Client Stories
Fool.co.uk
Richard Cartmell
My name is Richard Cartmel. I work as the marketing manager at Fool.co.uk. I've been at Fool.co.uk now for six years now. The company's been around for ten years, so we've been quite an established company, certainly, in this industry. We specialise in financial news and information.
Organic search is very important to us and pay-per-click is currently our biggest marketing channel.
Describe the situation before working with Efficient Frontier
When we first started about four years ago we were able to maintain some very prominent positions, but recently, as more and more people have got involved on this side of things it's just getting incredibly competitive. Prices have tripled, maybe even quadrupled over the last four years, so that's why we started looking around for some expertise.
Prior to working with Efficient Frontier, activity was fairly limited. We were concentrating on only certain verticals within our marketplace, specifically credit cards, a little bit of mortgage activity. But other than that, because it was predominantly run in-house, we just didn't have the time or the resources in order to expand, which was the second reason why we started looking for additional expertise. Efficient Frontier was instrumental in helping us establish new campaigns and explore other verticals, including savings, banking, loans.
Prior to that, though, we have actually run a couple of test campaigns with other third party agencies, but unfortunately, we just didn't feel that the fit was right and that they really understood the business. They weren't progressive enough for our liking.
What influenced your decision to move to Efficient Frontier?
I first came across Efficient Frontier when I was at a roundtable seminar which was run by e-consultancy. There were a couple of representatives from Efficient Frontier. There were actually a couple of representatives from most such agencies, and I was just really impressed with what Efficient Frontier said that they could do and what they could offer. More importantly, they seemed to have a science behind it, and they could actually explain an account for how and where they could help you.
I think the bid management system that Efficient Frontier uses is very dynamic in the fact that it's constantly reviewing the individual keywords, and that's where the resource is. That's where we needed to concentrate, and that's where we didn't have the time previously. So, the fact is there's a lot more transparency from the Efficient Frontier bid management system.
Prior to that, though, it was easy to identify the particularly profitable keywords, but it was difficult to actually try and improve other keywords that weren't converting so well.
The people at the agency has been one of the – well, perhaps not the biggest surprises, but everybody has been really impressed with certainly the account management handling and the skills the experience and the expertise of the people on our team at Efficient Frontier.
Managing search in-house is something, obviously, that we did previously. We did have some success with that, but we were very conscious of the fact that there is definitely a lot more opportunity out there, and until you actually get out there and speak to other people and get a better understanding of what they think they can deliver. And we were so pleased – we were delighted with the trial, and therefore, that's what's brought us here today and why we're continuing to work with Efficient Frontier. We were quite pleased with our credit card campaign. We could see the potential in the mortgages side of things; we just didn't have the resources in order to expand it. Efficient Frontier have definitely stepped in. And on top of that, they do offer a very reliable service.
What benefits have you experienced since working with Efficient Frontier?
When we first started working with Efficient Frontier, as I previously said, we had an existing campaigns live. So, the first thing they did was rather than increase the volume coming through these channels was explore the profitability, and they were able to open up a considerable profit margin, which was fantastic. Then using this new profit margin that's why they started – they used this to then start growing the volume, which is – so it's significant increase on the volume that's coming through.
When we first look at when we first handed the account to Efficient Frontier the integration was fairly seamless. Because we had an existing Adwords account they were able to wrap this under their umbrella. So, that was very easy. On top of that, we did also have Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search accounts which were nontransferable, but it was fairly easy to give access to Efficient Frontier. They simply took our existing campaigns and put it into a new portfolio from where they're managed now.
From a return on investment point we could not be more happy than the way things have gone. Transparency was another key issue for us, something that Efficient Frontier was able to offer, and that's one of the key reasons why we decided to go with them. We have 100 percent transparency. We have access to all of our search accounts so we can log in. We could go ahead and make changes if we so wished, but obviously, that would kind of defeat the purpose.
Technology is obviously massively important in this industry, and that's something that Efficient Frontier brings straight away to the table, but I think it's important that you need to have more than technology. You need to have an understanding of the marketplaces that you're going to be operating in, and also you need customer services experience. What the client service has been beyond our expectations by far.
A lot of the other agencies we dealt with or certainly spoke with, they operated on a very different strategy, and it was almost like a black box effect whereby we would be – we would offer them a CPA and they would go out and execute all search activity based on one CPA. So, to us, this meant this isn't really going to leverage volume, necessarily. What it would mean is that the search agency would then be trying to maximise their internal profits.
Yes. We do intend to work with Efficient Frontier moving forward for the foreseeable future. We think it's a great service they offer. We do recommend Efficient Frontier to a lot of partners on a regular basis.
