Why You Should Never Use Google's "Free" AdWords Service

I’m finding more and more small companies coming to me asking me why they should use SageRock, or any other agency, to setup their paid search when Google will do it for free.

I mean look at happy Romi here:

“AdWords doubled my website traffic!”

Do you know who else could double your website traffic. This guy:

Please people! It’s not about more traffic. It’s about more sales!

When you call that super handy number: 1-877-721-1738 you are getting into a system that has one goal: Take as much money as you will give them.

AdWords is not about bettering humanity and making your dreams come true. AdWords is about making more money for AdWords.

Google is a publicly traded company that just wants to see this pretty blue line keep going up:

Let me tell you 2 stories.

Story #1:

We used to work for a very large cable company. They would spend boat loads of money at Google AdWords.

We would have quarterly meetings at this company. A minimum of 3 Google representatives were always there. The client loved this. They felt so important.

Google would get an hour to present. All it was about was spending more money:

“We’ve compiled anonymous competitors in your industry and as you can see you are way below the industry average in advertising spend. You need to spend more money to be on par with what these other anonymous companies are spending.”
“We think you should get involved in Google Radio, buy some spots on Google TV.”
“We would like to talk to your chief marketing officer about all this.”

This cable company never once did any of these things. In fact, they eventually stopped directly advertising with AdWords altogether. But that’s another story. AdWords is a great tool when used correctly.

Story #2:

We had a small business client that is having a difficult time trying to figure out how to best promote their company online.

Take a look at this screenshot:

We (SageRock) were given access to the account on September 29. After completely optimizing the account, we increased the “General” campaign daily budget by $15.

By October 21 they had moved on. They let Google have at it. The first thing Google did was increase the company’s budget by $85 per day!

(I would like to say, we had worked on optimizing that account for weeks before we increased the budget by $15 per day. The very first thing Google did on the very first day they got in there was increase the budget.)

On October 22 they increased it again another $50 per day.
On October 26 they increased their budget another $25 per day.
On the same day, October 26, they increased it another $25 per day.
The company has now gone from a $465 per day budget to a $650 per day budget.
On October 30 there were 2 decreases.
Then an increase back to $625 on November 3.
And now back to $550 on November 6. I have a feeling the company has probably taken over their paid search campaigns from Google at this point.

Incidentally, I see people making these erratic moves constantly. They are based on nothing. They are simply fear based moves.

Let me show you their conversion rates.

First, here are the conversion rates we had while we were running the campaigns:

97 conversions.
$88.36 cost per conversion.
3.25% conversion rate.

Here are the results Google got after they took over:

80 conversions.
$132.92 per conversion.
2.62% conversion rate.

I would also like to point out that SageRock got them 92 conversions in 19 days for a cost of $8,621.79.

Google got them 80 conversions in 19 days for a cost of $10,648.27.

It cost them $2026.48 for the pleasure of getting “free” AdWords optimization work from Google that got them 12 less conversions.

The SageRock monthly maintenance fee for them was $750.

If they don’t change course they will basically be overpaying Google about $3000 every single month.

I wish they had just fired us and done nothing at all.

Fixing what Google has done will be a mess.

I can’t stand this. Google would make more money if they would just focus on conversion. But they simply won’t. It’s all about burning up these little companies at any price.

So you say you can’t afford me. Fine. Let me give you something for free.

I’m going to do a 90 minute Google AdWords clinic. Plus I’m going to give you $100 Google AdWords coupon that you can use in setting up a new Google AdWords account. It doesn’t work with existing accounts. But if you are setting up a new account it will work.

Here are the details:

This will be held online. (Workshop access information will be sent out closer to the event.)
Date: December 1, 2011.
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 pm Eastern Time.
Cost: FREE

I will show you exactly how we were able to lower their cost per conversion and increase their conversion rate while Google wasn’t.

I hope to see you at that webcast.

This post was written by

Sage Lewis – who has written 333 posts on SageRock Digital Marketing Blog.
My name is Sage Frederick Lewis. My kid's name is Indiana Sage Lewis. I am filled with love and passion for many things in life. The list of things I like about life is MUCH longer than the things I don't like about life. So, since you don't have all day reading about the mundane things I love (some of which, btw, include: Rocky, Indy, SageRock, movies, pizza, cheesecake, running, exploring.) here are the things I don't like: Driving Meetings Zucchini (I like it fine. I'm just allergic.) I think that's pretty much it. My Twitter account is: http://twitter.com/sagerock My YouTube Channel is: http://www.youtube.com/sagerock