Google Building me a new Campaign, should I?

[jebernier]

Spoke to a Google AdWords Account Strategist today and he suggested that he could build us a NEW Campaign (for Free) to replace one of my Campaigns that is not doing well.

I've spoken with a few different Reps. some are good, some not. This guy seemed to know what he was talking about.

Question - Has anyone tried this & if so, what were the results?

Thanks-in-Advance,

JB

[buckworks]

Google reps know lots about AdWords, but they won't know your business the way you do. So having a Google rep work on your account can be a mixed blessing.

I've never had a Google rep create a more cost-effective campaign than we already had, but even so I learned a few things from watching how someone else did things. For free, it's worth testing.

Keep your existing campaigns intact and just pause them. Get the Google folks to create new campaigns, then compare how those perform.

Spell out carefully how you're going to measure results and define success. Setting up the campaigns would be free but the clicks won't be, so be very clear what results you're aiming for and how you'll decide whether things have in fact improved.

[adebold]

Of course they will know their stuff when it comes to AdWords but I guess it's a question of whether you think their focus would be totally on maximising your return.

If you take this route, equip yourself with some basic knowledge (search Google for 'adwords advice' and be prepared to question, particularly if your campaign(s) is dominated by mainly broad match keywords with no/few negatives.

[RhinoFish]

nothing really good comes for free.

[Marketing Guy]

They seem to be rolling out a new strategist / planning team to work closer with agencies - had a phone call with one recently too. Mostly a generic overview just now, but they offered to review active accounts and at the very least it's worth getting a fresh pair of eyes on these things IMO.

[jebernier]

Thanks for the great advice. I'll give it a shot and just pause the other campaign. Mostly want to see how they structure the Campaign but I will take a close look at the Ad wording.

-JB

[jebernier]

The NEW Google built Campaign has been running for about 6 days and thus far (I know, it's still early) it looks good.

Clicks - up 23%
CTR -up 103%
Avg. CPC - down 13%

I know it's early, but we'll see how it goes.

[buckworks]

How are conversions?

[Sand]

I had a pair of dedicated AdWords reps for years, and we'd have bi-weekly calls to go over the campaigns. The reps were both extremely helpful and friendly, and I have no complaints about the overall service they provided (I just want to make sure it doesn't sound like I'm complaining).

When it came to optimizing an existing campaign, they were normally really spot on with their recommendations, and saved me a lot of money.

But on a few occasions, they offered to setup very large campaigns for me for 'free' (meaning they didn't charge me to setup the campaigns, but it's not like I was going to be paying for the campaigns to run with play money).

Now, I was in a kind of specialized niche, so I give them credit for trying, but my CPAs went up 400% - 500% with the initial campaigns they created. After a week or two of tweaking, I was able to get them back down to good levels. But hey, they saved me a ton of grunt work, and my initial efforts probably wouldn't have been a whole lot better.

So I will say this: the reps can save you a ton of time, but in the end, they're just like you and me. They're doing a lot of guessing (when you're starting a new campaign, anyway), and it takes time, data, and tweaking to get a campaign running efficiently.

[Sand]

One more thing I want to add:

At the beginning of this year, the AdWords reps were re-organized so that each group of reps now works exclusively with sites in only a couple of niches (before, I *think* they were organized based on spend volume, but I'm not 100% sure, so don't quote me on that). I was told about the re-organization, because I lost my long-time reps in the shuffle.

I would imagine that they are able to make much better recommendations now, since their knowledge is very specialized. They could look at what's working well for one site in a niche, and incorporate that into a competing site's campaigns.

Unfortunately, I stopped working with them in February, so I don't know how the re-organization shook out. But I'd imagine it would be to the advertiser's benefit (and Google's, since happy advertisers spend more money).

[netmeg]

I haven't tried them out for years, but when I did, it wasn't a good experience. They gave me keywords that were broad, not entirely relevant, and some of the ads had misspellings (!) I shut it down immediately.

But that was years ago, and perhaps they're better at it now. Just remember that they may be optimizing for clicks, and you likely want conversions.

[incrediBILL]

I'm assuming you spend a decent amount of money on AdWords campaigns or they wouldn't be offering this service in the first place, so it's really not FREE, it's value added customer service. With that said, never turn down anything if it doesn't cost extra because worse case they might do something you hadn't thought about and you'll learn something new. Whether the resulting work they do is suitable for your actual needs is another story altogether, but if it costs you nothing extra to find out what they want to do, then by all means, take advantage of the offer.

Whether you actually run that ad campaign or not is another story. :)

[skibum]

Generally no, but it has been a while but it depends on how much work has already been put into the campaign. The keywords would be really broad, the ad text not very detailed and the proposals designed to maximize revenue for Google and not maximize your sales. There was one rep that told us if we didn't run the proposal (on the content network) they gave us for a client, they would never give us another proposal for it in the future!

That being said it has been a while and it never hurts to see how someone else might promote your business. It is worth getting a proposal.

[jskrewson]

@skibum, I generally agree, but, I have been given a few decent tidbits from one of my four reps over the last few years.

Anyone going into this should realize that Adwords reps primary job is to make more money for the big G. There is a conflict of interest.

[incrediBILL]

There is a conflict of interest.

How so?

If they don't help improve the customer's ad campaign they run the risk of the customer actually cutting their AdWords budget if sales decline as a result of a bad campaign.

So their goal and yours are pretty much the same, making more money.

I know this from personal experience selling direct ads to customers on one of my sites because the more money I help the customer make, the more ad budget the customer will spend on my site. Likewise, if the customer isn't getting the ROI, they pull the ad campaign and I make squat. Therefore, the customer and I have the same basic goal to make the customer ad campaign as lucrative as possible and that's not a conflict of interest.

YMMV

[jskrewson]

How so?

Humans are flawed. When their incentives are weighted in one direction, they have a hard time resolving conflicts in a manner that is beneficial to everyone. So if Larry Page was doing the work, then yes, it would follow your train of logic. But Larry isn't, rather it is some low paid underling with an entirely different set of motivations.

[skibum]

So their goal and yours are pretty much the same, making more money.

I know this from personal experience selling direct ads to customers on one of my sites because the more money I help the customer make, the more ad budget the customer will spend on my site. Likewise, if the customer isn't getting the ROI, they pull the ad campaign and I make squat. Therefore, the customer and I have the same basic goal to make the customer ad campaign as lucrative as possible and that's not a conflict of interest.

In an ideal world, yes, but when an ad campaign on one search engine can make or beak your business, Google can be pretty sure they are not going to lose a customer that focuses on online sales unless that company goes out of business. Most advertisers can skip advertising on any one site but probably not G, no matter what the service or proposals are like. Access to the treasure trove of conversion data at their disposal may make proposals these days much better than in the past.

If an advertiser has more money than sense (usually large corporations), then they'll get you to buy as much of whatever they are selling until someone wakes up and realizes that the ad campaign is nowhere near optimal.

[webindia123]

For FREE could cost more if the your product and service is not known to the Google Rep.

Ask him simple question, has he managed any campaign of your niche, if the answer is YES then go for it or better avoid it.

Its good to deal with consultants who know their job and have result oriented skillset in managing various types of campaigns irrespective of topical and peak season complexities.

- lalit kumar

[jebernier]

Hello,

Unfortunately, being a B2B through a distributer network we don't sell online and lead conversions have been very hard to track. So, I cannot provide any conversions information.

It’s true that it’s a shot-in-the-dark depending on who you get at Google. But, it doesn’t hurt to have them give it a shot as long as you pause (keep) your original campaign.

Always looking for new ideas & continues testing.

[jebernier]

Also, our spend thus far is UP 5% (against the budget) but, as I mentioned, Clicks are UP 23% & Avg. CPC is DOWN 14%. So, I'll take that for now and watch the Bounce Rate in GA.

[bwnbwn]

jebernier Buckworks asked a very important question

How are conversions?

You posted some data on then new build but to me this is mute if my conversions don't improve. Question asked again. How are conversions?

[jebernier]

As I mentioned, we do not track conversions/leads so there is no real way to tell how effective this really is.

Our business model makes tracking conversions/leads almost impossible using GA. It's very frustrating for me.

[jebernier]

You are correct, it's mute if conversions don't improve.

[chewy]

How about engagement?

Surely, there are numerous ways to track different forms of engagement that tells you if you are on or off target.

Let's talk about different forms of engagement tracking sometime.

Meanwhile, my experience with "reps" has run from OK to bad to good. Just don't ask them to explain any of the finer points of QS or any other parts of their secret sauce.

Bad was how they showed us a few tricks to increase traffic (and they didn't care about conversion).

Good is when they help fix gnarly problems - or like just recently how one guy taught me a few things I didn't know and helped to confirm lots of things that I knew but didn't have ways to talk about them.

I learn something new every day - and I frequently learn that what I know (or thought I knew) is wrong.

[rankmaster77]

I want to echo RhinoFish: Nothing good comes for free...

[particleman]

I have talked with them 3 times now since they started calling customers. They are really helpful. One of them explained they get rewarded based on how many features they show you. They will push for you to make changes while they are on the phone. They also keep really good notes of conversations and changes made to your account with them.

Overall I would consider myself an advanced adwords user and I still learned some helpful things on the phone with them. In all likelyhood they know more than you about adwords. They don't however know your business so remember that. Be critical of what they are asking you to change but also keep an open mind to new features. Conversion data in your account is really critical I think to make any changes trackable, if you don't have that working already you need to!

[rankmaster77]

They know more about adwords from a functionality standpoint; but to build a campaign for your business? Really?