Don't Trust Money Grubbing Adwords Reps

[glakes]

So I decided to reactivate some of my campaigns after suffering from Google zombie depleting crap Adwords traffic. An Adwords rep assisted me with this process, which I found quite amusing. The first task she wanted me to do is to increase all of my bids by 10%. I told her that the conversions from Google were poor, which she admitted. So I challenged her on raising the bids, which most were already bidding front page anyway and she conceded that increasing my bids would likely do nothing to address the poor conversions from Google. Then the rep went on a tangent about sitelinks. I should change my sitelinks to my about page, contact page, etc. My response was why would I do that if I am an ecommerce website that uses paid advertising to generate sales? Her response was, "I see your point." Then she wanted me to raise my bids on mobile by 20%. Really, when they are already front page and producing crap for conversions?

After about an hour of my life was wasted, I came to the conclusion that Adwords reps are simply given the task to raise everyones bids without addressing their actual concerns (poor traffic quality is mine). So beware of any Adwords reps offering to help you. In the end they may just be trying to help themselves to more of your money without ever giving you anything in return - except an emptier wallet. Who knows, maybe Adwords reps even get a profit sharing bonus for what they are doing. All I can say is it is very unethical...

[deuces]

I don't think its so much malevolence as it is ignorance. I've talked to adwords reps and both times they were overseas. Heck, us just being on this forum with all these learning resources probably makes us much more advanced than any adwords rep.

[fathom]

without addressing their actual concerns (poor traffic quality is mine).

I would agree with the previous post. Newbies will join all companies (including Google) and they can't really get experience without actually doing.

I'm not a Adwords expert but I have a few thoughts.

Course, if this is just "story time," maybe you're not really looking for help.

Are you using independent landing pages?

[ppc_uk]

poor traffic quality

There are two things that must come together to generate sales:

Traffic
a). The right keywords (keywords that involve a the a second party to buy from). For example if I'm wanting to to sell hoverboards, the "buy hoverboards" is a good start ing keyword.
The next important step is negative keywords, they just as important as you positive keywords. There are three sets of negatives all campaigns should possess: 1) your default list containing phases sush as wikipedia, pictures, job, training, reviews... My default list has 400+ standard negative keywords
2). Now place your positive keywords in the keyword tool and open a notepad/wordpad, now place every term you see that does not pattain to your products/services in a list one word at a time. This job will take me a min of two hours+. There are ways to do this quickly with the keyword planner (negatives & keywords to include), however as I'm in bed about to sleep, I'll skip as too long to explain by typing. Add your negatives to the campaign, if you didn't find a hundred negs on your notepad list, go back and look for more.
3) now go to the google search page and do a search with your keywords, one at a time. Go to the bottom of the page and see the suggested results. There are usually 8 suggestions, see what keywords are not related and as them as negative keywords. Repeat for all keywords.

At this point if you ha be a shopping campaign, you may think this does not apply to me, however this is not true. The biggest errorvibsee in shopping campaigns is descriptive text that is not keyword rich. The descriptions are generic and do not follow rule a). The next mistake is again the lack of negative keyword research.

4). When all above is done, we can again find more negatives in the search term report after the campaign has started. A good AdWords manager lives in his report for weeks/months, looking for negatives and adding them to the negative list.

Let me give you an example of howcfar you can go with negs. My customer sells non branded handbags. So one of negative lists is a list of all UK fashion stores in the UK (300+ stores). So the next time someone types in buy Walmart brown leather handbag, my client will not show for this search with her keyword of "brown leather handbag". These kind of everyday goods campaigns are very hard to convert. This campaign has over a thousand negatives and is converting. More negs will be added to push down the CPA.

b). As I said there are two things hat must come together for a good campaign. I explain it like this: the right horses must come to water, the water must also be sweet to drink. I am referring to the website. The optimisation of landing pages is massively overlooked by most web designers. I will only touch on this briefly as I must sleep. Keyword rich environment s help massively with shopping and search campaigns alike. Find the right keywords and embed them on your product pages, no bullet points, google Hayes that. Think about your page source, page titles, meta keywords, meta descriptions. The on the page use those keywords to have great original descriptive text. Do not copy the brurb you got from the manufacture, this is a common mistake.

The reason why this all matters is you quality scores, ad rank and lower CPC. Getting more, better position clicks at a lower price. Also, your keyword rich description s trigger more relevant searches from customers with intent to buy.

I hope that has been some help.

PS, please excuse any grammatical errors, its too late to check over this. Night.

ppc_uk

[ppc_uk]

Also, you can not judge the whole support team in any business on a few guys. There are newbies in every business. The new ppc guy in my office makes errors all the time, after the call we go over it, should he ask and then he knows for next time.

Plus awards now had 7 exams to pass, (120 questions each). The new guys are under a lot of stress at my firm. After all those yearly exams, you must then get experience in a field that is changing everyday.

The newbie you spoke to was probably thinking:
- Ad Extensions improve adrank, better adrank leads to better positions, most sales happen in the to 3 results.
- 65% of all traffic is mobile, more people convert on mobile devices then ever before.
- the rule book says increase bids on converting keywords, dominate your key keywords.

The part that she/he forgot was to pick the right keywords, negative keyword bad traffic and optimise the site (make it sweet to drink). If the customer can't find the info/tools they need on your site, you competition is just a click or two away

[PCInk]

I've spoken to several of their reps. They are all the same. "You need to bid more"

[fathom]

Our team bids for us aims for position #3. So if you are below that you may indeed need to "bid more".

[ppc_uk]

Morning guys.

I can't say that I agree that all their google reps at bad. However I will say that my contacts in the UK google office do not always have the answers on all ocations. In those situations I email them as much detail as possible and ask them to ask about the office. In any business, their are those who know more than others. Maybe you have not had the chance the encounter them as of yet.

Some of the above info I wrote earlier was given to me by Google reps.

[tangor]

Guys and Gals...! Really?

It is called Sales (by Google for their product) and all you have to do is what they say. Play the game or not, just do not expect them to do more than urge you to spend more ... and most of the time they are reading a script and have no clue regarding the business itself. And... (wait for it) most of them are outsourced and have no clue other than "read the script and be polite at all times".

Seriously, kiddies, do ANY of you expect G to give good and actual information that will make you wealthy?

The black box remains opaque. As it should. And we have to work around that best we can. Because if we actually knew how the black box worked ... well, you can figure that out. :)

[fathom]

Agree with that tangor. That is the way of most companies. Customer service reps are costs that eat into profits.

I would outsource to a more experience consultant to get genuine support.

[tangor]

+1 to @fathom for what SHOULD be done. However, that is not what will EVER happen re G and advertising (adwords or adsense) and publishers and advertisers. G is in the business of sales to YOU the webmaster./publisher and a market for the advertiser with no gurantees. There is no compelling reason for them to change that model, or actually help either side excel because they (the black box) gets a cut from ANYTHING done.

I speak only to the OP re: g reps. I have never had anything helpful and in all cases their "solution" was "buy more, bid more, spend more, raise your expense, just open your wallet and give me all you have" kind of thing.

One needs to concentrate on what does work and avoid everything that might queer the deal (which you never signed a contract or agreement) for whatever you get.

And these days those dollars are significantly less.

Not a basher, just reporting realities. THINGS have CHANGED over the last three years and I don't see them moving positive, then again, there's that damn tin foil hat. :)

aside: Moved to in house adverts and private serving same about 8 years back. Have only two sites left with g ads of any kind. Which are under performing these days.

aside two: g is serving more and more krap ads and that is a big reason why.... the mansions in the sky are in default. :)

[ppc_uk]

May I ask, what country you guys are dealing with in regards to google reps.

I'm from the UK, I wonder if this somehow makes a difference. Maybe the reason why I'm so cheerful about these guys is they have only helped me make more sales.

My first encounter with the rep. He advised me to lower bids, so as to be in position #2. Said I would lower my CPA by not bidding on the top spot for various reasons.

They gave me a demonstration of proper use of the keyword tool and how to avoid certain keyword types. I also remember their statement that google makes more money if you campaigns convert. As a converting campaign never gets paused/deleted they hit CPA.

I take it that few people here have had this experience and such that is why the positivity contained by the few.

The answers are out there guys. Study, pass all the exams and research from others who have been before. The google guys have a ton of tools we will never have. However you have to know what to ask for.

[TheRealSaxman]

Well... I can't help but throw my 2¢ in here... I absolutely agree with @fathom and @tangor in their assessments... I've only experienced the exact same thing over the years. I've come to the assumption that G's main rule of thumb has always been that you will get better results if you are always in position 1 and have 100% of the Impression Share. It's only after you have achieved these two things that they will start to try and decipher anything else that may be going wrong, and even then the very first thing they will look at is "Do you have SiteLinks?"... and they will almost always try and tell you to use and "About Us" page, or a "Contact Us" page. So, in the case of the original post of @glakes who has an eCommerce site this DOES NOT make any sense whatsoever. If I were to have an eCommerce site that sells Widgets, and someone completes a search for Widgets... why would I not what to help direct them to the best page to make a purchase by including SiteLinks for "Brand A Widgets", "Brand B Widgets", "Brand C Widgets", and "Brand D Widgets"... or maybe Widgets of a different color if your Widgets are something like socks, shoes, hats or clothing. @tangor is absolutely correct in his assessment that G's support reps "have no clue other than "read the script and be polite at all times"."... My current company has "assigned" G Reps also who come and visit us from time to time, they seem to be more educated than the phone support reps that we get from day to day, but even they only seem to be there to push us to use their new products and spend more money. All I can advise is be careful, and don't drink the Kool-Aide...

[LiamL]

I agree with this, although that doesn't make all their recommendations bad.

Granted they often tell you to "increase bids" and "increase budgets" - usual tricks but off course they want people to spend more on adwords, can you blame them? I take this with a pinch of salt rather than worry about it too much. Drill into their knowledge of adwords and they can really help with accounts and ideas, especially if you have a good relationship with them :)