Adwords Is Overpriced if . . .

I keep getting these cards and letters from Google trying to get me to try Adwords (Please note how an internet company is using direct mail.) So far with offers of $75.00 and $100.00 in enticements I have not bitten to go that direction. Though it is very tempting Adwords was not in my 2010 marketing plan and to date it is not in my 2011 marketing plan. Now remember I review my plan monthly so that could change but right now it is a no. Yet, to go out and buy key words rather than making a natural organic search work, which I might add that I have, is tempting.


So I ask you does Adwords make sense or is it a dollar drain in my marketing budget?


Adwords is overpriced if you don’t have a good business model. If your business is loosy goosy in who you are targeting from your products and service offerings to your pricing to your overall marketing to your customer service you will miss your target because you don’t have a target to hit.


You need to be William Tell or Robin Hood to hit your target and be one of the top 5 companies in your industry. You need to focus and refine yourself down to the pure reflection of your offering. The biggest problem is going to be what we call, your back end. If you’re willing, to probably loose money or able to only break even at best for the first go round as you work out the bugs, go on and jump in.


Adwords is overpriced if you have a poor cash flow. Even if you have put together the best business model possible you might lose with Adwords if you have a tight, slow of conservative cash flow. If you could use the goggle enticement of $100 and maybe put in another $100 or your own money and get back $300 or $400 in profit wouldn’t that be nice. Unless you’re in a onetime transaction business and you’re lucky this is not going to happen. You could be looking at 6 to 12 even longer for the revenue streams to catch up to your monetary outlay. The longer the sales cycle the longer the cash flow drain. So let me ask you can you prime the Adwords well to get it started?


Adwords is overpriced if you don’t test. In marketing you want to test everything you can. For small business testing is not an option sometimes. Really, I know. As much as you might want and need to test, there are times that your budget is so small that it would be eaten up by the test alone so you need to make your test your outlay of your attack.


As many of you know I have just started my “official” training for a Spring Marathon. It is 19 weeks away but it is time to start ramping up my mileage so by the time February and March roll around I am up to speed and mileage targets to be ready on April 30th. Same too with Adwords. Start with a landing page or better yet 3 landing pages. Test those pages out with the appropriate words. Now remember this is not a test of one of your pages against another. Each of your top ad groups need their own test and you need to get your Marketing funnel or in this case vacuum working to achieve success in all areas and product lines. For most of you, pick out 1 and only 1 product and service to work with and concentrate your limited marketing monies on that 1 item alone.


Adwords is overpriced if you’re fighting for top position. Sometimes you just can’t afford to be the Big Dog in the marketing. To achieve that cost per click top spot might cost more that you can, would or even should afford. Don’t get into an ego bid for a word or word sting. There are times it is really just not worth it. If you are not tracking your ROI ego can take over from logic and make you bid for words that are too pricy. Call for your friendly Bean Counter or Mr. Spock from Star Trek to get you logically back on track.


Pay only what is logical and what you can afford. Real success is when you pay only what you can afford when looking at your cash, your cash flow and margin.


Adwords is overpriced if you have a bad account structure. Let’s pretend you have a good business model, an excellent cash flow and have experience with other kinds or marketing and advertising.


It is easy to be making mistakes with any kind of advertising and or marketing. The problem with mistakes in using Adwords is that a word or word group might contain too many of your competition, a word might not hit your target. A word might not be relevant for you.


Adwords is overpriced if you don’t understand the usage of Negative keywords. Never heard of negative keywords? A sometimes hidden secret is to use Negative keywords in your Adwords attack, Say you have a furniture store selling Night Stands. Guess what, you might show up in searches for One Night Stands! Oh my yes. The fix in this case is to use the negative keyword “One” so it gets filtered out of your Word traffic. You can be saving upwards of 33% by entering the right Negative Keywords. And that is a lot of money.


Larson Notes & Satire: Dare I say that this is only the tip of the iceberg for using Adwords. Use them wrong and you’re going down baby, just as hard as the Titanic, only maybe even faster! So if you get that letter for the good folks at Google you might want to put it on the side and let it gather a little dust. Don’t get me wrong Adwords are a good thing for some companies but are they a good thing for your company? I wish I knew.


While with a $100 coupon from Google might let you get started with no experience at all, if you’re going to go it alone do your homework. The real key is that you can become competent if you have the time and recourses. Success paying for words is a moving target like all web work and success. The better you get at it the more your overall price for using Adwords will or should go down.

My thoughts are to refined your organic key word search to the best you can, then look at Adwords. But then, what do I really know?


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
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