, and lost “Traffic Credit” for all those campaigns…what would the trends number look like?
[gradient_divider]Conclusion
With the economic climate that we are currently in, and the advertising budgets of small & medium sized companies being tightened, making the most out of our advertising dollars should be paramount in your decision making process. The intent of this article is provide a business owner with enough information about the other topics that should be considered when making this purchase. Not all online advertising programs are created equally.