DIY Adwords – Great Idea or Disaster in the Making?

“What’s the best place to hide a dead body? Page 2 of Google.”

That’s a common SEO joke. Everyone wants to be #1 in Google, but getting there organically is tough. One guaranteed way to get there is through Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is an advertising program from Google that allows businesses to display ads at the top of the search results. You only pay for that ad when someone clicks on it. This is called Pay-Per-Click Marketing. Sounds great, right?

It can be. 

There are a lot of variables to consider. Are people searching for what you offer? Do you have competition? Do you have the budget to pay for clicks.

The question I get asked a lot is, can’t I do this all myself?

Let me answer this with a story. Many, many years ago we had a client who had an e-commerce site. (Due to personal reasons, they have since closed up shop or else I would link to it.) Anyway, at the time she wanted to advertise on Google but didn’t want to pay us to set up the ads for her. She read up on how to do it, set up her ads, and within 24 hours had spent her entire $200 budget and had gotten no sales.

The question isn’t can you do the ads yourself, but should you?

Google wants to sell you ads, and so they will walk you through the whole process. But if you aren’t familiar with keyword terms, how to choose proper keywords, or how to write ad campaigns that convert, then it may not be in your best interests to do it yourself.

Here’s the second part of the story. I took a look at her ads for her, and she had selected many keywords. Her store was selling personalized embroidered and engraved items, so personalized baby bibs, ornaments, etc. She did some research and saw that one of the biggest search words in Google was ‘baby’ so she made that one of her keyword choices.

Unfortunately, someone searching for ‘baby’ might not be looking for baby bibs. They might be looking for baby growth charts or photos of cute babies or even baby chickens. The reason her ads did poorly was because her keyword choices were too competitive and too generic. Better options for keywords would have been ‘personalized baby bibs’ or ‘baby’s first christmas ornament.’

She was frustrated because she had chosen a keyword that was getting heavily searched. The phrase ‘personalized baby bib’ is going to get less search results, for sure. But how many people searching for that phrase are looking for what she was offering? Probably all of them. That’s the difference.

I would rather get 10 people on your site who are looking for what you offer than 100 people on it that don’t.

And I think that’s the difference between the kind of service we offer and what other PPC teams may offer. It’s not about getting MORE traffic to your site, it’s about getting the RIGHT traffic to your site. What good is 100 clicks in a day if zero of them buy? Those are worthless clicks.

We want your clicks to have value.

We are Google Adwords Certified.

We are very excited to add Andrea Fick to our team as our Internet Marketing Specialist. She has passed the Google Adwords certification exams and is now managing all aspects of online marketing campaigns for our clients.

The Google AdWords certification is a professional accreditation that Google offers to individuals who demonstrate proficiency in basic and advanced aspects of AdWords. An AdWords certification allows individuals to demonstrate that Google recognizes them as an expert in online advertising.

Get a quote from us today to help with your online marketing.