While most business owners are familiar with the idea of Google Ads, or Adwords is they used to call it, many have never attempted to set up their own campaign. And with good reason. The Google universe can be a confusing place for newbies and even experts like us.
While Google has managed to keep their secrets, well, secret for many years now, millions of businesses have found Google Adwords a great way to attract more eyeballs to their company website even if they don’t know exactly how the system works.
Google Adwords was originally released in October 2000. That’s more than 20 years ago! The platform allows paying advertisers to “bid” for the right to display brief ads intended to entice people to click and discover your website. Google Ads can be product listings, service offerings, videos, and more. The services are available via a PPC (pay-per-click) pricing model.
“Well I never click on those ads”, you say, and that might be true. But the reality is that hundreds of millions of people do click on those ads, with the result being 146.9 Billion (USD) in advertising revenue for Google in 2020 alone! Obviously they are doing something right.
How does AdWords work?
In short, Google Ads uses cookies and keywords to determine where advertising copy will do the most good or be the most relevant. The cost of a Google Ads campaign will depend on a host of factors. These include the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay per click, the keywords being bid on, and the relevance and click frequency of ads and ad extensions (set by the company) as well as how many competitors are bidding for that specific ad space.
Usually, when a small business signs up for AdWords, their account is managed by an agency that charges them a monthly fee – usually a percentage of about 20-25 percent – to build out their Google Ads campaign and keep an eye on their account. Often, disgruntled business owners complain that they’ve paid this fee for a year or two with little forward motion. In reality, they don’t actually know what’s happening with their Google Ad scampaign as the agency’s processes are not very transparent.
After avoiding AdWords for awhile at Watershed9, we made it our mission to come up with a better scheme that saves our clients money and allows them to see clearly how AdWords is actually working for them.
The Watershed9 AdWords Program – three steps:
- Build the machine – The process starts with building your AdWords “machine”. Other agencies do this step, of course, but when they’re through, they own it. At Watershed9, we believe that if you pay us to build a machine – you own it. we build it for YOU and YOU own it! This is a different philosophy employed by very few other marketing agencies. And we don’t tie you down with a contract. However, we do recommend a time frame of four to six months to make sure things are moving in the right direction since.
- Optimize the machine – Once we’ve taken the appropriate steps to ensure things are working correctly, and your Google Ads program is ticking along nicely, we move into a “maintain the machine” mode. In this phase less time is required to adjust and improve your campaign. We review and find ways to increase click-through rates, run more efficient ads and help your click budget achieve better results. By this time, we usually have enough data from Google to know how to adjust things efficiently but we can get these tasks done in fewer hours than the initial setup required. And here’s where Watershed9 deviates from the norm: We reduce our management fees so you can spend more of your budget on clicks.
- Maintain the machine – This phase usually happens between the fourth and sixth month of your Google Ads campaign. Once we’ve got your campaign in a good place and you are is seeing the results of the completed work (ie. increased traffic on your website) We only need to do some fine tuning every couple of weeks. At this point, the program is running at near peak levels and the time it takes us to maintain your campaign has been reduced even further. Our goal at this point is to pass the savings onto you. You can either pocket the difference or increase your ad spend to get more clicks. Of course, we’re still keeping an eye on things, but we just don’t have to dig in as deeply. Of course, we can always build out your machine if you have new products or services you’d like to advertise.
We are confident that our Google Ads philosophy is a more ethical and transparent way of working the Google Ads space. There are no secrets. How much your business is spending on AdWords and how much you are spending to have our team manage your adwords campaign is easy to see. One invoice comes from us for management and another arrives from Google for clicks. It’s that simple!
To talk with one of our experts about streamlining and improving your AdWords campaign, call us at 604-337-1449 or fill out the contact form on our website.