Page Zero Media

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work with a global fitness brand as a digital marketing manager. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

We predominately use them to run our PPC campaigns.

What was the scope of their involvement?

There wasn’t any discovery, as our company has worked with them for many years. Currently, they’re running PPC campaigns through Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and Microsoft. We create the content for the ads and provide it to Page Zero.

We also use them for one off-projects as needed within other departments of our company. They’ve done a bit of SEO as well.

What is the team composition?

We normally only work with an account manager, who is one of their directors. Our second touchpoint is Andrew (President), who joins on larger calls and discusses issues relating to payment.

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

They were already onboard when I joined the company so I’m not sure how we found them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $125,000–$150,000 CAD (approximately $97,000–$117,000) with them

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2015.

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

We’ve been running ads based on the ROAS we see, and we’ve achieved our target for YoY ROAS. The initial target was 3.5 times our investment, and then we moved on to 5 times, and 8 times, and finally 10–11 times.

How did Page Zero Media perform from a project management standpoint?

They are very responsive in terms of communication, even if we reach out beyond work hours. If there’s anything to be executed, they’ll do it on time. If we have any questions or queries, they’ll come back with alternatives and solutions.  

I’m sure they use project management software for other clients, but there’s nothing we use to them on a one-to-one basis.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their responsiveness is pretty quick.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be more forthcoming in terms of delivering ideas, especially based on what other brands and companies are doing in our sector. We’re always looking for them to execute, but I would love to collaborate from the other end as well and get some insight into the industry from them. In other words, I’d like us to experiment more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Definitely get their references. Additionally, structure your thoughts and requirements in a documented format. We put everything in a properly organized folder with strong naming conventions to help them set up. Even if we assume that one person will understand the requirements, these structures will help others understand them as well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Savorly, an e-commerce company that specializes in cocktail mixes and other food items that customers can’t usually buy at a grocery store. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

We hired Page Zero to help with our PPC campaigns on Google after the 2020 Christmas rush as things slowed back to normal.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Page Zero helps us with our paid ads campaign specifically on Google. We also do Instagram and Facebook ads, but we don’t engage the team for those efforts. They mainly double down on Google Ads as they guide us in that area. We sell niche products, so people search for specific words to find us. As a result, paid Google Ads is the right avenue for us. 

The team works on Google Ads by mining data and creating a strategy for us. They also try to get a sense of our existing strategies and products first, and then they target all search tools in that direction. The process is iterative, so the strategies also evolve over time. As our business evolves, so do the campaigns. They’ve assigned a team leader that I collaborate with as we pivot our account to different directions. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with around four people from Page Zero. A few technical people have been involved as we set up our accounts.  

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

Interestingly, Page Zero was our client first. They found us for a corporate gifting project, and it was our first time doing that. Around 2–3 months later, our engagement came full circle. As the slowness of the winter season settled in, I started looking for ways to grow the business. I searched on Google for the best PPC ad agencies in Ontario, and Page Zero came up with great ratings. They had a truly robust profile online, and given that we had a positive experience working together, I decided it was time to flip the script.

From there, I reached out to them independently to hear about their services without any mention of the previous work we did for them. They recognized us, though, and then they reached out to us directly. I did vet other companies, but we ultimately decided to go with Page Zero. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $10,000–$12,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. 

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

We’ve developed as a business, and Page Zero is driving traffic to our website. They’ve doubled — maybe even tripled — the traffic that goes into our website.

Moreover, Page Zero has been an excellent team, and I have nothing bad to say about them. They’re cost-effective, and the team is highly approachable. Their owner understands our high-level goals and communicates them to the team members working with us weekly and monthly. He's hands-on with the project, which is great, and he’s a visionary — a great shoulder to lean on when we need any general advice in the campaign. 

How did Page Zero Media perform from a project management standpoint?

Page Zero’s project management is fantastic. The team is truly stellar; there’s no doubt about that. To communicate, we talk via email weekly and over the phone monthly. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication and depth of knowledge are impressive. Everyone is skillful and knowledgeable in their areas. I’ve interviewed a number of agencies before, and I find that some companies lack the depth of knowledge to execute campaigns. Not to be too critical of those firms, but a lot of our conversations have been unconvincing. By contrast, Page Zero never feels like that to me. The depth of their knowledge drives everything, and they deliver.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

They can set up shop near our location for them to be more available. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear vision of your goals. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an alternative financing organization that fuels small business success. We provide fast, easy access to working capital. We serve small and mid-sized businesses across Canada, the US, and all US territories. I am the director of marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

The collaboration started before I joined the company, but our primary reason for hiring them was to help us attract new clients who could use our services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We used them for our PPC campaigns. They identified useful keywords within our industry, and they manage all our strategy, bidding, and adjustments within our campaigns. They make recommendations for our website and landing pages to optimize our results. Most of their work is through Google Ads, and we've branched out and tried dynamic search ads, retargeting ads, and other marketing options.

What is the team composition?

We work primarily with one individual who manages our whole account. Their leadership team is very involved, and our contact is at the VP level. There is also a team that helps with our visual ads and other assets.

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

Our CEO found them. They had a very good reputation, and he felt they'd be a good fit for our organization.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work began in May 2018, and we've expanded into other services that they offer. The collaboration is ongoing.

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

Our PPC initiatives are the largest drivers of traffic to our website over the past year and a half. Our lead count has grown through those efforts, and the quality of leads improves as we get more data to use in our strategies.

How did Page Zero Media perform from a project management standpoint?

They are thorough and willing to answer questions. They go the extra mile, and they help us solve problems. They’re committed to growing our organization holistically. We're always in communication via email, and we have a scheduled call every two weeks or once a month.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're hands-on and approachable, and they have a lot of experience. They're very forward thinking, and they always try to find the best outcomes for us. I'm so happy with their work, commitment, and dedication to our organization. They know how to drive the best quality leads at the lowest cost.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They do everything we need them to do, and I can't think of anything they should change at this time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open about your objectives, and give them as much feedback as possible. If you are forthright and open with information, they will be more successful.

Please describe your company and your position there.

ClubExpress is a SaaS platform to help clubs and associations run their complete front office and back office. I am the co-founder and CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Page Zero Media?

We hired Page Zero to run our PPC campaigns on Google and Bing (Microsoft/Yahoo).

What were your goals for this project?

Build and maintain an effective PPC campaign to drive prospective customers to our website.

How did you select this vendor?

Andrew Goodman, the founder of Page Zero Media, literally wrote the book on Google Adwords and PPC advertising. After listening to an interview and reading some of his articles, I decided to contact him and see if they would be willing to work with a smaller company.

Describe the project in detail.

As noted above, the project was to build and maintain an effective PPC campaign to drive prospective customers to our website. They have full admin access to our accounts on Google and Microsoft and work diligently every month to improve and fine-tune our campaigns, including bidding strategies, new keywords, A-B testing, and staying on top of the latest developments in the PPC industry.

What was the team composition?

We work with just one senior staff member who runs our account.

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

The campaign has been a success from day 1, driving prospective customers to our website and sales team. I get accurate and detailed reports every month and my contact is always available to answer questions and listen to suggestions.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

As good as it can possibly be.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their professionalism, knowledge and experience are exceptional and have served ClubExpress well. These guys really know their stuff!

Are there any areas for improvement?

The first engineer assigned to our account was perhaps a little too "techie" for us. While we're in the technology business, PPC advertising is outside our area of expertise. After a few months, we asked to be reassigned to another engineer; this was done immediately and has worked out much better.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the e-commerce manager at Williams Food Equipment, which sells high-end and brand name kitchen wares.

What challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

We needed a firm to replace our existing vendor’s PPC services. That company’s performance did not meet our expectations.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They handle all of our all of our PPC advertising on Google AdWords, Google Shopping, and Bing marketing services. The team operates according to the seasonality of our business by ramping up on AdWords during the holidays and then dialing it down after mid-January.

The process is very hands-off for our team. In addition to reading monthly reports, I assign them loose budgets and they work within those parameters.

What is the team composition?

They assigned me a project manager. I only work with him.

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

I searched for new firms and found their rates very reasonable by comparison. Subsequently, I spoke with Andrew, the founder, and thought he had clear and realistic expectations for performance. There was a real comfort factor in dealing with him, which I later experienced again with the project manager as well.

What is the status of this engagement?

Work began August 2016 and is ongoing.

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

The team has done a remarkable job. Our PPC performance has improved greatly in short order and ROI is at a desirable level. These metrics only increased my trust in their performance. At first, I read their reports on a bi-weekly basis, but now I look at them once a month. As hoped, they’ve made the process very easy for me.

In addition to the main holiday season, they’re also good at identifying other crucial periods such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Different strategies are in place for Father’s Day because that holiday doesn’t have the same traffic and conversion rates as Mother’s Day. Only a seasoned PPC marketing operation would have discovered that differential.

How did Page Zero Media perform from a project management standpoint?

They exceeded expectations with their responsiveness and accessibility. The project manager responds same-day or at least lets me know within that period if he needs more time for research to answer a question. While I only use them for PPC, I feel that I have access to the whole company. They open up their entire organization whenever we have questions about ways to help our business. The team also treats our budget respectfully by finding a good balance between their revenue generation and helping us stay profitable.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re extremely knowledgeable, honest, and forthcoming with ideas. The team is an excellent value and partner for e-commerce.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While we’ve had no negative experiences, it’s curious that they haven’t tried to sell us additional services. Frankly, given our comfort level with their team, we’re open to discussing other ways to improve our business.

Please describe your organization.

We are a site where you can read and write reviews on home improvement companies, and contractors. I met Andrew [Goodman, president of Page Zero Media] back in the early founding days. We're a Canadian site and the leader now in our industry. We started in 2006. We have homeowners write the reviews. We have tools where we allow contractors to request the review but, ultimately, the consumer just writes it online. These are local opinions versus large amounts of people like TripAdvisor. Users can't write a review on a plumber in a city they don't live in.

What is your position?

I'm founder and CEO.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

Right from the early days, Andrew helped from an SEO [search engine optimization] and SEM [search engine marketing] perspective. Andrew was on the ground floor helping us set up the architecture.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Page Zero is involved in handling various aspects of marketing and marketing support for us.

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

It was a long time ago. At the time, I looked at a variety of companies. I think what Andrew brought was just hard work and his industry reputation, and he seemed to be so passionate about what we were trying to do. He's well known in Canada and worldwide. He's written a book called "Winning Results with Google Ad Words [sic]," chaired search conferences, and spoken on panels. He really knows his topics. His expertise makes their company go.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was from $200,000 to $1 million per year. Andrew acts as an advisor, too. It's not something on which he charges a fee. He has options to work with many people, but likes us.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing work. They're actually working with us on a Facebook strategy now – that's what's awesome. It's not just Google and Yahoo. They're looking at broader digital marketing. They're a real full-service company. We've worked on user experience and landing pages with various members of his team through the years. Currently, some of their junior staff are helping on the Facebook campaign that we're running. We've been with them several years.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It has been successful. We're the leader in our vertical. Page Zero has helped us obtain that leadership position. Our traffic has been on a steady growth rate of 40 to  50 percent annually.

How did Page Zero Media perform from a project management standpoint?

Page Zero is involved in handling various aspects of marketing and marketing support for us. What I like about Page Zero Media is they're really a partner and Andrew's been an integral part of our strategy and growth plan. They really have a breadth of expertise and depth.

They will assign somebody on the team who really has the depth to support any of our marketing needs because things are changing so quickly in technology and so is how we reach consumers and businesses.

An example is the way we set up our categorization of types of work and landing pages – the architecture of URLs. These are all things that needed to be considered to make ourselves the most searchable and doing it in such a way that was staying in the exact sandbox. We never did any tricks to try to gain search engines. It was all about doing the right thing. We want to help homeowners who use search engines, so it was important we were operating above board and honestly to reach people who needed us.

What distinguishes Page Zero Media from other providers?

They're a team that doesn't outsource. They work directly with their clients. They're going to be very upfront if they can handle something or not. I think they're good at understanding the future and making sure that they are up to date on future trends and how people are finding companies and learning about what they need. They're very future forward. They've got a solid track record in SEO and SEM.

Is there anything Page Zero Media could have improved or done differently?

They work remotely now. We're starting to notice that when we collaborate in person it helps more. That would be the only thing I would say is it could be better to meet in person to solve more problems quickly and cooperatively.

Please describe your organization.

We are a third-generation family business. Our business comes through our website, and we have quite a loyal following. Through the years, we have grown to about 3,000 products ranging from nuts to dried fruit, seeds, chocolate, and spices. That is basically it in a nutshell.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am the CEO.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

They really helped me to grow this business. We were a tiny company with not much revenue. I was one of the first companies that decided to focus on PPC [pay-per-click] on Google around 2004. Their CEO was an expert in the industry, so I wanted his help to manage our campaigns.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Page Zero Media provided pay-per-click management for Google and Bing. They needed to get my campaigns organized and profitable.

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

In 2002 or 2003, I read one of the first books out about advertising on Google, written by Andrew Goodman [the CEO of Page Zero Media]. I reached out to him and decided to engage in 2004.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We spend more than $1,000,000 annually.

What is the status of this engagement?

For 10 years, they helped us grow our business, but we do not work with them right now. We brought our PPC management work in-house recently. Since we are larger, it makes more sense to manage these campaigns internally.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We ended up building a massive business and much of that was from paid search. We did it rationally and economically. We were so early in the game that it was much easier back then. While working with them our business grew by a factor of 40. They were not solely responsible, of course, but we did it very profitably.

I started doing online advertising in 1999, the atmosphere was brand new and not competitive, our cost-per-acquisition was quite low because it was so early on. In fact, I was paying five cents or one cent a click. What happened was that, through the years, things got more competitive and so our cost-per-acquisition actually went up, but we were still able to manage it very profitably.

What distinguishes Page Zero Media from other providers?

I know their team very well, and have spent a lot of time with them through the years. I am a tough guy to satisfy, and was managing this business myself. Then, I brought them on board to take on this area. It is a real testament to them that we worked together for 10 years. I'm not easy to please.

Page Zero Media pays great attention to detail. Andrew did not directly manage my account, but he was still very involved. He is a very smart man. He did not just toss us to some kid who did not know anything. He was very involved in bidding and performing the daily necessary minutiae, which is unusual these days.

Now, we are doing everything in house. But, again, they paid a great deal of attention to all the details. The account manager that we were working with at Page Zero loved his work. He was always on top of things, he would plow through the work, he was very responsive, and he had a vested interest in our business. Overall, it was a very good experience working with them.

Is there anything Page Zero Media could have improved or done differently?

At the beginning of this industry, a lot of the work was done by humans without automated bidding tools. They just sort of experimented. I am sure they use automated bidding tools now, but it would have been nice to utilize some of those tools when we partnered together.

Please describe your organization.

We're an online photo printer. People go to our website, upload their personal photos, print them off and ship it to them.

What is your position?

I am the owner.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Page Zero Media?

We need to generate traffic to our website and convert them into sales.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

There's no SEO [search engine optimization] work involved. They only provide search engine marketing work for the most part. It's been Google AdWords for most of the time we're using them. We've started using them to do advertising campaigns on Facebook as well.

How did you come to work with Page Zero Media?

They came as a recommendation through my business mentor. We went through a process of looking at different companies but they seemed like a good fit for us. I think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors in this industry. 

There's also a lot of large shops that will forget small companies like us. We were just starting out so we didn't want to get lost in the shuffle of being with one of the larger companies. It's been a good fit for us. They've grown and we've grown together. 

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was $50,000 to $200,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing work. We've been working continuously for the past five years.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It's been successful. I don't have any specific stats right now. Conversions are steadily going up. We've been able to drive our cost per acquisition steadily down. There's been growth every single year corresponding to the growth in the business. It keeps pace with the growth we're getting from other channels. We've been able to grow the company.

How did Page Zero Media perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they take a pretty analytical approach to things. Page Zero Media is deep into the understanding of the science behind the PPC [pay-per-click] and the metrics. They're constantly tweaking when there's enough volume there. 

What distinguishes Page Zero Media from other providers?

They've got a good amount of monitoring going on with the account. I think their prices are fair. You get good value by having someone manage the account with their amount of expertise as opposed to trying to do it yourself or trying to go with a larger company where they're mostly just working with automated technology.

Is there anything Page Zero Media could have improved or done differently?

We get a monthly report from them. Some clients would want more frequent reporting. I think it's fine for us but a larger company might want to see weekly reports.