Should You Apply Recommendations From Google Reps?

If you are currently running or have just started running a Google Ads campaign, I can guarantee you that very soon you will be getting a phone call from a Google Ads strategist. But don't think just because you're getting this phone call that now you have a direct line to a Google Ads oracle who is going to instantly turn your Google Ads campaign into a money making machine. Because the reality is, is that getting a phone call from a Google Ads strategist actually nothing special at all to put this in context. Because I manage anywhere between 20 to 30 different Google Ads accounts at any given time, I get on average around about three to five different phone calls or emails every single week from a Google Ad strategist eager to give me advice on how I can turn my underperforming accounts into over performing money making campaigns. Even though that in many cases these accounts are already overachieving what the client originally wanted to achieve with their Google Ads campaign. And this is why I mostly ignore all of these phone calls and emails. Hey there, is there a project you're working on? I know more than you. Now I want to clarify that. As you know, I am a big fan of Google Ads. I absolutely love the platform, but unfortunately I hate their support. And this is because 99% of the phone calls that you receive from Google Ads are a waste of time or even worse, they can be very damaging for your Google Ads account. And this is because in most cases the Google Ads strategist that you are talking to has very little experience of running a real life Google Ads campaign. But I do want to make a point. There is those 1% of calls which can be very valuable and very beneficial for your Google Ads account. So in this video I'm going to discuss why 99% of these Google Ads strategist calls are a complete waste of time or even dangerous for your Google Ads account. How to tell if you're getting one of those 1% very rare calls from Google Ads that can make a big positive difference to your Google Ads account. And then finally we're going to discuss the best ways that you can get support for your Google Ads campaigns. The reason for why 99% of these Google Ads strategy calls that you're going to be receiving a are a waste of time or as we've said, dangerous for your account. Because in most cases you're speaking to someone who's just gone through Google Ads training and then is reading off a list of recommendations which have been assigned to your Google Ads account. And these recommendations are ones that you can also see in your Google Ads dashboard under the Recommendations tab. Now, from the training that they've received from Google Ads, they do have a good working knowledge of how Google Ads works. But the reason for why their advice will not work is because of two important reasons. Firstly, they have no or very limited experience in running a real life Google Ads campaign. And secondly, and more importantly is that they don't have any real knowledge about your business. And for success in Google Ads you need two core areas of knowledge. Firstly, you do need to know how Google Ads works. But secondly, you also need to know some information about your business. Which products you want to focus on, what are the keywords that a user is likely to search to find your products, and what are the locations that you're wanting to target. And time and time again when I see these recommendations come through, they're recommendations that are given without any local context. And a perfect example of this is if you're running a service based business. So you're providing a service in your local area or a group of suburbs, and the Google Ad rep will look at the search volumes for your greatest city and from Google Maps they may see that it's only sort of 15 or 20 kilometers away from your business. But you may know that in your particular city, people just won't travel from one suburb to another suburb in order to get your service. And that's the type of local knowledge that you need in order to see success with your Google Ads campaigns, especially for those local business campaigns. And this is the type of local knowledge that your Google Ad strategist just doesn't have. And because your Google Ad strategist that is ringing, you only knows about Google Ads and not that business knowledge which you need, they put an over relian on the Google Ads algorithm. Now let's not underestimate the Google Ads algorithm. It is smart and given enough time and money, it will eventually work out the best keywords and the locations to target for your business. But the problem is, is that many businesses don't have that time and the money to waste. And sometimes it can take thousands upon thousands of dollars before the Google algorithm has enough data to be able to start targeting the best keywords and locations. And then further to that, if the Google Ad strategies is giving you recommendations to set up conversion tracking in a certain way whereby you're tracking conversions which are not highly important for your business, the data that you're giving the Google Ads algorithm will be incorrect. Meaning that the Google Ads algorithm will never be able to find the correct type of searches and the correct type of users that are going to be profitable for your business. And then the other part that I don't like about these Google Ad strategist calls is that they don't have any skin in the game. And what I mean by that is they're giving you recommendations to spend your money. And then further than that, because you haven't engaged them as a freelancer or a digital agency, they're not worried about their personal reputation if the advice they give you doesn't lead to fast results. And this is where I've seen that the role of the Google Ads Strategist has changed over time. Going back to 2010, when I first started in Google Ads, these phone calls from Google Ad strategists were really valuable. And the reason for that is because they took that extra time to get to know about your business, you could give them some further information that would go away, research it, and then come back with specific data around your actual campaign, as opposed to just broad generic recommendations. But over the last five years, especially since COVID I've seen these Google Ads strategist calls change from being something about giving you support as a business owner to now just being nothing more than a mere sales call, where they're giving you recommendations in order for you to increase the amount of money that you're spending in Google Ads. And this is why a lot of the time the recommendations center around adding in new keywords, changing your keyword match types to broad match, increasing your location targeting. And then after you've made those changes, they'll follow up in a couple of weeks with a recommendation for you to increase your budget because you're going to be seeing some large increases of traffic. Acting like this is some kind of surprise. Well, when you think about it, of course the traffic is going to be increasing. And because you've added in new keywords, expanded your location, and also opened up those match types. And then underlying all of this, the reason for why we know that these strategist calls are nothing more than a sales call is because if they ring you when you actually do have a real problem with your Google Ads campaign, like you're having an issue with disapproved ads, or you've got some malicious software warnings, they won't offer any real support at all. They'll just give you the email or a link for Resolution Center. And then as you follow through that process, it can take a matter of six to eight weeks before you get any real resolutions made. And if you've Currently got some experience with Google Ads support that you'd like to share. Why don't you drop it in the comments right below? And then on top of that, if you ask them for some advice or support for another account that you may be managing, they won't offer you any support at all and they'll juice you the line something like saying, unfortunately I'm not assigned to that account. And then this brings me to my current theory and I do need to stress that this is just a theory that Google Ad strategist will get a group of accounts. They then have the goal to increase the spend in those accounts over a three month period which they are then incentivized upon. So when you do get a phone call, and I can guarantee you that you'll probably be getting a phone call sometime over the next couple of weeks, if you're running a Google Ads account, just remember that 99% of the time you're talking to a salesperson as opposed to a skilled Google Ads representative. Now how can you tell if you're getting one of those rare 1% calls from Google that can offer you some real support? Firstly, the harsh reality is, is that unless you're spending close to $100,000 per month in ad spend, it is very unlikely that you will receive one of these phone calls. And that's because these phone calls, which can be very helpful, come from a very, very small team which is based in the head office of Google in your country, if you have one. Of course. Now I do need to stress that these phone calls are still sales based. And what I mean by that is that they'll roll out that your account has been selected to be part of your something like a accelerated growth program or it could have a different term and it's not an ironclad agreement. But you do have to have a discussion about your willingness to increase your expenditure with the Google Ads platform. But if you're accepted into one of these programs, what you will get is that you will get a weekly 30 minute video call with one or two different Google Ad strategists. And these are people who have been working in Google Ads from anywhere from five to 10 years and they have worked on a variety of accounts which they call their tier one accounts. Think of your national or international brands which operate in your country. They also offer done for you services. So they'll do extended keyword research. So not just looking at the keyword planner like some of the other strategists, they will go through and give you some extra Data. And they'll also create for you different dashboards that you may be requesting. And depending on the time of it, you can also get early access into some different campaign types. Like for example, at the moment, a current campaign that I've got in this program is testing out a new type of video campaign which they're running on the YouTube platform. And the main difference between these phone calls and you just your general 99% of Google Ad Strategist phone calls is that this first 30 minute video call is spent getting to know about you and your business. And when they talk about what the goals are, there's extended time talking about what what is really profitable to your business and then further to talking about the conversions that are profitable to your business. There is also a chance to discuss some issues in your industry. Say for example, if you have any regulations or legal concerns that you need to be aware of. And they take all that information into account when they're doing some different levels of keyword research or ad copy research. So now that we know that there really is two different types of Google strategy calls which you can be receiving, there's the 99% which is just giving you general information, nothing further than what you'll see in the Google Ads recommendations tab. And then there is that second type of call, that small 1 percenter, which will give you some real information about Google Ads for your business. So what I wanted to take you through right now is how do you tell the difference between these two phone calls? And let me show you right now. And the easiest way to tell the difference between these two levels of contact is you need to look at the email signature. So this is a common email that you'll get from just your general Google Ad support, that 99% which is just going to be giving you general information. You'll have a generic email with a schedule a call button. It will have their name in here and if you click Reply, it'll also reply to their individual Google email. And even if they reply back to that email that you've sent to them once again in their email signature, you'll only see their name and just something generic like Ad Strategist Google Onboarding. The individual signature, which you may see are different. But what I want to show you right now is what you need to look for to see if you're getting that 1% higher level support. And it's quite easy to find out because you'll see rather than a generic email, it'll be personal in its nature. And the biggest thing is when you look down in here, in the email signature, you'll see this users direct email. But further than that you will see the direct phone number. And that is the single bit of information which you need because all of those general ones won't give you a direct phone number. And the reason for that is because when you contact them it goes to a call center. Whereas if you get an email from your individual team, so you can see, because I'm based in Australia, I was contacted by the Sydney office, I have a direct phone number that I can talk to this individual Google Ads strategist. And if you get a phone call and not an email from Google, just quickly ask them to send you that email and then that way you can look at that email signature to check to see whether you're getting that lucky 1% of a phone call from Google that you know is going to offer you some real support. And now finally, let's talk about the best ways that you can get advice for how you can best optimize and use Google Ads to grow your own business. And I found the best option is to do what you're doing right now is to go through and check YouTube. The only thing that I would say with different YouTube channels is that when it comes to Google Ads is that you want to focus on learning from channels that focus primarily on Google Ads. So when you go through their video history, you see that a vast majority of their videos, so 80 or 90% of their videos are specifically focused on Google Ads. And they're not a channel that does some teaching on Google Ads one week and then they're doing teaching on WooCommerce or Shopify the next week. And the reason for that is because the advice that those channels are going to be giving you is just general advice, once again, something that you can easily find. And with these channels, it's likely important to note that they are releasing videos about Google Ads because it gets a high amount of views. So if you're really looking to learn how to use Google Ads, the best way for your business focus on those YouTube channels which are posting regularly about Google Ads. Now to help you with your own Google Ads account, what I want to give to you right now is my free Google Ads Optimization checklist. And this is a checklist which lets you know exactly what you need to be optimizing in your Google Ads account every 72 hours, every week, every month and every 90 days. And if you want to get your free copy right now, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. Once again, thank you for joining me. My name is Aaron Young from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads Master. And if you want to stay up to date with what is happening in Google Ads right now, make sure you subscribe to my channel and also turn on that notification button so that you know exactly when I release a new Google Ads teaching video. Thank you again. See you next time.