Two BIG Reason’s Not to Let Google Optimize Your Adwords Campaign
Over the last months, Adwords advertisers have been bombarded with a free offer from Adwords to let one of their Google Adwords Specialists optimize a campaign. With a notice in the Adwords Interface, emails, phone calls and even snail mail, Google is has been making a major push to get advertisers on board to let their inhouse specialists optimize campaigns.
What’s Wrong With Google?
Everyone likes something for free right? Let the Adwords Specialists at Google optimize my campaign? Sound great. Wrong! In my opinion if you are an Adwords advertiser, the last people you would want to optimize a campaign would be Google themselves.
Here are my top 2 reasons why you should never let Google set up or optimize your Adwords campaigns:
1. Adwords Specialists are not business people.The Adwords Specialist at Google is not a business person nor a marketer, they are an employee setting up an account with no risk to themselves and no incentive to perform. From this position the Adwords Specialist is not going to consider anything about your business, your market, or anything at all about the nuances that make your business unique. They will not get inside the head of your customers and write compelling targeted ads that speak to them. Not thinking like a business owner and marketer is a serious hinderance and in my opinion not moving a campaigns towards better results at the very core.
2. Campaigns are geared towards Googles interests not Advertisers. As an employee of Google the Adwords Specialists will set up and optimize a campaign with the interest of Google in mind over the interest of the advertiser. When Google offers to optimize an account for free, they mean to optimize it for Googles benefit and not yours.
Where is This Coming From?
In every single account I have had the opportunity to look at that has taken advantage of a free optimization from Google, the broadest relevancy keywords are used (think as general as can be like a client in the automotive industry that was suggested to use the keyword cars!), meaning more clicks for Google. Broad match type keywords are used meaning more impressions and clicks for Google. Location, Network and Device targeting is all set as wide as possible meaning more impressions and more clicks for Google. I think I am seeing a pattern forming here. Needless to say, optimization strategy for an inhouse Adwords Specialist is focused on one goal, more clicks for Google.
For Googles inhouse Adwords Specialists, there is no reward for creating a well optimized campaign for an advertiser. As the old saying goes, “You get what you pay for” and “If it’s too good to be true it probably is” definitely applies to a free campaign help offer from an inhouse Google Adwords Specialist.
So Is There Anything Good About Google’s Adwords Specialists?
With all that said here is one reason why you should let a Google inhouse Adwords Specialist set up a campaign. As you might have figured out, any campaign they will set up or optimizations they might make will be a good example of probably what not to do, but it can also offer some insights into options and features that could be beneficial if applied in the correct context that might have not been considered otherwise. Taking a lemon and turning it into lemonade as best as can be.
A free account review by the inhouse Google Adwords Specialists is just like many of the features that are pushed on advertisers. By packaging features and help as making managing a campaign easier, more convenient and the underlying message of “better results” Google is able to gain almost complete control over an advertisers campaign. Its like having a fox guard the henhouse.