But is it always appropriate? I argue no, sometimes its not.

Think of it like this. If you were booking a hotel room – and the hotel manager invited you to the hotel to take a look at the room – what would you prefer?

a) to be driven to the hotel, see the building, walk through the foyer, feel the atmosphere of the place, then go and see the room, or

b) be blindfolded and taken straight to the room.

Do you see my point?

I honestly think that for expensive purchases requiring reassurance or trust, people are more likely to want to get a feel of the company first, before seeing more about what they specifically want. This is where good user-friendliness and navigation comes in, as well as a site that is credible, professional, and designed for the target market.

Its not just a theory.

I tested this out for a holiday company. For some campaigns, longer page durations and lower bouncerates were found when the page was slightly more generic, allowing people to search for what they wanted, rather than taking them to a specific search result based on what they searched for.

For specific products, e.g. DVDs, appliances etc then a relevant landing page definately converts better.

But for things like cars, holidays, expensive services, I think a more generic landing page that gives the visitor some control of where they go next is better – it primes the all important reassurance and trust factor more effectively.

Last year he chose a cheaper AdWords Manager, because despite my clear logic and rationale about return on investment, skill, competence and awareness etc, he couldn’t get to thinking about “making money” because “spending money” was too big in his mind (as it is for lots of small business owners).

So recently he decided that (surprise!) his cheaper AdWords manager was vague, not strategised or focused enough, and the business owner had the feeling that more could be done.

I linked into the account, and sure enough, it was a total mess. Massively varied keywords in the same adgroup. Dynamic Keyword Insertion used improperly (mentioning the same keyword straight after the insertion which reads very badly). The highest impression levels were for irrelevant search queries (or at least, not leading to a relevant page), so low click-through rates and poor bouncerates would have certainly hurt the quality scores.

Yet… despite all this, the conversion rate was still excellent, and the cost per conversion very cheap (a testament to the site and product, rather than the AdWords account). Its a rare occasion when the AdWords account actually is the bottleneck, rather than the site or product (especially when its supposed to be managed professionally).

Anyway, this is all background info. The point is that I explained clearly my strategies, skillsets, and forecasts of savings, conversions, extra revenue etc, as well as some work that could be done on the website.

The business owner agreed to go ahead, but needed more reassurance on tracking. Proving that I was making a difference. So – I explained thoroughly how AdWords and Analytics track literally everything that needs to be known, down to keyword level, including page durations (relevant visitors), bouncerates, clicks, costs, conversions, everything. He agreed to go ahead again.

A week later and still no payment, so I enquire.

Still thinking about it. Having already spoke a year ago, having analysed his current account, written a proposal, explained again and again about the tracking etc etc, it seems some people just don’t like to spend money.

Its normal for clients to need reassurance – and I’m always willing to offer it.

But – I can’t tolerate people not sticking to their word – agreeing to go ahead twice and then changing their mind. I just don’t have time for it.

So now, regardless of the outcome, I won’t be managing what could have been a great account to manage (and a good example of how better AdWords management would have led to a much better ROI).

Because the site was bad? No. Because the product was bad? No.

Because if there’s one thing worse than working with poor sites or accounts, its working with indecisive, anal and anxious business owners! In my experience they drain time and energy more than anything else.

Getting to the top spot will obviously be more expensive, depending on what the competitors are doing.

However, experience with campaign bid management shows that continually increasing the bids is not the only option.

Some ads actually attract a higher click-through rate being slightly further down. This is likely to be because particular demographics and markets perceive the top ads to be associated with more expensive companies. Some people prefer the cosier option of the smaller business – rather than the big, glossy, call-centre driven ones.

Another variable with influences campaign bid management on AdWords is the quality score. Each keyword on adwords carries a quality score – the higher the score, the cheaper the click can be to get to the same position (as, for example, a lower quality score keyword).

Quality scores are influenced by a range of variables, including the click-through rate of the ad, the relevancy of the ad, the relevancy of the landing page, and the duration for which visitors stay on your landing page.

As an AdWords Management Agency, we use AdWords campaign bid management strategically to optimise the results. We do this by working to increase the quality scores, as well using the real-world feedback and results to adjust the bids.

If you think your business could benefit from AdWords campaign bid management, get in touch and we’ll see if we can help.

Compared to traditional forms of advertising, AdWords is unique in that you only pay when people see your website. Each click represents a potential customer – and whether they do or don’t respond to your website, at the very least they offer valuable feedback.

Because AdWords is such a controlled system – you can change, change and change your campaigns again until you hit the sweet spot – a high conversion rate.

But its not easy.

Which is exactly why many companies blow a lot of money advertising with adwords.

You need to make sure:

• the keywords are relevant

• irrelevant searches will be excluded
• your conversions are being tracked
• your ads are relevant to the searches, so visitors click on them
• your bid prices and budgets are optimised
• your website is ready for it!

Most business owners lack the time and expertise to get the formula right – which is why we make advertising with AdWords a breeze. We do all the donkey work, the optimisation and watch over your campaigns – making sure you’re getting the best results.

If you would like to discuss your business, website or whether advertising with AdWords is the right choice for you, simply get in touch using the form to the upper right.

But there’s a massive hole in the middle of that process, called “bounce-rate”…

…which is the percentage of people who immediately think “urgh” or “not for me” or “don’t see what I’m looking for” and click back to find one of your competitors instead.

So whats the problem with most websites?

- Poorly written
- Difficult to navigate
- Unsure what you’re supposed to do next
- Information isn’t presented in the most relevant way (i.e. the most compelling features right at the bottom!)

For a lot of businesses, the idea of over-hauling the website equates to moving a mountain.

They remember the long, drawn out process of having the first one… the problems with the agency or designer… all the little things that weren’t right… how expensive it was… BLEH.

Getting a website exactly how you want it could be far simpler, and cheaper than you think (yes, I will plug our services here!) And if you feel good about your site – you will want to advertise it more. Otherwise, it feels like climbing uphill with an unnecessary bag of heavy rocks on your back.

But thats logic. It makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense, is keeping with your current website because:
- Your friend designed it
- Your wife likes it
- Your customers say they like it.

Your current customers are likely to say they liked it, because they responded to it. And it’s certainly useful to learn why they like it. But its the customers who don’t respond that you need to worry about – and its much, much harder to find out why they didn’t respond. They’re already on the phone to the other company.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

A hundred people land on your site, and here is what they think:
Two people = “I called because I liked the flower logo, it reminds me of a flower I have in my kitchen”.
Ninety-eight people (if we could ask them) = “I didn’t call because I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I couldn’t even find the contact page to ask”.

If you keep the current site, you won’t realise it but you’ll be attracting the same demographic – the ones who like your site (which may, or may not, be quite narrow).

But by applying a few sound marketing principles, you massively increase the probability of attracting a wider (but still very relevant and valuable) customer base.

So the real question isn’t “how much would it cost to have the site re-designed?”

But…

“How much is the current site costing you in lost business?”

So – get in touch and I’ll let you know what I think of your site (if you dare! I won’t bite, really).

Of course the real results don’t lie with anyone’s opinion – yours, mine, or any other marketing expert. But in sales. And this is why AdWords and Google Analytics are so useful – you can see exactly what your customers are doing.

So get in touch!

Just a small company right? Sure – you want to ‘be seen’ on Google, but goodness, you don’t want to spend too much.

Hey – maybe the phone will even ring once in a while. If you’re lucky, of course.

Advertising should not be looked at as an expenditure, but as an investment. This is more so with AdWords – because you can track exactly what works, what doesn’t, how often and at what cost.

If an AdWords account works well, you should have a relatively consistent conversion rate, so you can predict how many sales/enquiries you are likely to incur and at what cost. And if its working well, then why not up the budget?

The only real limitations for a streamlined AdWords account are:

- The demand for your product or service
- The amount of business you can handle.

If the demand is limited – then upping the budget shouldn’t change anything, because there won’t be more searches to create more clicks. That is of course, unless you have a bad account that lets in all sorts of irrelevant searches.

If the amount of business you can handle is limited – then its time to think about expanding!

Either way – reluctance to spend on AdWords is usually due to a lack of understanding (or trust) in how the system works. But that’s not to sound cynical – its actually a very positive thing.

Because…

…it means you can out-think your competitors! Through having a chat about your website, account and business direction, I can let you know “where its at” in terms of your options. Maybe you could blow your competition out the water… or at least leave them all behind.

So get in touch!

“I wasted hundreds on Google. I’m done with AdWords – I’d rather do anything other than line Google’s pockets with more money. The whole system is a rip-off”.

In fact, here is a real email I recently received from someone who once contacted me about AdWords. They didn’t go ahead with AdWords Management – which is a shame as even an initial consultation could have saved them alot of time and money.

“It has been a very unsatisfactory six months. While I have managed to get our costs down from Google’s original charges, we are still paying way more than we were for a pretty poor conversion rate/ROI. I am exploring other ways to promote our site as I think Adwords and the way they operate are just a rip off, and not the place for us to be. I’m just making them money while losing out myself. I expect you know how to get the best out of PPC but thank’s to Google messing us about for the last 6+ months, I don’t want to throw any more money in their direction.”

Here’s the reply I wrote:

“I really wish you’d let me know when you were back in the PPC game, I think I could have saved you a lot of money and trouble.

AdWords is a double edged sword. Google are really selling you the opportunity to advertise with them, which is a good thing as they can expose you to thousands of relevant people. BUT the opportunity does need to be managed properly because its far too easy to mess up. I think this is where Google fall down – they don’t make it obvious how to use the system properly and will gladly let you stumble ahead and waste lots of money (because yes, they profit from your mistakes). However, if you take advantage of the system with streamlined accounts, then it can work brilliantly.

As an example, when I last looked at your account, I don’t think you had any negative keywords. So a majority of your ads would have been exposed to irrelevant people, searching for pictures, videos, etc. Also, having keywords on broadmatch shows your ads for similar searches, but what Google thinks is similar is often way off the mark. So of all your clicks, maybe only 30% were actually relevant. So cutting out the 70% irrelevancy would have more than doubled your conversion rates. As an example, a client came to me who had a junk clearance company, his broadmatch keywords of “house clearance” were showing his ads for searches of “house selling” and even “flats for sale”. So only about 10% of the clicks were actually relevant. I know, you’d hope that people wouldn’t click on the ads if they weren’t relevant to them, but people do click on anything (which is annoying for the advertisers!)

It would be ideal if Google had the ethics (and customer support resources) to say “hang on a minute, this advertiser is paying us lots of money but not getting any conversions – we should call her up and offer to help with her account”. But they dont. Anyhow – thats just to put AdWords into perspective a bit, as its common to hate Google when you’ve had a muddled account – but it can also work very well.

On the flipside, I have just done a test account for another similar site, to research the suitability of using AdWords. I set up thirty or so relevant keywords linked to townnames, to test for click prices. The click prices were in the region of 75p to £3, which although they would become cheaper on broadmatch, were too expensive. The problem is that you can only afford so many clicks to still profit from a conversion, as the profit margin is so low, and with low conversion rates (ie. competing with the bigger sites) the clicks really do have to be very cheap to make it work. I think 75p – £3 would have wasted the client lots of money in the longrun, so advised not to proceed.”

Its too easy to make mistakes without AdWords Management

Frugal business owners may think investing in professional Google AdWords Management is another costly expense. So they try it themselves, think they have a grip of it, and then hate Google when it all goes wrong.

Here’s why its almost fool-proof to have your accounts professionally managed:

We only manage accounts we think are going to work well – i.e. we want the business owner to profit from their AdWords account, not simply waste money on us and Google.

We therefore do some preliminary research to see how confident we feel its going to work – based on your website, your product or service, industry, competition etc. We’re upfront about all of this, and share any concerns with you.

If we feel confident, and you want to go ahead, then you can do so a month at a time. So if things aren’t working out, you’ve only spent a small amount of money to learn exactly what’s wrong and why it isn’t working. Compare this to simply throwing money at it, and not having a clue whats going on or why it isn’t working.

When you invest in professional AdWords Management, all of the results are valuable feedback. Whether its in the form of reinforcing your confidence with profits, or letting you know exactly where the bottlenecks are (which you can then work on), you know what to do next to help your business grow.

This is why investing in expertise is so valuable – you get expert information back – not random guesses which leave you in the dark and feeling frustrated with Google!

Have you received a call saying “we have people in your area looking for you…” followed by a promised top spot on Google, unlimited clicks, all for a set fee?

If so, you might have left the call feeling a bit confused, belittled, and bewildered. I’m just hoping you didn’t sign up to it. They tell all sorts of lies – some of the more common ones I have addressed below.

The usual suspects are BtCustomerStreet.com, Lavora Marketing, Raw Marketing and MatchMakerMarketing.co.uk (links go to the ‘whocallsme?’ consumer review site).

They hope that you don’t know much about AdWords and online marketing, and will try to dazzle you with false promises, jargon, and nonsense until you sign up with a direct debit. Normally, if you show any resistance, they will become aggressive, patronising, and imply that your business will go downhill. Its yet another example of personal accountability being diluted through call centre staff who don’t have a clue about the scripts they are trained to read from.

The typical lies they tell:

• “We can get you unlimited clicks in the top position for a fixed price”
• “We get you in the sponsored box at the top – but its not AdWords”
• “We are one of only three Qualified Google companies in the UK”
• “We have a special relationship / deal with Google”

These are all complete and utter lies. The cold-caller will lie through his/her teeth to justify their claims, but they are complete rubbish.

If you have a specific question you’d like a real answer to – you’re welcome to fill out the form to the side. In the meantime – I have answered some of the more common lies below.

They don’t work for Google

Google has no such affiliations with outside companies. Companies may be Google qualified (as we are) but this just means that you have gone through the Google training program, passed the exam, and handled a high enough budget on behalf of clients.

You can’t get unlimited clicks

…unless you have an unlimited budget. There is no “special system”. The lie is based on the fact that it is aimed at sole traders – for five specific keywords based on town names – and to the overall demand is likely to be minimal. Because the agency wants to make money too – the amount of clicks you get from your fee will be absolutely tiny. Most of them won’t report how many clicks you get.

Five keywords is a poor campaign

In comparison, I built a campaign for a local photographer which consisted of literally thousands of keywords (at the scam-company rate of an extra £20 per keyword, this should have cost £200,000 a month!), based on many keyword variations and combinations with many different relevant place names.

Sure you want your business to be marketed to as many relevant searches as possible – not just five very specific keywords.

They won’t care about your site

I turn down about 50% of prospective customers because their sites, profit margins, or demand aren’t suitable (i.e. the maths doesn’t add up to make it work). The lie-companies would never care about that – they won’t even look at your website.

Your account won’t be optimised

I give customers tracking code to put on a ’sale successful’ or ‘enquiry submitted’ page, so that you know which keywords are working, and which ones aren’t. This lets me streamline the account further, to save you money and drive more relevant customers to your site. The other companies have no idea what keywords are working and which aren’t – they leave it up to you to decide – but you may not have a clue!

Its no way to make your business thrive!

You will end up paying a direct debit to a company who is only going to get you a very limited number of clicks for a very limited number of keywords. If you want to actually make money from AdWords – you need a thorough campaign, dedicated agent who cares about your success, and the ability to optimise and grow the budget to make even more profit.

They take advantage of your techno-phobia

Which is why you shouldn’t fall victim to their lies. They simply overwhelm you with pressure and jargon until you feel that not going with them is going to ruin your business! The opposite is potentially true. If you want to make the most of your marketing, talk to me – I explain how it all works in easy, down to earth terms. Why? Because I want you to be in control! Its your business – you need to be in control of your marketing and know whats what. I just provide the expertise in managing very thorough, successful AdWords accounts.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) = The natural (sometimes called ‘organic’) listings on Google. They don’t cost you anything when a visitor clicks, however it does cost time, effort and (if you want to do it right) money to get your website ranked well for your relevant keywords.

In a nutshell, pay per click (AdWords) advertising can deliver instant, relevant traffic. It offers a high level of control, but the cost is split up between the individual clicks (and the overall management fee). SEO takes advantages of natural listings traffic (which is free) – but is much more expensive in the short term in terms of the work involved. It’s therefore more a long term approach, and doesn’t offer immediacy or much control.

It’s usually a case of choosing between Pay Per Click or SEO based on your business needs – however, it may (depending on your budget of course) make sense to use both. This would then offer the immediate benefits of AdWords, whilst developing a longer term strategy for natural traffic at the same time. The results from AdWords can also feed into SEO – for example noticing which keywords tend to be the most successful.

The table below compares the two approaches based on the relevant variables. If you have a particular question you’d like to ask, feel free to contact us.

The Recession

The tough economic climate has justifiably made business owners very cautious about spending – and marketing budgets are often the first to go. This is actually counter-intuitive, because saving money is no way to make money – especially when you’re losing out on making new customers. This effect has actually reduced click prices in a number of industries, and improved the market for those with more confidence in their budget.

Its essential to have confidence in your business – and believe in your product or service. By this I don’t mean blind positivity and saying “my business is great” even if its completely flawed (as you regularly see on Dragon’s Den for example!) But its worth testing your business, your landing page, to build a statistical confidence that it works. You can then justify budgeting for the necessary clicks to get you the sales or enquiries that you need, or invest in experimenting with online marketing as a way to test your site, product or service. In this light, no money is wasted, because you are either buying valuable customers, or buying valuable information that will help steer you towards making more profit in the long term. Its all positive feedback – showing you where the bottlenecks are. When managing new AdWords accounts we’re always cautious to start slow – and see how things go before upping the budget. If lots of money is being spent before conversions come in, then something needs to be changed. Similarly, there’s no point in being too frugal – or you could be waiting far too long until the statistics bear any significance.

Is Cheaper Always Better?

Its not uncommon for our potential customers to find cheaper quotes elsewhere for AdWords management – which suits us fine! We’re aware that there is some very poor work out there because we have seen the horrors in peoples accounts who have switched to us from other agencies. We’d rather work with clients who value thoroughness and understand that the best return on investment isn’t always going for the cheapest option. If you don’t get the best results possible, then it could actually be a far more expensive option. Our prices are extremely reasonable based on the time we invest into accounts, the specialised processes and the one-to-one expert service that we provide.