A Call From Google (Not a Question but the Moderators said to Put this Here)
-
This is not going to be a long post but I wanted to get something out there that a lot of other business owners might not understand. I have several different PPC campaigns that my business partner and I personally run. The campaigns are all doing quite well with a high rate of return.
Never has Google contacted me (other than for surveys, which I did wind up receiving 5 blue gym bags with the Google insignia on them) and never did I think they would. The campaign they called me on wasn’t a particularly large campaign. Right now the PPC spend is around 3000/month. I understand this isn’t a little bit of money, but at the same time it’s not in the millions like most of Google’s top sites.
The thing that concerned me most was the reason for their call. A nice woman introduced herself and said that the campaigns were nicely run except for a few changes. She went on to tell me of a couple of updates in the PPC realm (this happened to me yesterday – Feb 28). She said within the past few months they were rolling out a new way to target their content network and for most people they were able to save 35% (that was a number she mentioned) with the tactics she was going to suggest. My background lies in mathematics and finance (somewhat related) and I tend to know when I am either being sold or being tricked into being sold.
Through the whole list of things she mentioned that would help as she was walking me through she mentioned that it was a good idea to up the bid on the content network. That way we would have more chances of being seen and it would help with out conversions. This by itself seems like decent advice, but our bid for the content network is not cheap. If they are calling every small – medium business and telling them to up their bids, we are going to have a dilemma on our hands. The dilemma being that the AdWords placement is going to cost a heck of a lot more. She said that even if we up our bid, we are not likely to pay the full amount. She wants us to have a repeat conversation on Monday.
One side of me was a little upset after the conversation but all they are doing is simply up-selling. They are raising the rates through what I guess are fair business practices. A lot of business owners might just take the advice of a Google representative and not think twice about it. This means we have thousands to hundreds of thousands of people at this very moment upping the bid on their content network.
If they can even get a small proportion of people to increase their bids - let's say 10% - the other 90% will start getting less shows and eventually increase their bids. Also, the people that have higher bid amounts in but aren't paying the full amount will start getting closer and closer to the amount they put in as their maximum bid.
This wouldn’t be alarming to me but this is the first and only time I have ever heard from a Google representative. I can’t say I didn’t see this coming but at the same time I was definitely taken aback. I am curious to know what the MOZ community has to say.
-
The budget is maxed out for this term - they just wanted us to up the bid (which we are spending .25 of the current bid).
-
We are number 1 btw - that is the average - they just suggested to raise the bids. I should have mentioned that.
-
I have played with it - I know exactly what is going on. That is not the problem. The problem is their suggestions. We spend enough to know about raising budgets. They want us to raise the budget for something specific that is already maxed out - it is set at 500/day and coming in at much less - they didn't even look at it. The problem is they want us to raise the budget as a suggestion without any looking into. This is dangerous.
-
They will keep doing this and eventually it will up the price for all terms (I am sure this has already).
-
cant believe they are still doing this till today.
Thanks for sharing Jacob
-
We have a term that is performing really well and showing to the maximum amount of people on the content network - she wanted us to limit the people it shows to and up the bid.
-
Yeah...seems it's a common problem. There's a Google Partner group Google set up on G+, Lots of complaints and examples of terrible advice.
Good luck!
-
It wasn't great advice and really wasn't applicable. Pretty weird - hopefully it's not driving up the bids which if everyone followed it the advice would.
-
Google AdWords seem to be having a massive push on customer retention at the moment. We've had clients that spend 20-30K and 1K alike per month receiving calls offering "advice" (often VERY bad advice). We (and some other Google Partners) have complained to our account managers at Google and ours in particular mentioned that they have some teams calling advertisers working from prompt sheets (basically offering them all the same advice).
So take it with a pinch of salt, experiment but don't fall into the trap of thinking because it's Google they're 100% correct. Often google uses outside agencies for these types of things - one in the UK is called Capita I believe.
-
I say play with it. If your hunch is true then you'll pay more and get the same results. If your hunch is not then you'll pay the same or slightly more and get better results. PPC campaigns are all about testing, analyzing and improving. Maybe this is one of the ways for that to happen.
-
I have a meeting with our Google Rep weekly. They do enjoy spending your money, however most of the suggestions are worth it in terms of ROI in my experience. Guess it all depends on the size of the marketing campaign. Interesting they are reaching out in this way though.
-
Hi Jacob,
They're definitely upselling, that is just their sales business ;-). I've received a couple of calls over the years as well to incentive me to spend more money with them. I don't have a problem with it personally as any other sales department of any company would do the same probably.
You might want to also have a look at this one: http://webmarketingschool.com/should-you-trust-google/
I must say that she had a point that upping your bid doesn't mean that you will have to fully spend that amount on display advertising. It could also be that she sees that you just have to spend just a bit more to generate more top placements and so on receive more conversions and lower your CPA. But it's a hard guess if that would really be paying off for you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved How should I update the grouping of keywords in a google ads account
hi, I have a google adwords account running for a while in a fairly competitive market in a major city so there is only one geo location with many suburbs or council areas as popular searched. I have keywords that are 2-4 words long and very similar. I have had one keyword in its own campaign, several in one campaign and a location campaign. The location campaign has several adgroups for specific suburbs. My question is that the most popular search terms are similar but in different campaigns and I am wondering if this is not the best way. for example I have these keywords in separate campaigns as exact match and phrase match
Paid Search Marketing | | salliWW
rubbish removal
rubbish removal near me
rubbish removal Washington But the way google uses exact match seems to be changing and I am concerned these would be best in one adgroup. Also these keywords trigger similar phrases, for example, waste removal. Is it best to put them in one campaign with one ad group or one campaign with separate adgroups, or leave as is. As competition has increased I need to bid for top of page now and need to keep budget rises as little as possible..0 -
Can Google shopping listings affect SEO rankings?
Hello everyone. Here is my question: Until 4 weeks ago we used to have just around 2,000 product/pages on Google shopping of our product pages, then we added over 40,000 more items/pages to it, and our Google natural search rankings dropped on most of our long-tail keywords pointing to the same product pages. Do you think that's just coincidence or could the number of products/pages on Google shopping affect natural search results?
Paid Search Marketing | | fablau0 -
How Do You Remove the "Google Site Stats" Tag from a Conversion Page
Our company does not want it up there. Is there a way to remove it without have to change the conversion tracking code? It's quite a pain given our internal processes to overhaul many conversion codes. Is there an easy way to do this so that we can simply remove the tag?
Paid Search Marketing | | CSawatzky0 -
Recommend a company for Google Product Feed?
Hi there, Is there a Google Product feed company you've used and can recommend? We're not looking for anyone to manage the Adwords end of it, just help set-up/submit the data feed. I'm NOT looking for a free option, I'm looking for a reliable, efficient way to get the feeds set-up and updated. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | marketingcupcake0 -
Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Code Help - Not Showing Conversions
Hi, all. I am having issues with a clients website. They have their website developed by a company http://www.flowerstoreinabox.com.au/ my clients website is http://www.flawlessflowers.com.au the google adwords conversion tracking code has been added to their site. It measures all details as far as ads clicked on, etc.. the only part that is not been measured is the conversions of the adwords campaign. So I cannot see if the ads are successful or what their conversion % is. I have looked at the code on the thank you page and the google adwords conversion code is present on the thank you page after the sale. I am not a coder and so not sure what to look at if all the details on the checkout page exist in the code to measure the adwords conversion ecommerce transactions correctly. I have provided a link to the source code of the competed order page. If someone could look at the code and provide any assistance I would appreciate it. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16973368/7 may adwords flawless flowers.txt I am also happy to provide you access to the google analytics account if required just give me your email address to set it up. Thanks for all your help Regards Arthur
Paid Search Marketing | | VivaArturo0 -
Google Adwords Clicks v.s. Google Analytics Visits
Hi Guys, This question has been asked several times before but after doing some research, I haven't really found the right solution and/or explanation. I'm currently seeing a 30-50% discrepancy in Adwords Clicks and Analytics Visits, where there are more clicks than visits in most situations. E.g. 74,127 clicks v.s. 46,845 visits (34 add-to-carts, 67 initiated orders, and a revenue of $12,000). Can anybody in the forum help explain this? Thank you, Jurgen P.S. I've also looked at all the tracking codes and everything seems to be alright, I've checked if any internal redirects are stripping off parameters but to no avail. Lastly, I'm not sure if this is a behavioral issue here in SEA--will first click (Adwords) and last click attribution (Analytics) be the only explanation? P.S.S. I'm seeing the same discrepancies with Facebook ads and Analytics.
Paid Search Marketing | | JurgenEstanislao0 -
Questions about Adwords Display network.
I am starting up an Adwords campaign that is set to run in the Display (content) network only. In the past I have meshed search and content together, but after reading Brad Geddes book I see that I need to separate them. I can't see my quality score for my keywords - it just has a dash in place of QS. Is this normal? Additionally, I can't see how much I am paying per keyword. I only have one text ad and it is still pending approval. I have several image ads that have so far had a good CTR. I'm assuming that I can't see QS because my text ad is not running yet. But, if this is the case, then how do you optimize your campaign for image ads? I'm currently paying about 45 cents per click. (Previously when I had a poorly optimized quickly thrown together campaign I was paying twice that), but I believe that I could get this down significantly. Any help is greatly appreciated! You guys rock!
Paid Search Marketing | | MarieHaynes0 -
In Google Adwords, can I create negative dollar-amount keywords?
example of negative keywords: -$40 driving lessons -35 dollar driving lessons The driving lessons I'm selling are $55 an hour, so I obviously don't want unqualified leads chewing through my budget when they clearly don't want to spend $55 on a lesson. I already have the price mentioned in my ads, but I want to negative out the dollar amounts because people are still stupid enough to click without reading the ad. Any help will be appreciated! Matt
Paid Search Marketing | | strilliams0