Why will the Internet Marketer not show us his receipts?

[Highway of Life]

One of my clients is paying for someone to do SEM/SEO for them...
After over 6 months of spending a couple thousand a month on Internet Marketing, the results are about 1 conversion a month.
The SEM guy tells my client that he has spent half the budget on Ad campaigns, but when the client asked to see the receipts (as there have been near no results from the campaigns), the SEM guy has refused to submit anything but a Traffic report to the client.

Is this standard practice for Internet Marketers? -- Should the client have the ability to review the receipts for the ad campaigns?
Or is it standard that an Internet Marketer not reveal in detail where money is being spent on the campaign, and receipts to prove it?

Thanks for any insight in advance!

[littlelo]

People that are not forthcoming with information often have something to hide. I bet you could take the couple thousand and do a better job yourself than what the "expert" is charging you. Another idea is to pay him based on conversion rates.

[bhartzer]

After over 6 months of spending a couple thousand

Uh, why did it take 6 months for them to realize that they're only getting once conversion a month?

The traffic report should show where the traffic is coming from--and it's it's coming from a PPC campaign or ad campaigns then that should show up in the traffic report (see the referring sites section).

It's standard for the client to have direct access to the campaigns so they can log in...especially PPC campaigns like Google AdWords campaigns and Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns.

Since things are done online, then it may be tough to produce a "receipt".

[nashville]

We do it all in house after being scammed by even the well known names.

[Dinghus]

He should be able to at least show the ad campaigns and how much has been spent on them AND results.

[brander]

Any Marketer who is not forthcoming with where the budget is going and is not able to provide substantiation as far as expenditures for any campaign is not a marketer in the strictest sense of the terms.

Providing documentation regarding activities on any account and certainly regarding any expenses on behalf of a client is standard practice for a professional.

If you are not in a contract or under a service agreement with this person or their firm, then cease your relationship immediately and find a professional.

If you do have a service agreement or contract, then review it for any breach regarding reporting standards. If the service agreement or contract has no section that defines reporting, then next time you sign a service agreement or contract; make sure that you clearly state your expectations and needs prior to signing it.

[marcel]

Originally Posted by Dinghus

He should be able to at least show the ad campaigns and how much has been spent on them AND results.

Ask to see statistics on the ad campaigns.

Also, maybe he does not want you to go do it yourself. If you see the emails receipts, he might afraid that you stop using his services.

A good Internet Marketers should be able to show you much more buzz activity.

Especially if you spent seaveral thousand dollars.

[mawells]

We keep our clients' ad funds separate from our management fees and can account for every penny. Our clients' get monthly reports that not only show the traffic, but the expenditures as well and we work with them to ensure that we have the best possible keyword phrases (ones that actually convert to sales). Most of our clients have been with us for several years and claim that their sales are skyrocketing as a result of their online ad campaigns.

With that said, we have encountered a problem with the IRS. It seems that we have to pay taxes on the "ad budgets" that our clients give us to spend on their behalf. Since 100% of that ad budget belongs to our clients, we have to add a 3.5% budget handling fee to cover the taxes. We are looking into creating a "client trust" that we hope would be non-taxable, but even the IRS can't give us an answer as to whether or not that would work.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by mawells

We keep our clients' ad funds separate from our management fees and can account for every penny. Our clients' get monthly reports that not only show the traffic, but the expenditures as well and we work with them to ensure that we have the best possible keyword phrases (ones that actually convert to sales). Most of our clients have been with us for several years and claim that their sales are skyrocketing as a result of their online ad campaigns.

With that said, we have encountered a problem with the IRS. It seems that we have to pay taxes on the "ad budgets" that our clients give us to spend on their behalf. Since 100% of that ad budget belongs to our clients, we have to add a 3.5% budget handling fee to cover the taxes. We are looking into creating a "client trust" that we hope would be non-taxable, but even the IRS can't give us an answer as to whether or not that would work.

You could probably reduce you bookkeeping work and tax burden, by simply allowing the clients to fund the ad accounts directly.

Just a thought

[puamana]

After years of listening to my customers complain about not only the expense, but the poor results using "SEO specialists" to market their sites, I've come to the conclusion
that small businesses need to take their own marketing in hand. Even if it means hiring an in-house person to manage and track SEO efforts.

I have recenly found a program (WebCEO) that allows management of submissions, keywords, comepetition and even ppc advertising, and provides statistical reports that most people with a minimum of internet experience can understand.

See: SEO Software by Web CEO :: Search Engine Optimization Software / Complete SEO Toolkit :: Website Optimization, Promotion and Submission SEO Software

It's a free download, most features are free to use, with some specific areas that are subscription based. (At the prices SEO professionals charge - even these subscriptions are a bargain!) They even offer training for those who want to use WebCEO management as a service to offer their clients.

Good Luck!
Puamana

[TrafficProducer]

nashville "We do it all in house"

This may be a better option for you as well.

For example sign up to Google Adword. It could take some work and some reseach to get the best Pay Per Click Keyword for your budget. Start small and seel how things go.

With any Pay Per Click you may have to watch out for Click Fraud, (Fake Clicks for cash).

You may wish to compare this with the levels of hassle you are getting now for very little Traffic.

[Clarrie]

Without question he should be prepared and able to justify his charges with documentary evidence. A matter of simple professionalism; anything else is strongly suggestive of wrongdoing.

We provide detailed performance statistics for all the campaigns we manage. Because of this we have never actually been challenged to provide supporting evidence, but would certainly have no problem, and be happy to do so.

Your client should sack his "marketer" and find a real professional or do it himself.

[Matteo]

Okay NEWBIE question

Am I wrong in thinking that Internet Marketing is far more straight forward in it's approach that Search Engine Optimization? I know in SEO there are a million and one steps and things you must do from Links to Code to optimize a site.

But shouldn't internet marketing be fairly easy to report?

Spent This Many Billable hours doing this
Spent this Much Money via this Pay Per Click site...

I'm thinking that you should be able to get a monthly invoice from any service industry. Doctors, lawyers, pest control people et al can give a detailed list of services and time spent, so should an internet professional

[visser]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

You could probably reduce you bookkeeping work and tax burden, by simply allowing the clients to fund the ad accounts directly.

Just a thought

We're considering this option atm, it's not a bad idea. Giving the client direct access to Adwords, Y!SM or any advertising platforms is another way to prove your credibility and involve your client in processes.

Clients do need to understand that firms need to make a commission one way or another, on that topic, $$$ ad spending should be open and forthcoming between parties.

[itispals]

"PPC is definitely easier than SEO" is true. But even for PPC, the person who handles the job should be possessing lot more analytical skills, business accumen and more importantly the creative writing skills. It is a mix of talent that is required to achieve the results. If some one just needs to run the PPC campaigns, then it is very simple. Just get an account with Google, Yahoo or MIVA and you can kick start your campaigns in a few hours. Most of it is explained by these service providers.
But the extra few hundred dollars that you part is only for the wealth of experience and skills that these PPC service providers possess that you pay for.
Today with Google, it is just not enough if you have the ability to bid for the highest rate, Quality of adcampaigns to play a crucial role. So monitoring the campaigns and modifying them at the required time frame all needs definitely lot of effort, if PPC has to be taken seriously. But for all these the method that we provide, to our clients is: a base price+bonus based on performance and ROI. By these we assure our client that he would surely grow and as he grows we take a share of his pie. As the client gets the profits, he is willing to share....
Now to the question of receipts, in most cases we set up an account for our client. We educate the client on the basics and since he also has the userid and password, he is free to monitor at any given point of time. More over he can see the amount spent on day to day basis, the campaigns that are running, that are paused, stopped, etc
We try to be as transparent as possible to our customer and at the same time educate them.
Hope this is useful..
itispals

[Highway of Life]

First of all, thanks for everyone’s insightful replies.
You confirmed everything that we have been thinking.

It might take a few replies to address everything.

Originally Posted by littlelo

Another idea is to pay him based on conversion rates.

The client has decided to terminate the agreement with the SEM. -- This particular SEM has had 3 clients who were doing Internet Marketing with him suddenly drop him... I had a chance to discuss it with him face-to-face, and grilled him on some very direct questions (since I am at least proficient in SEM knowledge) and he gave me a very flustered and devious response to my questions.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Uh, why did it take 6 months for them to realize that they're only getting once conversion a month?

We just found out within the last month that this money was being spent on the service.
Once we found out, I insisted to the client that we needed to take a look at detail traffic reports, I spent several hours going through the report with the client to help them understand where traffic was coming from...
After we realized traffic was near NULL from any outside sources (besides direct and some searches on Google for the domain name), I asked the client to request a detailed expense report from the SEM.
After a week of conversation back and fourth, the SEM refused to show the client anything but a generic breakdown of monthly expenses
"$xxxx for Ad campaigns, $xxxx for leg-work per month" -- was the report, with no detailed report, and no documented proof of ad campaign expenses.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

The traffic report should show where the traffic is coming from--and it's it's coming from a PPC campaign or ad campaigns then that should show up in the traffic report (see the referring sites section).

There are NO results from any PPC or any ad campaign as far as I can tell. -- I don’t have direct access to the Analytics traffic report, but the client does.
There are no referrals from any sites.
There are only a handful of organic results and the rest of the traffic is direct hits.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

It's standard for the client to have direct access to the campaigns so they can log in...especially PPC campaigns like Google AdWords campaigns and Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns.

This was my thought as well, but the SEM refuses to share any detailed information, saying that it’s unethical for a business to request expense reports from another business.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Since things are done online, then it may be tough to produce a "receipt".

The Client is not aware of how SEM works, so he thought there would be physical receipts, but basically, all the client is looking for is proof, physical proof from the Ad companies that they are supposedly supposed to be advertising with.

Originally Posted by Dinghus

He should be able to at least show the ad campaigns and how much has been spent on them AND results.

The expense report was rounded to the nearest hundred.
The results, the SEM says are in the Google Analytics.

Originally Posted by brander

If you are not in a contract or under a service agreement with this person or their firm, then cease your relationship immediately and find a professional.

If you do have a service agreement or contract, then review it for any breach regarding reporting standards. If the service agreement or contract has no section that defines reporting, then next time you sign a service agreement or contract; make sure that you clearly state your expectations and needs prior to signing it.

Regardless of what "precisely" was defined in the contract, any agreement does require both parties to fulfill their end of the agreement.
Client pays SEM $x-amount to do X - job. X-job is not being done...
The Client is going to break contract with the SEM, as the agreement has not been upheld by the SEM.

Originally Posted by marcel

Ask to see statistics on the ad campaigns.

Again, the SEM has insisted that the analytics traffic report should be sufficient, but as you know, as all of you know, it’s not... especially when spending several thousand on ad-campaigns, you want to see physical results, but there is nothing...

Originally Posted by marcel

Also, maybe he does not want you to go do it yourself. If you see the emails receipts, he might afraid that you stop using his services.

A good Internet Marketers should be able to show you much more buzz activity.

Especially if you spent seaveral thousand dollars.

Exactly!

But he’s also afraid to come out and say that he really didn’t have any time to put into the SEM because then he would be liable for the tens of thousands of dollars that were paid to him to do the service, and he would have to pay it back.
So obviously the SEM is going to keep up the facade.

[seostew]

I am almost speechless, but apparently not because I am replying. I have never heard of such a rip off and non-disclosure of information in this industry and I have heard many stories. I know for a fact that there are many ethical and information transparent SEO/SEM companies/consultants that will give you as much, and even more, information than you want to know on the progress of your campaigns, as well manually create other activity reports. Please don't let this guy tarnish the industry in your company's eyes.

AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing , & MSN adCenter do have accounting and billing receipts that can be printed easily. I would not normally say this and not to be litigious, but your company should consider suing this guy so he doesn't just keep taking people's money and deceiving them into thinking he is doing SEO and SEM.
Many clients do have unrealistic expectations in the beginning (especially as far as SEO is concerned), but you companies requests were not unreasonable at all and very much with the norm. For SEM it should be a little more controllable. Decide how much a customer is worth to the company and continually try to lower the cost per acquisition, increase the ROI, or some other goal. Traffic is just a byproduct.

He may have even outsourced the ppc management or started it and never even logged in again. There is so much to know to even ask the right questions, a member of your team should get as educated as possible to ask those questions in the beginning before going with another company/consultant.

As with any job, Internet Marketing SEO/SEM isn't voodoo magic. It is work and it takes ongoing hours of time. Expertise definitely plays a part and separates the people who are going to waste your money verses make you/your company lots and lots of money. Sounds like this guy had barely any experience, or just flat didn't spend the time doing the work, but he must have been a good salesman to take your company for tens of 1000s of dollars.

If both parties understand that SEO/SEM is work, the SEO/SEM should not fear that he/she reveal their bag of tricks. The nature of the work should be defined in specifics as well as goals, accountability, and reporting.