I Tried Google AdWords And It Didn’t Work

You gave it a good try. You spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on Google AdWords, hoping to find that “magic bullet” of advertising on the web. You spent your money on pay per click advertising, and got low-quality leads that aren’t in your target audience.

Why didn’t Google AdWords work for your business?

After managing Google ads for many industries over the last 10 years, we at jSinger Marketing have found a similar pattern of failure. We also have a solution, so read on.

First, ask yourself the following questions to determine if the failure was on Google’s part, or something you did:

1. Did you manage ads yourself?

2. Did you let a Google rep guide your set-up?

3. Did you advertise in the wrong region?

4. Did you use “broad match” keywords?

5. Did you “eliminate the junk” by using negative keywords?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you owe AdWords another chance. The wrong set-up can render 90% of your budget useless.

Here’s how you should run your AdWords Campaign:

1. Find a professional agency to manage your ads. OR, take classes and get certified. Google ad management is an art, from selecting regions to keywords to writing the ads. If you don’t have the education, and did it yourself, it’s like building your car with parts from Ford, and then blaming Ford when you do it incorrectly.
2. If you’re doing it yourself, it’s OK to let a Google rep help. But keep in mind, this is how they make billions of dollars a year. Their goal is to 1) make money for Google and 2) to get you activity. Google knows that they need to flood you with web traffic to get you excited. They don’t care if it’s good traffic.
3. It seems simple, but the default set-up when you build a Google AdWords campaign is to show ads throughout the entire United States. If you are a local company, this means your budget is spent incorrectly. Even if you are national, you can hardly afford to cover all of the U.S. And the data you get to learn from will be inconclusive – not a big enough sample size.
4. If you don’t know about Google AdWords keyword match types, you’re in big trouble. If you are a surgeon, and you use “shoulder surgery” as a broad match keyword, Google allows anything to come in that they deem as similar. Your ad could trigger for search on “Mayo Clinic.” You have little control over how your money is spent.
5. Lastly, and so often overlooked, are negative keywords. If you are a dentist in Chicago, you don’t want a keyword of “Dentist Chicago” unless you also want to show ads when searches are done for “dentist assistant job openings in Chicago” or “dentist conferences Chicago.” By adding “job” and “conferences” to your negative keyword list, your ad will not show and not waste your budget. A good Google Advertising Partner Agency will have this in their initial plan for you.