Beware The Google Doofus – 5 Mistakes That Nearly Killed A Business

A Real Life Google Doofus

I recently took over the administration of a client’s Google Adwords account that, for 3 years, had been managed by another consultant. I had never taken over an account from another Google Guy before, so I was curious to check out his style. Adwords, after all, is a mix of science and art.

The reason the account was handed to my company was poor performance. When I entered the account, within 10 seconds my jaw dropped. Another two minutes in, and my entire face, chest and spleen dropped. Was the person administrating this account just lazy? Maybe he was so happy with the money he had been paid, he went out on a drinking binge… for 3 years?

Or… and this is my guess, maybe he was a doofus. Actually, to be more precise: moron.

It’s unprofessional of me to refer to fellow Internet marketer that way but I see no alternative. To illustrate, here are a few of the ways in which the account was mismanaged:

1) BORING ADS
The ads he created were very dry, no appeal to emotion at all. That’ s not a major no-no, but the ads represent the point where a searcher must be grabbed and given a reason to click your ad over all the others. This was bad but certainly not a fatal mistake.

2) NO AD TESTING
There was no split testing of the ads. Within the many adgroups, there was one ad created for each, and each was left to run for 3 years. How would they ever know whether or not the ad was optimal if they had never compared its performance to others? The answer: they wouldn’t. And they didn’t. They just let the first ad run and hoped for the best, it seems.  Testing ads against other ads is a basic element of success in Adwords and this doofus didn’t even get that right.

3) A GEO-TARGETING MESS
The account was comprised of two campaigns. In the first campaign he had geo-targeted a 50 mile radius around the company’s business. I won’t bore you with specifics here, but there’s no way in hell that a potential customer would travel more than 10 or 15 miles to visit this particular business. It’s just not the nature of the business. Trust me. Plus many of the ads were being served across a large body of water (from Long Island, New York, across the L.I. Sound over to Connecticut). People living on the other side of the water would never consider traveling across it to a different state, to visit the business.

4) AND WHAT STATE ARE WE IN ANYWAY?
The second campaign geo-targeted Virginia only. That’s over 300 miles away from Long Island. Not kidding. They must have screwed up the initial campaign set up and never bothered to check where they were targeting. Every ad in this campaign was being served to a state over 300 miles outside the business’s reach.

5) BROAD MATCH ONLY
Only broad match keywords were being used. Over 900 keywords were stuffed inside the adgroups–far too many by the way–and ALL OF THEM were broad match. No exact, no phrase. So, maybe the Adwords gurus among you are thinking, wow, he must have set up a great list of negative keywords to work along with the broad matches, right? Granted, on one campaign, he set up a fair list of negatives. Fair. But not nearly enough, as when I looked at the report for keywords that triggered ads, many of the terms people were finding the business with, and clicking on ads, had nothing to do with the business–hence the clicks were a complete waste of the client’s money. For 3 years! And on the other campaign, comprised of all broad matches, there were NO negatives at all!! You should see some of the wildly unrelated terms people entered on, and eventually clicked on.

Oh, and one other thing about the keywords, every keyword that was used from the beginning of the account 3 years earlier was still active. No matter how poor the CTR was, it was never removed or paused.

There are other mistakes the guy made–like how he seems to not understand the relevancy factor of the quality score and how Google expects ad content to directly relate to the keyword(s) and the website content–but I’ll stop here and end with this advice. Next time you hire a professional, just because he tells you he’s good and he gives his business a catchy name, think and investigate a little before you hire. It could mean many thousands of dollars–and possibly the very existence of your business–if you choose poorly.

John Barlowe owns Barlowe Interactive Marketing, a full service Internet marketing company in New York.