Hello hello, from my 7th flight this month. Is it just me or is Delta now far superior to the other US full service airlines?
For our March blog post, a few tips if you are running Google Ads or thinking about running Google Ads.
1) Your Rep Is Not Your Friend. Google will probably assign you a “rep”. They are sales reps. Their job is to get you to spend more, not to make you more money or save you time. Ask them questions, but DON'T apply their suggestions without a second opinion.
2) Change the Default Channel Settings. By default, Google shows your ads on Google itself (good) and “search partners” (low quality traffic and fraud). It tries to force your ads onto search partners because it has trouble selling this inventory otherwise. It even gives you ominous warnings when you try to turn off search partners; ignore these.
3) Do Not Run App Campaigns unless you really know what you’re doing. When you run an app campaign, Google decides where to place your ads. Just like in the last example, Google is going to put your money in places they have trouble selling ads otherwise: low-quality channels.
4) Don’t Fall for Google’s Location Tricks. You’re a business that sells only in New York City, so you tell Google to only show your ads there. Done, right? Wrong! There’s another menu, in a different section, that asks whether you want “people in your targeted location” or “people in or interested in your targeted location”. As far as Google is concerned, the entire population of India seems to be interested in every location worldwide. So if you don’t want your ad spend diverted to India (where Google can’t sell as many ads without this trick), change that setting too.
5) Turn off Auto-Apply Suggestions. Google will periodically produce suggestions for your account. 98% of them are useless (and the other 2% are obvious) and almost all of them involve giving Google more money. Guess what? If you don’t go in and decline each suggestion individually (or change this setting), Google will automatically apply them to your account. Go on vacation for a few weeks and come back to find your budget has been doubled and you’re advertising products you don’t even sell in places you don’t sell to.
BONUS - Check up on your marketing team by going into Google Ads, selecting “activity” and see what, if anything, your team has done for the last 30 days.
P.S. When Google was founded, its motto was “don’t be evil”. They took this out in 2018. This doesn’t mean you can’t make money with Google; of course you can, and lots of it. What it means is that when you work with Google, you’re literally working with a partner that decided about 5 years ago that “don’t be evil” doesn’t fit their mission and values anymore. Cheap shot? Maybe, but it fits. Protect yourself out there.