Taking Candy from a Baby

The new Starter Edition of Google AdWords offers a solution to advertisers who don’t have the time or the money to spend on creating an effective PPC campaign… Right? Or, is it just another way for Google to maintain their leadership?

I think the Starter Edition can be compared to taking candy form a baby… it’s easy to do, but in the end all that is left is one disappointed baby. The Starter Edition of AdWords allows an advertiser to set up an account with ONE ad, a list of keywords and a monthly budget, no CPC… but don’t worry Google will figure that our for you. The advertiser won’t be able to run reports, or have any type of tracking through Google. What they will be able to see is the impressions, clicks and total cost of their keywords.

It takes constant management of a campaign, creative ads, strategic bidding, a good landing page, and a little time and money to run a successful PPC campaign. And let’s not forget the importance of conversion tracking. There’s little chance that a new advertiser, with a small budget, is going to be able to come in and be competitive with the big guys who have been there since the start. Think quality score. Think big monthly budgets. Even if the new advertiser makes it on the first page, how many times is their ad going to be able to be shown to searchers? You need to have a presence in order to be successful.

I think that there comes a point when, to protect the value of your product, you need to tell somebody that your product is not right for them. Whatever the reason may be. I used to be an Account Executive for a television station and we had a rule of thumb; if a new advertiser couldn’t at least give us a commitment of X consecutive months at a minimum of $X then we would tell them it would be a waste of their money and efforts. We knew without that commitment from them, there was little chance we could run a successful advertising campaign, one that we would be proud of.

Advertisers who use the Starter Edition of Google AdWords are most likely going to get poor results and walk away thinking PPC doesn’t work; after all, it’s like taking candy from a baby.