1&1 Search Engine Marketing Service Review

I’m not one to hate on the other guy, but people should have access to information about the products and services they’re buying.

I recently received an email from 1&1 containing the subject line:

1&1 Search Engine Marketing Service: Be Found Online Faster

Ah, search engine marketing from a hosting company. This should be interesting. So I opened up the email to see their offer:

Are you looking for a way to position yourself more favorably on search engines like Google™ and Bing™, but find yourself lacking the time and/or knowledge to make it happen? We’ve got the perfect solution for you – 1&1 Search Engine Marketing Service.

Our search engine experts will work closely with you to make sure:

Your website appears prominently on all the major search engines

There are targeted ads to your intended customers

Local advertising of your website appears in your area

Order 1&1 Search Engine Marketing Service now and be found online faster. Packages start at just $49.99/month*.

Sweet! Only $50 per month and my business will appear prominently on all major search engines. So I clicked through to their offer page. The offer page contained this really cool tool that allowed me to pick my industry, set my monthly budget, and then provided me with an intended advertising success projection:

Awesome! $1250 per month in advertising and these guys are projecting 2,659 potential clients per month! I’ll be retiring in no time! Of course, this is a “non-binding estimation” but even if they do one one hundredth of that (26 clients per month for non-math majors), I’ll still be on easy street.

Full Disclosure: I’ve never used 1&1’s Search Engine Marketing Service

However, I have managed several law firm paid search marketing campaigns. And let me tell you, what 1&1 is promising is absolutely outrageous!

But it gets worse.

If you click on More Product and Pricing Details, you see that they charge:

• One time setup fee: $79 – 3 months minimum contract term. $99 – 1 month minimum contract term.
• 1&1 Search Engine Marketing Service Monthly Fee

And the service fee which varies based upon your monthly click budget:

Ahhhhhhh!!!!

So, if you plan on spending $50 on clicks, you pay 1&1 49.99 to manage your account! That’s about a 100% management fee. Nice.

As I wrote above, I’ve never used 1&1 for search engine marketing. Frankly, based on this offer, I don’t have to in order to know that it’s a complete waste of money. If you’ve used this service, and have been satisfied with the performance, I would absolutely love to hear from you.

Paid search marketing, especially for legal services, is extremely expensive and highly competitive. While there are a variety of acceptable ways to structure paid search management, paying 100% of an ad budget is absolutely ridiculous. In my experience, for budget-based management, 10-20% is pretty standard.

Before you pay for any web marketing, or really anything for that matter, get informed! It’s really a shame that people actually sign-up for this kind of stuff.

And if I’m misunderstanding something about this offer, by all means, let me know.