Avoiding Scam PPC Agencies and Contractors
Scam agencies & contractors are real.
They will spend all your marketing dollars, and take up $5–20K in retainer fees without making one sale. Adding insult to injury, they may hold your ad accounts hostage unless you also pay a “transfer fee.” Finding a good PPC agency or contractor is no easy task for any client. Especially nowadays, Upwork has made tremendous strides in filtering out scam PPC contractors and agencies- but it is not foolproof.
Our team often encounters clients who have encountered low-performing PPC agencies & contractors who do not know how to buy, misrepresenting themselves and scamming clients. As clients, we know it isn't easy to navigate agency waters. You’re trusting a new group of people with your hard-earned marketing budget, brand, and merchandise. Over and over, I’ve seen agencies who are misrepresenting themselves and charging a $10K retainer per month. They run media for two months, spend $30K in media, and run off $20K in fees. Clients are left picking up the pieces and restarting their search for another agency.
Best Places to Find a Good PPC Agency
Referrals are the best; those are trusted friends who have recommended an agency based on previous good performance. The second best is a trusted platform with testimonials and scores. I would also leverage requesting to speak to previous clients that contractor or agency has handled. At YRV Dynamics, we have the highest possible ranking, Top Rated Plus, on Upwork, with a 100% job score.
Our Upwork testimonials speak for themselves. Please note that these are not foolproof. Our team has scored 100% on 21 jobs in a row; this is extremely difficult to fabricate. Another factor to consider is the number of “work-in-progress jobs.” These are the long-term jobs that are still not complete, such as the final screenshot. In this case, we have a client who is several years old, views the agency as a long-term partner, and loves our work.
Buyer Certifications and Credentials
There are two parts: The first is understanding who is working on your buys. It should not be delegated to buyers you don’t know. You should know the buyers working on your account on a first-name basis — they should not be hidden. Second, they must be certified in key e-commerce platforms, Meta and Google.
Certification shows dedication to their craft, expertise, and professionalism. The buyers in your ads manager must be certified — pure and simple. Scam agencies could care less about investing in their personnel. They are mostly likely to spread too thin in accounts. Request they’re certified by the platform: Google certified means an official certification from Google, and Meta Blueprint comes from Meta itself. Google and Meta do not recognize Udemy, Coursera, Masterclass, or any 3rd party learning certifications. It means the buyer paid $200 for a free diploma — to make matters worse, their skill level is similar to someone who learned on YouTube.
Access to Key Personnel
As the CEO and Lead Founder of YRV Dynamics, I attend all client meetings. I also have considerable input on the buys and make recommendations. I also meet at least 2x a week with a new client until their buys with our team are performing well. I don’t relax until my clients are confident with our team managing their business. Additionally, I connect clients with essential team members, including our Shopify tech, who conducts quality assurance on crucial product pages for our clients.
AI and Tech Integrations
Both of these are mentioned in previous articles. Our team incorporates a PPC-learned, Chat GPT4 and a professional integration with Power My Analytics. With Chat GPT 4, we use predictive modeling for KWs and reporting analysis for insights. We utilize Power My Analytics dashboards for comprehensive and detailed data analysis. Both options are important since YRV Dynamics is invested in high-performing tech for its clients. Our team is also working with a multi-touch partner, as Google and Meta ClickIDs become less detectable via iOS17 or other platform updates. This will become more important as Google begins deprecating cookies starting January 2024. In other words, our team is prepped and ready for all advertising challenges.
Clients should demand their agencies have embedded tech solutions. Scam agencies live month-to-month. The last thing they want to do is develop long-term story-telling with their dashboards, nor will they have multi-touch solutions or any AI offerings. All they can offer is Excel sheets for dashboard visualization. They think short-term and maximize ways to get as much fee as possible in a 30- to 90-day period. Excel worked in 2010 but not for the details needed for 2024/2025. Scam agencies and contractors will offer excuses not to do this since dashboard technology means higher scrutiny for poor-performing campaigns. A top-performing agency wants to show its top-performing results. At YRV Dynamics, you get a premium dashboard as added value for working with us.
Case Studies and Examples of Great Work
Full transparent ad agencies offer various examples of their work. Specifically, where they took a client, tested, scaled, and proved their PPC hypothesis. YRV has seven case studies and twelve standard PPC articles dealing with improving performance- click here to view them. Your PPC agency or contractor should have a similar volume of case studies and article volume.
The same goes for proof of outstanding work. This should be highlighted and not hidden. Any agency should be able to share results across various platforms. These should be highlighted in their LinkedIn or page.
Swiss Army Knife
Examining their supplemental offerings is one final way to ensure your PPC contractor or agency is not a scam. These days, PPC is affected by a variety of factors. These include:
- Website: Optimizations to the path of conversion
- SEO Optimization
- Creative: Static/ Video
- Organic
- Email Campaigns
- Merchant Center/ Review/ Shopify Tech: high demand
Some of these, such as creative and site, affect ROAS and conversions more than others. However, your agency or contractor should have a way to work through challenges in any of the above areas. Scam agencies usually work in PPC buying only, or some media buying-creative hybrid.
Emergencies are hard to predict; at YRV Dynamics, professionals on staff work on all of the above verticals. This allows us to keep your ROAS strong; in many cases, these are simple adjustments — however, you want access to experts should something occur.
Ad Accounts
This is one of the most popular scams for agencies and contractors. Here, they build your ads manager for Google or Meta. After months of poor performance, you want to switch agencies. They’ll charge you a $5K to $20K “transfer fee” for your account. This is a very common scam; make sure you are the admin/owner of all your ad accounts and have fine print saying so. Any transfer fee is a scam. You should always own your account, period.
Follow your intuition or gut feeling regarding questionable advice from your agency or contractor. We also have the companion video below, delving deeper into this topic.
Follow our YouTube discussion on Avoiding Scam Agencies and Contractors. In the meantime, we have additional updates on our LinkedIn channel.
Yousaf Yunes is the CEO/ Lead Founder / Principal at YRV Dynamics, with more than 15 years of expertise in the advertising industry. He’s garnered a Top Rated Plus status on Upwork, earning a perfect job satisfaction score of 100% with twenty-one 5-star reviews from his Upwork clients. Yousaf earned certifications in Google Search and YouTube/Video and holds dual Blueprint certifications in Meta’s planning and buying. Yousaf has also won the Monty McKinney Award for the Institute of Advanced Advertising Studies (IAAS).
During his downtime, Yousaf is the lead moderator for the largest Meta group focused on Blueprint, known as “Facebook Blueprint Certification Prep,” which boasts a membership of over 30,000 individuals.
