Google Ads – Don’t try this at home
Brad Cannon | 03/06/2020
At this point it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that running Google ads (formerly known as AdWords) is a must. The only real question is how to actually do it.
There are a lot of ways you can handle Google Ads management, and you have to be careful because, frankly, many of them are bad.
GA can be very deceptive in that it’s possible to get campaigns up and running quickly. Actually, it’s pretty easy. That’s part of the problem. Easy doesn’t always equal good.
To run a campaign properly, there are many things that have to be considered. First, you have to define your objectives. Clicks or conversions? Things like geotargeting, key performance metrics, scheduling, bidding, and a lot of other variables come into play. All of them have a significant impact on cost and success. And cost and success aren’t even necessarily directly related. It’s complicated.
I’ve seen GA management handled in many different ways, but it usually boils down to one of three ways (or close variants). You can hire your nephew to manage your campaigns, ask your marketing manager to run them, or hire a professional.
I think it’s easy to agree that someone hiring a friend/family member isn’t taking GA seriously enough to begin with. I’ve been doing this for 13 years, and I can tell you that never ends well. Usually just makes Thanksgiving and Christmas awkward. Just don’t.
Asking your Marketing Manager is an option, but often you’re just setting them up for failure. It’s not that they aren’t good, or wouldn’t try very hard, but they usually have a lot of other things on their plate and simply aren’t able to devote the time it takes to get educated and up to speed to do the best job at it. It’s not really fair to ask them to do it.
The most successful dealers hire professionals. Would you rather have an A level tech work on your motorcycle, or your office manager? You can’t just throw a body at a task and hope they can do it.
REAL success comes from the dealer principal and/or Marketing Manager setting some goals, and communicating with a Google Ads specialist what they want and expect. And I’m not talking about some Google Ads person who calls you and says they’ll do an analysis of your business, and their next call is to the pet groomer. We’re talking a real industry expert with years of experience. Like us.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a shameless plug, but we have a long history of outperforming the competition. We’ve been doing this longer than any of them. Give us a shout and let us show you how we can help.
