• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
(800) 689-1273
Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin
Prospect Genius logo

Prospect Genius

Menu
  • Services
    • Websites
      • CoreSite
      • Free Google Business Profile Website Alternative
    • SEO
      • CleanSlate
      • Directory Dominator
      • SEO Content Writing Services
    • A.I.
      • AI Optimization Quick Start
      • GEO – Generative Engine Optimization
      • AEO – Answer Engine Optimization
    • Social Media
      • SocialStart
      • SocialBuzz
      • SocialStream
    • Pay Per Click
      • Google Adwords
      • Facebook / Instagram Ads
      • Remarketing
    • Email Marketing
      • EmailStream
      • ReviewStream
    • Tools
      • PhoneSwap
      • CallTrax
      • Spaminator
      • EmailMask
      • WebFax
      • AdTrax
      • MapTrax
    • Google Business Profile
      • Google Business Profile Rescue
      • Google Review Rescue
      • Google Business Profile Optimization
      • Google Review StarSaver
  • Reviews
  • FAQ
  • About Us
    • Charity
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
Log In
You are here: Home / Archives for costs

Phone Package Upgrade: Scam or Necessity?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Has your phone package recently been upgraded? Are you confused about why the phone package upgrade raised your bill by a few extra dollars per month?
telephone
Some clients have been vocal about their confusion—which we always welcome—and have even shared their concerns about it with us. Now, we’d like to explain why we have to handle the phone package the way we do.

First, Here’s What You Need to Know

Before we dive into our explanation, let’s make a few points clear:

  • The level 1 upgrade results in a 2.9% increase (about $9) in your monthly bill.
  • Your package is only upgraded after you exceed 100 minutes of phone time on your CallTrax™ line.
  • This is a pass-through cost. We’re not charging this fee to earn more profit, but rather to cover the increased cost we incur by buying more minutes for your campaign.
  • We don’t automatically build these extra minutes into your plan because we don’t want clients to have to pay for them unless they’re actually using them.

Now that we’ve established the facts, let’s get into why the upgrade is truly necessary.

It Keeps Our Interests Aligned With Yours

Why can’t Prospect Genius just cover these extra costs on your behalf?
The answer has to do with keeping our interests aligned with yours. You see, as your LeadTrax™ campaign performs better and better, it will generate more calls from customers. That’s why you hired us, after all. But if we were to pay out of pocket for all of our clients who exceeded their allotted phone minutes because their campaigns were too effective, then we would be incentivized to do a worse job so that you receive fewer calls (thus minimizing our payments).
Obviously, that would be against your best interests. You want us incentivized to send you as many quality leads as your business can handle. That’s why we pass the phone costs on to you. The way we see it, asking you to pay a nominal fee of $9 to the phone company is worth it if it enables us to continue working hard for your business.
If we didn’t do this, then we would wind up footing the phone bill for some ultra-successful clients, which could actually do some serious damage to our own finances. Take, for example, a taxi company in NYC that we work with. This particular business was fielding so many calls that it once racked up $900 in phone charges in one month! We wouldn’t be able to continue to do good work for all of our clients if we had to pay out of pocket every time that happened.

It Keeps Us Motivated to Do Good Work

The good news is that, as long as you pay the nominal fee for extra minutes, we have only the incentive to provide you with quality advertising services and to send you the valuable leads you want.
That’s what sets us apart from pay-per-lead advertisers. Unlike them, Prospect Genius’s bottom line is not dependent on the number of calls we send you. Pay-per-lead advertisers, on the other hand, earn their profit by charging you for each lead they send to you. This means they have the incentive to send as many leads as possible, even when they aren’t legitimate or relevant to your business. As a result, low-quality leads are common with these advertisers because they’re trying to maximize profits.
Thankfully, our flat-fee model means we’re free to only do good work for you, no matter what. That’s probably why you chose to hire Prospect Genius in the first place. But if our finances were suddenly tied to the number of leads we sent you, this would inevitably change. Again, that’s why we pass the phone costs on to you.

It’s a Small Price to Pay for a Successful Campaign

If you’re still unsure about paying an extra $9 per month, try viewing phone minutes as just another minor business expense. In this context, the phone package upgrade should be a no-brainer.
For instance, let’s say you’re a traveling repairman and you have a set budget for gas every month. In May, you unexpectedly start booking more jobs and, because you’re traveling so much, you end up surpassing your gas budget by the end of week three. Would you increase your gas budget to cover the fourth week, expecting that your increase in jobs will more than make up for it? Or would you pass on any incoming jobs for the rest of the month because you refuse to pay a little more for gas?
Or, let’s say you own a car audio and accessories shop. You have a set budget for the electricity bill each month, but in December, you suddenly get a lot of new customers looking for holiday gifts. Would you take the extra jobs and run up a slightly higher utility bill as a result? Or would you stop accepting new customers as soon as you reached your limit?
In either of these scenarios, we’re guessing you would probably accept the slight increase in costs in exchange for more jobs. Paying a little extra for phone minutes shouldn’t be any different.

Ultimately, It’s About Transparency

Some other advertising companies avoid the issue of a phone package upgrade by building extra phone costs into their monthly prices. As we explained in an earlier blog post,

Every company in this business must pay phone line charges. No matter who you deal with, those minutes must be paid for. If an SEO company never raises their phone package price or never adjusts your bill to allow for more minutes, that means they’ve been unnecessarily charging you for the biggest package from the get-go.

But we don’t think that’s honest or fair to the client. Wouldn’t you rather start with a lower baseline price and then only pay extra for minutes that you’re actually using?
We think our approach to clients’ phone packages is the only way to remain open and transparent. It also keeps us doing honest, good work for your local business. While you may not be ecstatic to see your bill go up, remember that the upgrade is just a side effect of a strong, vital campaign.

Are You Spending Your Online Advertising Dollars Wisely?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Throwing Money Away

Are you getting your money’s worth from your online advertising expenses?
That’s the question many business owners should be asking themselves. You already know that having a web presence is crucial and that hiring an online advertising professional is worth the investment—but are you making the right investment for your company? Once you’ve decided to hire a provider, it’s a little more difficult to figure out if you’re actually getting the best return possible.

What Are the Options?

There are advertising options for every budget, and they can be categorized into a three-tier system of pricing.

  • Top-tier providers are suited for large, competitive markets and undefined geographic boundaries, and are therefore very expensive.
  • Mid-tier providers are perfectly serviceable for niche markets and narrow geographic boundaries, and are therefore more affordable than top-tier providers.
  • Bottom-tier providers are entry-level online advertisers who provide one-size-fits-all marketing, and are therefore considerably cheap.

To simplify matters, we’ll use general terms and average rates to discuss the advertising providers in each tier (as specific services and price points vary from provider to provider). Obviously, the tier that you’ll want to use will depend on your company’s marketing budget as well as its needs. At the end of the day, you want to get the best possible online advertising services that you can afford for your business.

Top-Tier Providers

In this tier, clients have a range of advertising options to choose from. However, the two most prominent options are premium outside marketers and in-house marketers.
OUTSIDE MARKETERS
Premium marketing services from outside providers generally cost around $10,000 per month or more. Not surprisingly, these services are typically reserved for large corporations that have broad national or international campaigns. Regional campaigns (in New England or on the West Coast, for example) with a more focused market will cost maybe half, but that’s still in the ballpark of $5,000. Regardless, let’s use $10,000 as the baseline price. That adds up to $120,000 spent on Internet marketing services in one year.
So, what are you getting for $120,000 per year? You’re paying for high-end, 100% customized services from a small firm that only takes on a handful of clients at a time. You’ll get personal attention at all hours of the day. Your hired specialists won’t have tons of data points to work from, given that they typically don’t focus on more than a few clients in a given year, but they’ll still be able to draw on experience from previous and other current clients in order to evolve their approach when necessary.
IN-HOUSE MARKETERS
The other top-tier option is to hire an in-house team that performs numerous online marketing activities for your company. This will involve hiring at least one promotions specialist on a yearly salary that falls between $50,000 and $55,000. (Keep in mind, costs for in-house employees go beyond salary; you must also account for health benefits, personal equipment, and other overhead costs.) However, if you want an efficient marketing team, then you’ll want to hire a couple of additional specialists, as well. If you hire just two promotions specialists, you’re already looking at a yearly cost of $100,000 to $110,000 in salary alone.
What are you getting from your in-house marketing team? You’re getting a team that, by definition, is under your employ and therefore at your beck and call. Attention to your campaign can’t get more personalized than that. However, this team is only working on one campaign, so it won’t have the benefit of A/B testing and multiple data points that come with an outside provider who has many different clients. This means they may not be able to spot trends in updated search algorithms or test new techniques with as much confidence.
THE WINNER
With the average costs of both options being relatively equal, we’d say that premium services from an outside provider will get you the biggest bang for your buck. However, they’re both viable and effective options.

Mid-Tier Providers

On the other end of the spectrum, mid-tier providers are for local businesses that are marketing to a niche audience in a restricted geographic area. These are plumbers, electricians, handymen, and similar businesses. Prospect Genius is a mid-tier provider.
This type of provider may cost between $300 and $500 per month. With these providers, a campaign is roughly 20% customized, with the remainder following a standardized procedure that’s used for all other clients. Although the vast majority of small businesses have similar advertising needs and face similar issues, mid-tier providers will work with clients to tailor campaigns as much as possible within the framework of their program. These kinds of campaigns are effective because small, localized markets aren’t very competitive and don’t require as much legwork to get off the ground.
What are you getting for $300 to $500 per month? You get all the online advertising essentials: a fully functional website with custom content, Google+ Local optimization, directory listings, social media exposure, and (usually) performance reports. Mid-tier providers typically work with hundreds and hundreds of clients who all have similar needs, so they’re exposed to a high number of data points that allows for accurate A/B testing. This means they will be able to detect patterns with different search engines and continually test new techniques to create the most effective strategy possible.
With mid-tier providers, there’s also plenty of room for clients to grow. Typical mid-tier providers will offer a wide selection of campaign upgrades and add-on features that clients may take advantage of at their own discretion. Popular expansion features include social media updates, blog posts, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clients usually start out paying for the bread-and-butter package, but over time they might like their campaign’s results so much that they want to add to it to make it even stronger.

Bottom-Tier Providers

Otherwise known as “one-size-fits-all” marketers, these providers cater to small, local businesses who don’t wish to spend much money on advertising. You’ll find a lot of snake oil in this tier. These providers usually cost about $100 per month because their services and strategies apply to every one of their clients with little to no variation whatsoever. They sell the same exact product to every single client, which is how they keep their costs down. Some of the better known providers in this category are Yodle and 99 Calls.
Well, $100 a month sounds pretty cheap! But what are you getting out of it? You’re getting a one- or two-page website that’s identical to many of the provider’s other clients, as well as written content that’s been outsourced to a non-native English speaker. What’s more, most of that content is duplicated from one client to the next, with only minor details like company name and location changed. (As we all know, Google penalizes duplicate content.) But, in a way, their practices make sense: With $50 of your $100 going to overhead costs, and another $25 going to profit, these providers only have about $25 to actually spend on your campaign per month. They’re doing all they can afford to do.
Unlike mid-tier providers, who not only offer room for customization but also room for growth, most bottom-tier providers don’t offer any expansion features. What you see is what you get. The providers that do offer expansion features essentially just upgrade you to a campaign similar to a mid-tier one. In these cases, where they clearly have the resources to provide you with a better service, they should have just sold you the right solution from the start.

Go for the Best 

When selecting an online advertiser, you should apply the same logic that you use when you’re selecting tools for your trade. When you go to the hardware store to purchase a new tool for your plumbing or remodeling business, do you buy the cheapest tools—or do you buy the best tools? You shouldn’t spend beyond your means, but you also shouldn’t skimp on quality, either.
Whether you’re currently in the market for a new online advertiser or you’ve been using the same one for years, keep this in mind: You get what you pay for.

Want to Cut Back on Advertising Costs This Winter?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Each year, we hear from a handful of clients who wish to decrease their spending during the winter. Most often, it’s due to the overwhelming costs of the holiday season. We want to make sure small business owners are able to enjoy the holidays with their families without stressing about their online advertising, so we’ve put together a guide for cutting back on advertising costs without doing long-term damage.
Here’s what you should, and shouldn’t, do when you want to temporarily minimize your Internet marketing expenses.

Definitely…

Create a budgeting plan in advance. If you anticipate difficulty paying for advertising during the winter months—whether it’s due to holidays or your company’s slow season—you can actually plan ahead. Prospect Genius offers flexible financing, so if you’re expecting heavier cash flow during the spring and summer than in the winter, you can pay extra ahead of time. Instead of paying the same amount every month, regardless of your company’s fluctuating profits, you can choose to pay more while you have a surplus and pay less while you’re tightening your belt.
For example, if you’re signed up for our $299/month Core program, you could pay $50 extra per month from March through November while you have increased profits, and then you would only have to pay $75 in December and $75 in January. This allows you to keep your online presence strong, prepare for the seasonal increase in demand, and beat out your competition that didn’t made such a wise decision.

Feel Free To…

Pause your pay-per-click campaign (if you have one). This type of advertising program is designed to turn on and off very easily without causing damage to your overall web presence. Because you pay for clicks as they come in, you can choose to stop the campaign, and all that will happen is that you will stop seeing PPC leads and site visits until you resume payment.
If you’re serious about decreasing your spending and you don’t mind your business’s leads taking a hit, this measure could really help. We recommend it especially if you provide seasonal services like landscaping or junk hauling, which are naturally slow during the winter. You can save the PPC costs and campaign management fees while only missing out on a small amount of traffic.

Do NOT…

Stop your SEO campaign, under any circumstances. SEO is a lifestyle. Since search engine optimization is an ongoing, strategically tiered and integrated process, it must be kept consistently intact. There is no “pause” button. As SEO providers, we must create, update, and maintain many listings for your business. If we have to take all of your listings down because you stopped your campaign, then your web presence will take an enormous hit.
In fact, if you do toy around with your online presence by stopping and starting your SEO, you run the risk of Google perceiving your actions as spam. If that happens, you could be looking at a very long delay before you recover. For example, some people affected by Google’s algorithm update nicknamed “Penguin” took action to rectify their infractions and were left waiting 12 months to find out whether those changes actually worked! All those people just had to sit and wait, hoping that they would recover, because it took Google 12 months to roll out an update to Penguin’s accompanying filter. You don’t want to be like those unfortunate people and put your entire web presence in limbo for a full year just to save money for two or three months.

We’re Here to Help

As our mission statement says, we exist to help small businesses thrive. Our bottom line is your success. We want you to enjoy the holidays without stressing about your company’s advertising budget or compromising your company’s well-being. Please don’t hesitate to call or e-mail us if you’d like to discuss your options for decreasing advertising costs this winter.

When Pay-Per-Click Becomes Pay-Per-Search

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

We have a lot of clients who like to periodically search for their business on Google. Understandably, they’re curious as to how their campaign is performing and, if they’re pay-per-click clients, they want to see how their sponsored ads look on the search results page. But here’s the thing: Frequently googling your company can actually sabotage your campaign.
This is especially true for companies enrolled in any type of pay-per-click advertising, particularly one using Google AdWords. Here’s why.

Impressions, Clicks, and Quality Scores

The performance of your ad largely depends on the ratio of passive views to active clicks. An inflated number of views means an inflated cost per click. But why?
As we’ve discussed previously, AdWords uses a Quality Score system to ultimately determine the cost that a given account will have to pay per click of ads and keywords. Since Google only wants to endorse “quality” content, a low Quality Score means you’ll have to pay a much higher cost per click if you want your ads to be displayed.
An account’s overall Quality Score is highly influenced by click-through rate (CTR) and relevance. A low CTR or lack of relevance will significantly decrease your overall Quality Score. While it’s easy to achieve relevance—simply target ads by keyword and location—it’s a little more challenging to boost an ad’s CTR.
CTR is calculated by comparing the number of “impressions” (how many times the ad appears) versus the number of “clicks” (how many times a viewer actually clicks on the ad). So when you’re continually googling your company’s name and search terms to check out your sponsored advertisement, you’re spiking the number of impressions without adding to the number of clicks. In effect, you’re lowering the CTR of your own ad.
Unfortunately, this effect doesn’t stay exclusive to the particular ad or ad group in question. If you have multiple cases of low CTRs, then your whole AdWords account will ultimately be downgraded. As PPCHero explains, “If you have a lot of low CTR ads in your ad groups, they could be contributing to a low Quality Score since AdWords considers all of your ads when calculating your scores.”
And, as we’ve covered, a low overall Quality Score means higher costs for you. In a nutshell: By frequently googling your company, you’re driving up your own PPC costs.

Don’t Learn the Hard Way

Case in point: We’ve had numerous clients in the past who did serious damage to their PPC campaigns just by searching Google for their company’s ads too frequently. One client in particular actually spiked their cost per click from $22 to $31!
We understand the temptation to see how your campaign is performing, but you’re actively holding it back by constantly turning to Google’s search bar. Don’t make the same mistake that our client made. Don’t be an active participant in the downfall of your own PPC campaign.

Seek an Alternative to Googling

We wouldn’t tell you to stop googling yourself without having a viable solution for you.
If the reason that you’re always typing your name into Google’s search bar is that you want to track your campaign’s performance, the solution is simple: Find an online advertising company that offers tracking features as part of their program. At Prospect Genius, all of our clients have unfettered access to all of their account’s call logs, leads, and other reports so they can view their campaign’s progress right from the Client Portal—without having to resort to Google.
If you already have access to these types of features but can’t seem to kick the habit in moments of weakness, just remind yourself of all the damage you’re doing with every search. It won’t be easy at first, especially when boredom or curiosity takes over, but it will be well worth the sacrifice.
For further guidance, call Prospect Genius today!

Prospect Genius logo

Contact Us

Prospect Genius
279 Troy Rd
Ste 9 #102
Rensselaer, NY 12144

Business Hours

Mon – Fri: 9am – 6pm ET

 (800) 689-1273
 hello@prospectgenius.com

Let’s Connect!

Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin

What Drives Us?

Our passion is helping small businesses thrive. It’s why we get out of bed every day. Too many business owners are cheated and lied to every day so we see it as our duty to be a beacon of truth, a safe harbor, in an often unscrupulous industry.

Client Portal App


Helpful Links

  • Case Studies
    • Negative Review Attack
    • Resiliency of SEO Strategies
    • Facebook Ads for Growth
    • Google PPC Ads Double Calls
    • Facebook Ads vs Google Ads
    • SEO Brings Online Success
    • GBP Optimization
    • Prospect Genius > Home Advisor
    • CleanSlate Creates NAP Win
  • Professional Answering Services
  • Integrity Pledge
  • Porting a CallTrax Phone Number
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • About
  • FAQ
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Sign up for our newsletter!

Join our mailing list and receive regular updates on how to effectively market your small business, along with exclusive service promotions.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.
Suspended Map Listing?

Just 2 failed attempts at reinstatement and your listing is gone forever! Luckily, we have a nearly 100% success rate!!

Google Business Profile Rescue

Don't Waste Your PPC Budget

PPC ads will quickly drain your budget if you don’t optimize them well.

Learn About Our PPC Services