I love watching Discovery Channel’s Gold Rush Alaska following six men risking it all to strike it rich. The trials and tribulations seem a million miles away from life on the internet.
The trouble is, our gold miners are more likely to hit gold than you will on the internet. Even if it goes belly up, there are TV appearance fees and the book deals for our intrepid miners, but what is there for you? Increased competition, lower margins, lower sales and increased AdWords costs.
You may have been successful in 2007 or earlier when AdWords was easy pickings. Google are now fully focused on extracting every last penny from you and have even employed a 1000-person help desk team to advise you on how to spend more. We all know the AdWords help desk strategy for success – increase your average position.
Ok, they are partly right, but you cannot achieve and maintain the top position without advanced knowledge and help. If you increase your bids, you are just going to matters worse. It seems that filtering poor quality traffic is an unspoken phrase at Google these days.
I know that better than most AdWords experts because unlike them, I stuck my neck out and spent upward of £20,000 per month on AdWords with my own online business. You can talk about putting yourself in your customer’s shoes but I was wearing them out, stressed, at times at little depressed and feeling helpless as I watched our hard-earned money and life bleed away to AdWords.
My solution was total luck: I met a series of people and lady luck just ran with me…well, I was holding on for dear life. I developed a series steps that enabled me to cut costs by over 60%. I eventually had the lucky idea to teach others how to save money on AdWords.
But along the way, one of the amazing things I found was that talking over my account with someone else really helped. The steps that I developed accounted for 80% of the improvement, a bit like the 80/20 rule: 20% came from talking my ideas over a fellow AdWords mentor.
To this today, I believe the relationship our clients form with their mentor is vital to their AdWords success. It’s the re-enforcement of learning and experiences that truly deliver the best results. There is a sense of responsibility and our mentors pull out all the stops to help clients.
I am a total car nut and had the pleasure of driving around Ireland – a fast lap of Ireland’s coastline in 4 days – on an organised driving event. We had the usual who’s got the loudest car competition with some Cannonballers we met along the way, and the amazing part is how much your driving improves. After 4 days you are razor sharp, acceleration and braking becomes smoother, you are safer and more focused on the traffic environment around you.
AdWords is no different. If you don’t work with and discuss your account with an AdWords Mentor who understands you, your problems and your AdWords road trip, you won’t accelerate your learning and performance. You need guidance from a mentor or you won’t strike it rich (or even break even) with AdWords.
