My Google Adwords Consulting Experience
Google Adwords Consulting. Even though I actually do provide Adwords consulting services and I do consider myself an Adwords Specialist, I still cringe at the sound of those words. Why?
Because Google Adwords is ridiculously complicated. OK, I’m going to go on what might seem like a rant but it actually does serve a purpose and that purpose is to save the average small business Adwords advertiser from a) spending 3 times more than you should for a visitor to your website and b) going insane trying to figure out the logic behind what Google is doing.
Let me begin by saying that I respect Google. They provide a service that reaches and helps billions of people and they’re really, really good at making money. I just don’t like the way that they’re doing it.
Here’s the whole story. I just launched a site that was built to generate sales leads for a contractor. Like most small businesses they didn’t have the in-house expertise to make online marketing work themselves so they came to me. After a little investigation, they also didn’t have a lot of interest in having a page one ranking on Google (egad!!) but they did want what all business owners want….
Sales Leads!!! Qualified people that they could speak with and hopefully turn into customers.
So I built a new site to attract traffic and generate sales leads. I’ll then bill them for each lead (phone calls and emails) that comes in off of that site. Simple.
Of course, I wanted to get the site up and profitable as soon as possible so I turned to my considerable experience with Google Adwords. I will go on record here as saying I’m not a certified Adwords Professional but I have managed six figure campaigns for clients and more importantly, I’ve managed my own campaigns where I’m spending my own cash. THAT is where you know a marketer is worth his salt.
So the site was ready but I didn’t have a lot of time to set up a campaign. If you’ve ever tried to setup your own Adwords campaign you know it is just a matter of setting aside ten minutes and its done. Not even close.
Google does, however have a program where if you commit enough dollars to a monthly budget with them they will set up your campaign for you and even let you talk to them for a full 30 days until your campaign is, what they call, “optimized”. Theoretically, this means making you money but in reality it means making Google money.
This is what happened when Google’s Adwords consulting service set up my campaign. Actually, let me break it down into the good and the bad because, gain, I don’t want this to sound like I’m slagging the Big G. It wasn’t all bad.
Google Adwords Consulting: The Good
Both reps that I spoke with were very nice guys. They said everything that a business person wants to hear. Terms like win/win, ROI on your advertising budget, positive results, etc. were flying around everywhere. They mentioned that I could email anytime for a 30 day period from when my campaign began and we scheduled weekly follow-up calls to ensure my campaign was on the right path.
The campaign was setup within a few days so that was good. The Adwords quality scores (QS) were also good. They ranged from 3-7 with most of them being 6 and 7s. QS is Google assessment of how well your ad matches the keyword that is being searched for, the content within your ad and the content on the page you send the visitor to.
All in all, not bad right? Ah… no.
Adwords Consulting – The Bad
During my two chats with my reps I told them what I was willing to spend per day and per visitor to my website. They managed to upsell me on both criteria to twice what I had in mind. Fine. However, when the campaign was ready the daily spend limit was met but the cost per click was 3 times what I was willing to spend.
Second BIG concern. I offer a free report on the site to generate email leads. I specifically said that I didn’t want that being advertised on the search network becaues the clicks are expensive and I’d lose money even if someone signed up. Granted that isn’t really true but it would be really, really tough for me to make it profitable. Yet sure enough, there were two Adgroups specifically for the email signup.
But looking a little more closely, the ad for the email signup didn’t even go to a page that had my form on it. My Adwords Specialist had just copied the Adgroup from somewhere and had forgotten to change the url. Again, big problem especially at their $9.25 click price.
I made it very clear that what I wanted from the site and the campaign was to generate phone calls. I know that I can include a phone number in my ads and my Adwords Consulting Specialist would definitely have known that. But was there a phone number anywhere to be found in the text of my ads? Nope. Why? Because Google makes money when someone clicks – not when someone calls.
When I asked if I could add a phone number my rep reluctantly murmured (literally), “I guess you can if you really want to.”
Dude, I want to generate phone calls. Why wouldn’t I want to have a phone number in my ad?
Finally, the ads were set to run 24 hours per day and they were set to show as quickly as possible. What that means is that most of my budget would have been spent between midnight (start of the day) and 8am. Great time to receive phone calls, eh?
I ended up finally redoing the whole campaign and changing the things that were obviously not in my favour. Whilst doing this I noticed Google has done some other things that are of dubious ethics. Specifcally, they’re using javascript to hide where your ads are showing. The DEFAULT is all of the US and mobile devices. You don’t see any other options until you click the other options button.
Even when you do so, there is the (recommended for new advertisers) beside the option that makes Google the most money.
I could go on and on but the point I’m trying to make is that having a Google Specialist that works for Google set up your campaign is like going into the most expensive bar in Vegas, giving your credit card to the bartender and saying, “Give me whatever you think I need, keep ‘em coming and add whatever tip you want on there for yourself.”
All of that said, they did do quite a bit of the heavy lifting when it came to setting up the adgroups and keywords so that did shave a little time off from my end. However, here is what would have happened if I didn’t know what I was looking at and I turned on the campaign exactly as they had set it up:
- I would have easily paid 3 times more per click than I am now
- My conversions (number of leads and email sign-ups) would be 10% (this is a guess) of what they are now
- I would have burned through my daily budget and have no idea why the phone wasn’t ringing.
Ultimately, I would have joined the millions of other small business owners who quit thinking that Adwords doesn’t work for my business. When the fact is that I’m quite certain that it will be very profitable for me and it will continue to be as long as I don’t let Google get their sticky fingers on my campaign.
But what a waste. First, why does Adwords need to be so complicated? Is it because all along Google wanted to offer this “free” service wherein they can dictate what you pay per visitor? Second, how many Adwords advertisers can they burn through before someone finally says enough is enough? Their turnover on these campaigns must be insane.
The truth is that it is an awesome system. Everyone describes Adwords advertising as “Direct marketing on steriods.” Nothing can produce target sales prospects as quickly as a well developed PPC campaign but getting there requires crawling through a snakepit that few survive.
Anyway, that is my Adwords Consulting Experience. I hope you can learn from it.
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