ePPC

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Digital Marketing Manager for an international route coach service provider. Our HQ is located in Tallinn, Estonia but we operate in 7 countries and have local marketing managers in 4 countries. My responsibility is to support local marketing managers with digital know-how and ensure efficiency of our digital marketing activities.

For what projects/services did your company hire ePPC?

After I joined the company, I started to critically review existing digital marketing activities and noticed an opportunity to improve several areas, one of them being PPC marketing, especially in Google ad network. With having a general understanding of Google's advertising options myself, I needed a reliable partner with expertise knowledge.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to update our messages and use possible new ad formats to improve our rankings and increase traffic and sales through the website.

How did you select this vendor?

I sent a brief about our goals and needs to several potential agencies in Estonia and abroad, being honest about the fact that they will be compared to their competitors. The selected agencies were asked to review our ad accounts and propose techniques and solutions to make our advertising efforts more effective. We received a few analysis and after a virtual presentation we decided to cooperate with ePPC. The whole marketing team was involved and the decision was unanimous.

Describe the project in detail.

The project doesn't have a specific scope as it is an ongoing project with multiple sub-projects. We started off with analysing our existing ad accounts and then rebuilding a new structure for more clarity and effectiveness. ePPC proposed different solutions and has been very patient and quick to answer all of my doubts, questions and concerns in a very professional way. They have been thorough and proactive in finding out our goals.

What was the team composition?

We have a team of 3 people whom we are actively communicating with but as far as I have understood there are also a few more people involved behind the scenes. Karl, the owner, is personally present and available in case we run into anything more complicated than usual.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Since we have been working with ePPC for less than half a year and a little while ago we had to pause everything due to the coronavirus crisis that is affecting our business very directly, we have not been able to measure the actual value to business results yet. Setting up the new accounts took a bit more time than we expected but that was completely due to our own delay, so the accounts didn't really have enough time to start bringing in effective results as of yet.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication has been very quick and professional. In the beginning I had lots of questions and thoughts to be clarified, ePPC team handled that very well and always replied promptly. Since our team is international, we have had online meetings via Google Hangout as well as in-person meetings in their office. We've always set up a meeting agenda beforehand so everyone is on the same page and that has worked out very well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I think the most impressive part is the extent of their knowledge and proactive attitude to make sure that client's expectations are met. It is not comparable at all with our previous service provider because I have learned a lot more from the ePPC team than I did with a previous one. ePPC team knows exactly what and why they are doing.

Are there any areas for improvement?

If any, I expected to see a bit more analytical approach to the measurement of KPIs, but again, since our cooperation is so fresh, there wasn't too much to analyse yet.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a digital marketing manager of a B2B product within a large international company that mainly operates in European countries. They run a lot of other financial products, but the one I’m working on is a fast and secure business loan product.

What challenge were you trying to address with ePPC?

We have a partnership with ePPC for nine countries in the European market. We wanted to keep one point of contact for all operations related to digital marketing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ePPC is mainly helping us with the daily operations of our search engine marketing (SEM) accounts. They handle support interactions with the Google managers that cover the countries we’re operating in. They do everything related to the SEM field on Google Ads, Bing, and several platforms that are native to the countries we operate in, such as Seznam in the Czech Republic. Depending on the country, this channel brings quite a substantial amount of website traffic. They’ve also participated in the initial stages of entering new markets by providing market research.

What is the team composition?

I’m the most engaged person from my unit, and I mostly interact with the account manager from ePPC’s side. We’ve had two different account managers over four years. I’ve also met three different assistants from different locations. Karl (CEO) is involved in strategic subjects.

How did you come to work with ePPC?

I inherited them when I started with my company. They were covering four countries at that point. I looked at how they were working and dropped one of the agencies working on different markets, consolidating everything on ePPC’s part because they were doing a better job.

How much have you invested with them?

They’re managing a yearly budget of €2 million (approximately $2.2 million USD). We have an hourly rate with them, and we utilize 40–70 hours per month of their combined team’s time. That mostly goes to our key account manager but also includes substitute persons and analytics. We spend $50,000–$200,000 per year on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

I joined the company in January 2016. I was replacing the digital marketing manager completely and became the sole person responsible for the digital marketing of my unit’s B2B product. ePPC does a lot of other work for our consumer products, but I’m not part of that. The contract with them was fully ongoing when I joined.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They’re professional and have a hands-on approach. We can rely on them to do whatever needs to be done. We operate in an extremely competitive, niche, and narrow market that has low-volume click and conversion rates. Despite having a lot competition in each country, ePPC has maintained performance throughout the years, staying within the limits of our acquisition costs. They’ve properly managed and stayed within budgets. Whenever there have been issues, they’ve reported them quickly. We’re a company of oriented growth, and they’ve maintained yearly growth.

How did ePPC perform from a project management standpoint?

They definitely maintain a very professional level of project management, from the setup and organization of meetings to the reporting of issues and action reports on what’s been done and what needs to be achieved. We have no issues whatsoever. We run weekly meetings to discuss all the issues that come up. We keep weekly and monthly automated reports to gain insights on different issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are probably no highlights, because it’s a continuous struggle, but they are persistent at finding bits of optimization that help us stay afloat and competitive. They also maintain high positioning for keywords within budget constraints. Their consistent performance is amazing to me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’ve been utterly polite throughout the communication. Perhaps this hasn’t been necessary, but they could’ve been braver and more consistent in some cases. They always argued their positions, but if all arguments are equal, the passion wins. They could be more persistent in sustaining their position in some cases, but it’s a stretch.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Top Connect is one of the world’s leading alternative roaming service providers. Our products include affordable global mobile connections and management solutions for B2C, B2B and IoT connectivity. Top Connect is a fully licensed MVNO and we provide Sponsored Roaming and e-Profile solutions for various service providers. I am responsible for E-Commerce and Marketing

For what projects/services did your company hire ePPC?

We launched our e-commerce site www.travelsim.com and needed the AdWords partner who can run campaigns globally and in different languages.

What were your goals for this project?

To increase the customer intake and sales revenue and decrease the acquisition costs.

How did you select this vendor?

We found them via referral. We have used different companies for our AdWords campaigns but the results have been best ones with PPC. That´s why we only continue with them now.

Describe the project in detail.

We have worked with them now for more than 3 years. When we have a new product to launch, we discuss the preliminary strategy and start testing. We have campaigns running in 5 languages (English, French, Italia, Spanish, German and in more than 40 countries. Day to day optimization is very important for us in different markets to maintain the desired acquisition cost.

What was the team composition?

We have a dedicated account manager+ support team from PPC (depends on the campaign, language and destination country)

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have made constant progress form 2017, month by month. Our revenue has increased by 620% and the number of new customer has increased by 700%. Around 74% of this growth has come from AdWords. We also launched very successfully with them our new distributor in Brazil. The initial AdWords campaigns gave the strong platform and growth for our future success there.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have weekly discussions about the projects. the co-operation has been tight and very effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are always result-minded, proactive, responsible and flexible. And nice people as persons :-)

Are there any areas for improvement?

It´s very hard to tell, because we constantly try to improve the KPI`s and constantly try to improve the results.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Synctuition. We have a meditation app that’s available all over the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with ePPC?

We’re from Estonia – a small country with a population of 1.4 million – so growing our business locally was never an option. For us, exporting and selling in the United States, Canada, and Australia was our goal from the get-go. From there, we scouted for the best agency with knowledge of international sales. Their owner has a lot of experience and is highly regarded in the Baltic regions.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a dedicated team with them. They look over our campaigns all the time. What I like about them is that they’re unafraid to give suggestions about how to structure campaigns. At the same time, I’ve worked with agencies in the past and their reporting hasn’t been adequate. With ePPC at the moment, it’s excellent. Their feedback is excellent as well, and that’s the reason why we’ve been able to grow since we developed campaigns in January 2019.

Then, our budget was around €5,000–€6,000 per month, but now, our advertising budget is around €800,000, and in April we’ll do €1.5 million.

Because of their recommendations, we heavily rely on Google Ad campaigns, and later on, we started with Facebook. We also had some internal technological issues that prevented us from starting on Facebook earlier. ePPC is so closely tied to Google — they’re an official growth partner — which means they have immediate insight reporting from google. We’ve gotten really professional help from the first day onwards. We develop the content ourselves, but they supervise everything.

What is the team composition?

I’m lucky enough that the owner of the company, Carl (Founder, ePPC), is our main point of contact. Next to him, we have at least four people working with our campaigns. There’s also a couple of people on everyday numbers.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since 2020, we’ve ranked number four in the United States in the health and fitness category on the app store thanks to ePPC. Google’s actually written a case-study on us because our growth using ePPC and their tools were so great.

We increase in downloads every day, and we haven’t had any significant bumps either. Any bumps are a result of the systems we use – glitches in Facebook or Google.

How did ePPC perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent. I don’t have anything negative to say. I’ve tried some other agencies and businesses in the past and, usually, they’re not active enough and don’t provide enough feedback. With ePPC, the feedback is clear enough for us to grow our advertising spend every month. Their advice gives us the confidence to spend more and more money.

We email every day, and we have video calls in the middle of the week with the whole time. We also schedule calls if necessary.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Usually, small businesses and startups like up are venture capital-funded. We’re self-funded, however, so that meant our goal was to be positive from the get-go, and we received ROI immediately. This is unheard of in our field. All the money we’ve invested in advertising we will receive back in a couple of weeks.