As a director of several small businesses I have struggled to find a service provider that can fill the gap between full-on bespoke search support and do-it-yourself on AdWords- so imagine my elation when I see BT offering a service geared at SME’s for just £100 per month. Branded SearchSmart it purports to offer “Affordable pay per click management from search specialists”
Unfortunately a call to the BT sales line gives rise to a little confusion. The £100 per month for PPC is actually £300 per month unless you take other services, and BT take £90 of this and that the remaining £210 is spent on media through Google, Yahoo and Bing. Apparently I can transfer any Google accounts that are set up back to my name without any impact on my quality score, and that “all the work is undertaken by BT employees and nothing is outsourced”. This may be news to Alex Hoye the CEO of Latitude who is quoted on their website saying “This partnership brings together BT’s reach and trust with Latitude’s technical expertise to enable small businesses to succeed as more consumers move online.”
In terms of reporting I am told that I can see reports on what is happening online, but logging on to the Demo Site suggests that I am not going to learn very much, and far less than I would learn from my existing free Google Analytics account. BT do also offer me access to Google Analytics but for £75 (with one part of the website saying this is a monthly charge and another saying it is a one off). The real killer though is in the small print on the website which says that I can’t use any of the BT services if I have had an active account with Google in the last 90 days. So much for the trouble free transfer.
Bottom line is that you still can’t get proper search management for peanuts, and the reason is that proper search management requires sophisticated and time consuming input from experienced practitioners; people who understand that each and every website is different in the same way that each and every searcher is different.
A guest blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-Executive Director of Reform and Director of Craigie Mains (http://www.craigiemains.com).
Tags: affordable search marketing, BT, BT SearchSmart, Latitude, search management service providers, SME search marketing