I’m going to give you some advice on how to work with marketers.
But, before I get to the advice, I have to set it up with a story.
The story is about Wilhelm Steinitz, the first ever world chess champion, and it goes like this…
Steinitz was playing a game against another top player. After the game, the players went over the game. They discussed different ideas, and alternative moves that weren’t played.
While they were doing this, an unskilled amateur – in chess parlance, a “patzer” – kept interrupting and telling the masters what moves they should have played.
Steinitz, put up with this for as long as he could. But, finally, he snapped. He turned to the patzer and asked, “Sir, have you ever seen a monkey examine a watch?”
OK, what’s my point?
I was recently hired by a company to improve their PPC results. They were paying around £60 per lead, which was roughly breakeven. We set a target to get that down to £45.
So, I reworked their AdWords account and, straight off the bat, we were down to under £45 per lead. (more…)