Dropped $600 on a PPC agency before I figured out their whole strategy was just keyword stuffing.

Used to think I had to pay a big agency to handle my Google Ads. They took my money for 4 months and my conversion rate actually dropped. Finally got sick of it, spent a weekend learning the basics myself, and now I manage my own campaigns. My cost per lead went from $45 to $12 in two weeks. Has anyone else had better luck learning the tools yourself vs hiring out?

2 comments

2 Comments

allen.amy4d ago

Oh man, does that story sound familiar. Have you had any luck getting some of that money back or did you just chalk it up to a lesson learned? I went through almost the exact same thing a couple years ago. Paid this agency that promised the moon and they just threw my budget at the same generic broad match keywords everyone uses. It's wild how many of them are running on autopilot and hoping you don't notice. That's a killer improvement though, going from $45 to $12 per lead. Once you get into the actual settings and see what works for your specific market, it's hard to go back to trusting someone else with it. I still think there are some good agencies out there, but you really have to vet them. Most of the learning for me was just trial and error with match types and negative keywords, nothing fancy.

alicecooper4d ago

Threw my budget at the same generic broad match keywords everyone uses" - that line hit way too close to home lol. I never got a dime back from those clowns, just had to eat it and learn the hard way. What really got me was when I looked at my ad reports later and realized they had stuff like "plumber" set to broad match with zero negative keywords. Like come on man, my whole budget probably went to people looking for DIY videos or something. The trial and error phase is brutal but at least you actually own the data when you do it yourself.