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Anyone ever done a google ad campaign?

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68
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London
Got a phone call this morning from a company who were trying to sell me a google ad campaign. £109 including VAT for the first month to run 5 different ads, then £20 a month after that. No contract, just 30 days cancellation notice. I'm not sure I'd bother using them, as I can probably just do the same thing through google myself, but just wondered if anyone gets work through this type of online advertising. My reputation is growing and my leaflet drops and Facebook bring in customers, but I wouldn't mind trying to get myself a proper full, splitting at the seems round this summer. Many Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Matt.

 
Hello Matt,

Yes I've tried a few Adwords campaigns - not for windows but other exterior cleaning services - roofs/driveways/patios etc and I found the results to be non existent compared to my website.

That is top or thereabouts for all services and I get around 1000 visits a month to my site and 100+ emails via contact page per month plus tel calls.

My adwords were appatently getting lots of clicks but generating no work. I was only doing it out of curiosity (and bit of greed tbh) and wondering what impact it might have but didn't make slightest difference.

That said I only stuck with it for 2 or 3 months with ads for a couple of different services running at any one time ,so maybe I should've stuck with it but didn't see the point.

It was good for info on EXACT search terms used relating to each service so helped me re-optimise my site pages for additional terms so was worth it from that point of view.

Personally I think a high ranking listing in the organic results and a listing in the Google My Business 3 pack are far more beneficial - if I had to choose organic or GMB I'd go for a top 3 in organic results every time.

The problem with Adwords is that for all you know a competitor could be eating up your budget endlessly clicking on and off your ad and there's nothing you can do to stop it. But also a paid ad is NO guarantee of appearing in the ads above the organic results on page 1 and really THAT is the only place worth paying for.

You get details of number of times your ad has been viewed but a 'view' could be you appearing at the bottom of a page that appears in search results ,but it doesn't mean the searcher went all the way down to the bottom of the page and actually saw it.. And all statistical info on where u appear in SERPS and what positions get the most clicks suggests the chances are they didn't get that far.

It is worth noting that the most recent studies on this have found that page 1 listings get 80% + of all clicks but paid ads only get 10% of this. The majority of all traffic goes to the top 5 positions. Clearly then u want your ad at the top of the page to really benefit and at the bottom or page 2 isn't going to do u any favours.

A 'view' also includes your ad appearing on 'partner sites' which could be business directories,gumtree etc.

On top of all this your ad position/rank is determined by a number of factors including size of your bid / budget combimed with a 'Quality Score' based on use of  most relevant keywords in ad , placement of them within the ad , ad text , URL , relevancy/usefulness of your ad AND optimisation/relevancy/usefulness of the landing page on your website the ad links to.

So depending on the competition levels for particular keywords you're really up against it. With SEO of the ad being so important there is an argument to justify using specialists to manage your capmapign,depending on what your own SEO knowledge is like. But paying for it by no means guarantees your ad appearing above the 3 pack and organic results and if you're not showing there why pay for the privilege of a company managing your campaign?

Furthermore,my own view on it was why bother to be paying for adwords at all?

No SEO company can ever guarantee page 1 ranking in the organic results or adwords position beacause it all comes down to Google's algorithins which determine all these results.

My personal opinion,for what it's worth,is concentrate on ranking highly in organic results and GMB 3 pack and that will generate and expand your business. Even more so when optimisation of your site pages is directly related to how ads might rank,so that needs to be sorted anyway.

BUT that doesn't mean I'm right. I'm only going on my own limited experience of running adwords but that combined with what I know about adwords ranking is why I don't bother with it. Might be totally different for you though so if you want to go for it - go for it. If the costs are affordable then I think lots of advertising options are worth considering and perhaps worth a try.

My attitude is can I afford to lose this amount of money if there's no return from it? If yes then I'll think about it. And of the numerous advertising platforms out there adwords would be my first choice to try.

What's good about it is you set the budget and you can stop it anytime you want (but don't forget that budget limit has a bearing on rank).

Hope that all makes sense and is of some use...and if u want a few pointers on SEO for your site feel free to ask.

Cheers.

 
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