Registering a trademark with Google

January 17, 2012 Google Adwords No Comments

Do you have a trademark in your business and want to stop competitors from having adverts appearing within the Google paid search listings?

Then you need to make use of the Google Adwords Trademark Complaint Form (http://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmcomplaint), which lets you complete all relevant details including allowing you to grant use of your trademark to some Adwords advertisers (rather than blocking everything).

So, if you sell widgets and you have a good relationship with ABC Ltd and DEF Ltd, but not XYZ Ltd, you can include ABC Ltd and DEF Ltd as being ‘Authorized Entities’, which lets them advertise your widgets while excluding others.    XYZ Ltd wouldn’t be allowed to use your trademarked name as part of their Adwords campaign.  This could be particularly important in cases where people may try to sell your widgets at reduced prices in order to gain in other ways (which devalues the market positioning of your widgets pricing).

What if you haven’t got a registered trademark?

Well, there’s nothing to stop your competitors having adverts appear when people type words that are related to your business.  So, if you haven’t trademarked ‘WidgetsCo’ then all your competitors can have an advert appear when WidgetsCo is typed into Google.  How much business does that lose you?  It’s difficult to tell but at some point you may decide that it’d be more beneficial to get your trademark registered, instead of losing business to competitors who are capitalising on your name.

Adwords phone number costs per click

December 19, 2011 Google Adwords 2 Comments

It’s only a matter of time before many Adwords advertisers start to see their clicks bills increasing because Google have changed their rules a bit.

For not long now you can have an advert like this and you won’t pay a penny if someone makes a search, sees your advert, and then uses your phone number …

Great if you’re a taxi firm who wants to advertise for free.  Someone in the pub searches from their phone, sees your number and rings it.   Cost to the taxi firm: zero pence.

But Google are changing things so that if you have a phone number within an advert, and someone from a mobile sees that number, they will be able to click on it to ring directly.   That counts as a click and the taxi firm then pay for that click.  No more zero pence.

This actually makes sense because, as Google say:

Currently when advertisers enter a phone number directly into their ad text instead of using Call Extensions, the phone number is not clickable and will not generate a call. This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users who attempt to initiate a call to this phone number.

So, to make mobile users happy (plus make some money for Google, naturally), those phone numbers will now be clickable and will cost the advertiser for each click gained.

But it got me thinking about what type of business puts a phone number in their advert anyway.  And what type of person contacts a business just based on their advert and phone number.  Yes, I understand how that works with taxis and perhaps places like fast food restaurants, pubs etc. but for other types of business it’s not so clear.  As an example, here’s what currently appears in Google when someone searches for ‘maidstone plumbers’ …

If you needed a plumber and it was a real emergency then you may call that number (from a mobile), which would cost the plumber for that call made (in fact, the double-whammy of the 0800 number and also the cost for the click on the phone number within the advert).

But what sort of person contacts such a business without finding out more about them first?  Surely you’d look at their website to find out more about them?  In fact, it could be a dodgy plumber that’s capitalising on the freephone number and because it was easy for you to call you end up with a disaster of a plumbing job done!

I’m sure that Google know what they’re doing.  They’ve probably worked out that they’re losing some revenue from people who have phone numbers in their adverts, but it doesn’t make Google any money.   It would be fascinating to see ‘before and after’ figures of how much Google make specifically from people who click on phone numbers within adverts, but that’s unlikely to be financial information readily available from Google.

But wait, there could be a more sinister outcome here.  Let’s say that a click on such a phone number (e.g. to a plumber) costs the advertiser 50p.  As soon as the phone number is clicked on, Google get their money.   Suppose that same plumber fell victim to a rival plumber, who used sophisticated methods to kill their business.  It’s not hard to imagine and would work as follows:

1. Dodgy plumber signs up to an online service that pays people to click on links from searches (from mobile phones).
2. Each worker within that service has a mobile phone.  They get paid pennies to search for ‘maidstone plumbers’ (from their phone) and click on the phone number.  They then hang up.
3. The phone may ring briefly at the other end but by the time the plumber has got to it, the caller has gone.
4. A minute later another call comes in the same, this time from another worker who gets paid pennies to do it.   And so it goes on.
5. Within no time at all the plumber has burnt through their advertising budget and are no longer visible when people are actively searching for them.   Their competitor wins by reducing their ability to be visible.

OK, that may seem a bit far fetched and would be more complex than that, but such things are possible.  If it’s possible to pay outsourced workers pennies to fabricate thousands of Facebook Likes then this is only a natural progression.

Back in the real world now the potential problem is far less sinister – it’s just that many advertisers will get caught out because they haven’t noted that Google are going to start charging them for clicks on phone numbers within their adverts.

What Botox teaches us about eggs in baskets

December 17, 2011 Google Adwords, Website Promotion No Comments

In the past there have been a few Custwin blogs about Botox and its gradual death within Google Adwords.   Since then we’ve had numerous visits to the website from people who have used various search phrases related to Botox and Adwords.   The screenshot below shows just a few of the types of phrases typed (and how many people typed each phrase) …

Numerous clinics/people offering Botox to potential clients found themselves in a position where they dropped off the face of the Internet when Google eventually banned all Botox-related adverts.

The evidence of the impact is clear to see – you just have to look at the data we collected (via the link below) to see just those people who found their way to our blogs, having typed phrases related to Botox and Adwords, probably desperate to find the answers to their sudden lack of website traffic and enquiries …

http://www.a1webstats.com/stats/view-report.aspx?ReportID=8E38BBA9-1A88-4388-B9AF-D9BC7F266D1D

So was it ‘big bad Google’ that butchered the ability of Botox injections providers to gain business?  Well, yes (obviously), but they had their reasons.  But those business owners can’t blame only Google.

They can blame themselves.

When it comes to websites, laziness is the enemy of businesses.  Getting a Google Adwords campaign set up with Botox keyword phrases was, once upon a time, a good idea.  But done alone, it’s laziness.  Pay for clicks, get the traffic, convert the traffic, make the money, pay for more clicks.  Simple, but ultimately stupid if done alone.

The cleverer Botox providers had an arsenal of other marketing methods.  These could have included:

• Organic search engine positioning (in more than just Google)
• Print advertising in local media
• Local radio advertising
• Printed material in local public places (e.g. posters)
• Email newsletters
• Facebook
• Twitter
• …. the list goes on

The law of averages means that the more forms of marketing you’re using, the less impact there will be if one of those marketing methods fails for some reason.  This would apply regardless of marketing method used.

So, what Botox teaches us about eggs in baskets is that when you put your eggs in purely the Google Adwords basket you put yourself at the risk of a serious amount of yolk on the floor.  When you buy a series of smaller ‘marketing’ baskets that can contain only a few eggs in each, you are putting yourself and your business in a much safer position.

Analysing website visitors from mobiles

November 30, 2011 Google Adwords, Website Analytics No Comments

We’ve been working on a Google Adwords campaign for an American client recently and the results have surprised us.

The campaign is targeting people in the US who are searching for phrases like ‘free apps’, ‘free apps for my cell phone’, and numerous variations. Although the focus of the client business is very much ‘apps’, our original thinking was that we would be attracting potential buyers searching from desktop/laptop based computers. After all, if you want to get ‘free apps’ then it’s usually a lot easier to search and view via a larger screen (than a mobile phone).

The screenshot below shows a very different picture. It shows that the vast majority of people used Android to search on those phrases (e.g. ‘free apps’). These are people who then clicked on the Adwords adverts …

The screenshot shows only the top 7 of browser/operating system combinations but it’s noticeable that Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox (all on Windows) between them only made up 302 of the 1,890 people who clicked on the Google adverts. That’s just 16%, meaning that 84% of Adwords adverts got clicked by people using mobile devices.

OK, there are two key points screaming out here:

1. The business focus is very much ‘mobile’ and so it’s perhaps natural that people would search on their mobile devices and click through on the Adwords adverts.
2. The campaign is running in the USA, which is, to be fair, much more ‘mobile’ in its attitude than here in the UK.
3. The target market for the US client is people born in the 1990’s.

The reality (for now) in the UK is that PC/Mac based searching, is going to remain dominant for quite some time (in most business sectors). However, in some business sectors searchers will lean more towards mobile (e.g. consumer brands).

Every business, regardless of sector, should be keeping an eye on which browsers/operating systems people are using in order to find their website. The reality is that, for now, the ‘mobile’ type searchers are going to be low and so it’s perfectly acceptable to check such things once every couple of months.

How do you check which browsers/operating systems people are using?

The answer is Google Analytics. It’s free, easy to get set up on your website, and for certain types of information like this, it’s useful. By monitoring which browsers and operating systems your website visitors use, and mapping it out (e.g. on a graph) from month to month, you’ll start to see changes in trends and, at the appropriate time, may want to adjust your online presence to cater for the mobile market in a better way than it currently does.

How much does a Google Adwords consultant cost?

November 29, 2011 Google Adwords No Comments

That was the search phrase used to find the Custwin website recently, as you can see in the screenshot below …

Because the person had taken the time to look through our website we took the time to contact them (they had signed up for the email newsletter) to help answer their question because it’s a very good question.

A Google Adwords consultant can cost from a very small amount per month through to a ridiculous amount per month.  However, there is a recommended path to help whittle them down to a shortlist, having identified a few to contact …

1. If they jump in straight away with a cost to work on Adwords campaigns then discard them immediately.  They will be purely interested in getting the business from you.
2. If they ask you some important questions, then consider them further.  Such questions would include:
   1. Do you know how many visitors you get to your website each month, and how many of those convert into enquiries?
   2. Have you had your website fully analysed to identify weaknesses that would stop Adwords clicks from adequately converting into enquiries/business?
   3. Are you prepared to make website changes that will help convert more visitors into enquiries?

Yes, an Adwords consultant could set up a campaign, working within a clicks budget, and it could convert clicks to enquiries.  But if the website isn’t strong enough then the conversion rate is going to be low.  The end result of that is:

1. The Adwords consultant gets paid for their work and they’re gone.
2. Google gain revenues from the clicks.
3. The website owner feels robbed because their perception is that “Adwords doesn’t work”.

In my view, a good Google Adwords consultant shouldn’t consider themselves to be an Adwords consultant.   Instead they should look on themselves as being a website profitability consultant because Adwords doesn’t work effectively without website strength.

Many many times we’ve spoken to people who want Adwords campaigns and we’ve (nicely) referred to website weaknesses that should be strengthened before spending any money at all on Adwords.

It’s the same rule as with organic SEO – if someone wants to charge money to raise positioning in Google then run a mile if they haven’t asked the same important questions that you should ask a potential Adwords consultant.  Whatever the traffic source, if it costs money then that traffic needs to convert into business.  And if that means holding back on advertising a business while the website is strengthened then so be it.

The costs of an Adwords or organic SEO consultant need to be recouped over a period of time.   Maybe not instantly but over a period of months.  If a consultant is willing to work with you over a longer period of time, rather than earn a big wedge of money upfront then that makes them much more accountable and so potentially of more value to you.

Google Adwords poor customer service

November 25, 2011 Google Adwords 5 Comments

No, I’m not talking about when you speak to Google, I’m talking about the Google Adwords system providing a poor service to the customers, i.e. those people who are searching for anything within Google.

This is right at the top of my list of annoyances with the Google Adwords system and it flies in the face of Google’s so-called ‘quality’ message they keep spouting on about.

The wish

To use Google Adwords to advertise a product/treatment called Dermal Fillers so that when people are searching for them within a geographical area, they can see the advert and hopefully click on it.

The process

Create a series of keyword phrases such as:

• Dermal fillers Bexley
• Bexley dermal fillers

(and similar)

Link them to a relevant advert such as:

Dermal Fillers in Bexley
We’ve Been Delighting Our Dermal
Fillers Clients For Over 10 Years.

Give it a budget and let it run.

The result

Google rejects the keyword phrases because they are apparently ‘Low search volume’. According to Google, if they consider a keyword phrase to be low search volume then they won’t allow the advert to be displayed, regardless of how much budget is being offered.

End result: a campaign that can’t run because Google won’t allow it.

So, let’s see what adverts Google WILL allow if someone searches on a phrase such as ‘dermal fillers Bexley’ (i.e. someone who actually wants dermal fillers in the Bexley area) …

First, those in the yellow box …

And then some of those in the right-hand column …

See anything glaring about them?

That’s right – not one of them refers to Bexley! So, for the person searching for ‘dermal fillers Bexley’ they see Pay Per Click results that are generic and don’t refer to Bexley. Are they going to click on those adverts? Possibly, but after clicking on a few they’re not going to bother looking at others if there’s nothing catering for Bexley.

What happens in reality

Google is effectively saying to the advertiser:

“I know that your advert is highly specific but hey, we’d rather stop you from being visible and instead allow you to go head-to-head competing against other advertisers who all want to be visible under the much more generic ‘dermal fillers’ phrase”

You could type into Google ‘dermal fillers for my dog’ and you’d still see those same adverts appear, which shows that they’re all visible because of the ‘dermal fillers’ that the advertisers have chosen to be visible under (obviously, no-one would need dermal fillers for a dog!).

So the person searching for ‘dermal fillers Bexley’ may click on a few of those adverts but they’ll be disappointed because they don’t cover their geographical area of interest. The searcher feels cheated and the advertisers have paid for irrelevant clicks. So the searcher thinks that the adverts are rubbish and is less likely to click on those adverts in the future – which means that Google lose out.

What should happen

The Google Adwords system needs a good shake-up.

If an advertiser wants to be visible under ‘dermal fillers Bexley’ and accepts that even though there may not be huge searches for that phrase but they’re accept that, then that should be their right to be visible when people type that phrase!

The Google Adwords system should see such a keyword phrase and effectively think “ok, if someone searches for that phrase then we’ll make the advert visible right at the top because:

a) there’s a good match between the search phrase, the advert, and the website, and;

b) it’s more relevant than the other adverts that could display.

However, IF the ‘dermal fillers Bexley’ advert doesn’t get a strong enough level of clicks then we’ll penalise it”.

That is a completely fair system for Google to adopt.

But Google won’t do that.  Why?

Because it’s much more profitable for Google to stop advertisers from having their niche keyword phrases triggering highly-specific adverts.  Those advertisers are then forced down a path of using generic phrases (such as ‘dermal fillers’), which are more expensive per click.

The ultimate effect of all this

Searchers have to take longer to find what they are looking for in Google (which takes up their valuable time).

Searchers also think that the pay per click listings are poor, which makes them less likely to click on them in the future.

Potential advertisers can’t advertise under niche phrases, instead having to pay higher costs per click competing against everyone else who has to advertise generically. This makes the advertisers cost per acquisition higher, which damages their business strength.

Google win in the short term (people feeling as if they HAVE to abide by Google’s Adwords rules and so paying for expensive clicks) but long term will, I feel, take a right kicking if something seriously competitive comes along. Are you listening Bing.com, you ’slow-to-wake-up-to-opportunities-beast’?

There’s always a website worse than yours

November 24, 2011 Google Adwords, Website Development, Website Strategy No Comments

Sometimes it may feel that you have the worst website in your industry.   Day to day the visitor enquiries are non-existent or very low, and you think things are bad with your website.

We’ve reviewed and helped literally thousands of websites in our time and although there’s little excuse for having an underperforming website, it can sometimes be comforting that there are people out there with a worse website and focus than yours.

This one will appeal particularly to people in the holidays industry.  There are some brilliant websites in the holidays industry, particularly the niche holiday websites.  Then there are those in the middle ground.  And sometimes you find something that is spectacularly off target.

We had an enquiry come in recently and it said:

“i run a travel agency ..i do advertising on google. i want to buy 50 to 100 keywords for a year and i want them to be on top..can you please tell me how much it will cost me for a year?”

Apart from it being one of those ‘how long is a ball of string?’ questions (and actually impossible to answer even if knowing what keyword phrases were wanted), the focus was very much on advertising.

A bit of dialogue later and it turned out that the person wanted to be visible under various ‘holidays’ type phrases.  So I looked at their main navigation bar as there was nothing else jumping out from their website saying ‘holidays’.  I won’t name the company because that would embarrass them (no, they’ve not become a client – they ran very fast when they were told how much work they’d need to do in order to justify using Google Adwords).  That navigation bar displays as:

Nothing about holidays in there.

Eventually I worked out that if you click on ‘Flights’ it takes you to what is their holidays page and you can see a sample below …

Putting aside me wondering whether ‘Adeliade’ is anywhere near ‘Adelaide’ (I have a degree in being pedantic about website errors), I thought “hmmm, Adelaide for £811 – let’s look at that” and I clicked on the box.

Well, I tried to click on it.  But it doesn’t go any deeper.

On discussing that with the website owner they were surprised that anyone might actually want to look at details of the holidays on offer and “surely they’d see the price and ring up to find out more?”

So, we’re at the point where this company wants to spend money on sending Google Adwords clicks to a website that is woefully inadequate.  In fact, it makes even mediocre holiday websites look good.   At that point I (nicely) said that I wouldn’t be prepared to set up such an Adwords campaign and that they’d be advised to run a mile from anyone who would be prepared to (before the website is strengthened).

I suspect that they’ll do exactly that. God forbid, they’ll go directly to Google who will quite happily help them set up an Adwords campaign that links through to a rubbish website (they have a department dedicated to doing just that).   It was very clear from the conversation that they had an Adwords tunnel vision and nothing mattered more than sending traffic to the website.  Unfortunately, this is a common disease that can lead to financial death.

Maybe it’s time that we had some sort of central system where business owners can submit their website details and ask for people to grade it on various factors (design, content, depth, etc.).  Just a quick 2 minute appraisal ticking boxes and maybe adding in a few comments.  Everyday people could respond, as could website professionals.  The intention wouldn’t be to sales-pitch services on offer but to give just a small bit of time to website owners that need a collective view (rather than one opinion) of where their website needs to be stronger.

With such a rating system in place, people like me would be less likely to get enquiries about Adwords from people who are clearly not yet ready to line the pockets of Google.

Google pushing PPC more again

November 3, 2011 Google Adwords No Comments

You’ve got to hand it to Google because they will innovate all the time that they think it’ll bring more money to their pockets via PPC advertising.

The search view for Google has recently changed and while on the surface it’s a cosmetic change,  there’s always an agenda that financially benefits Google.   The screenshot below shows a search for ‘private schools’ – can you spot the difference to how it would have been viewed before?

The ‘on the surface’ difference is that the map graphic on the right is much more of a rectangle, which looks kind of good.

The real difference though is that the organic search results don’t appear to have as much space and the PPC adverts now have a huge chunk of white space next to them.  This has the effect of drawing more attention to the PPC adverts.

It’s all very clever stuff from Google and I’m sure it’ll get more people clicking on the PPC adverts (and less people clicking on the organic search results).  But it’s yet another example of Google trying to force people into PPC advertising which can only ever push up the costs per click (as more advertisers compete for positioning).   Google win of course but for companies who want a presence in Google it’s going to become increasingly costly.

I continue to wait for Microsoft to finally wake up and work out that they can corner the ‘small business’ market with a more intelligent way of advertising via Bing.com PPC solutions.

Smaller businesses are suffering in the current economy but they have the potential to give things a kick start once they start succeeding more themselves.   A mass of smaller businesses doing better for themselves can have a much stronger impact on the economy than the bigger businesses can.   If someone (e.g. Microsoft via Bing.com) makes it easier for small businesses to advertise, cost-effectively, then Google will find itself out in the cold trying to retain advertising revenues from a search system that would have lower numbers of people using it, having started using Bing.com more and more.

If Microsoft don’t seize the opportunity then something else will come along and eat up chunks of what is currently a Google-dominated world.  I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the online directories (e.g. Applegate) really up their game to attract people to them for their searches, instead of going to the major search engines.

For now, expect to see Google continue to do whatever it can to push companies down the route towards having to use PPC advertising.

Using negative keywords to raise Adwords CTR

October 27, 2011 Google Adwords No Comments

Whether ‘negative keywords’ or ‘CTR’ are familiar terms to you, if you spend money on Google Adwords (directly or outsourced) then this blog should be of interest.

CTR (Click Through Rate) is a vitally important factor in getting success from Google Adwords.  Don’t worry about the reasons for now, just accept that it’s important to have a strong CTR.

CTR, in simple terms, means that if your advert is visible 100 times in Google and you get 5 clicks, that’s a 5% CTR.

So let’s take an example to demonstrate …

You want to be visible in Google when people search for ‘security companies’ and in your Adwords campaign you have the phrase ‘security companies’ set up.  Your advert says something like:

ABC Security London
Experts in all types of commercial
security.  We cover all of London.
www.abcsecurity.co.uk

You run your advert for awhile and the Google system tells you that you’ve had 100 impressions (times visible) of your advert when people have searched for ‘security companies’.  However, you’ve only had 2 clicks (2% CTR).

You’ve done some things right, namely:

• Your advert is only visible within the London area for when people search for ‘security companies’
• Your advert has a reasonably high position in the Adwords results.

What the Adwords system hasn’t shown you though is that those 100 impressions weren’t purely from people who typed just the phrase ‘security companies’ but were from people who typed variations on that phrase.  For example:

• Jobs in security companies
• Security companies for house parties
• Manchester security companies
• Security companies in Cornwall
• Security companies vacancies

In the examples above, the words in bold are simply add-ons to the core ‘security companies’ phrases.   When people type those phrases and see your advert they will be thinking:

• They don’t cover my geographical area.
• They’re commercial security only.
• They’re not offering security jobs

In most cases, the people won’t click on the adverts.   If they don’t click then the CTR is reduced.  Let’s say that out of 100 times the adverts were visible, 50 were people who were looking for jobs, security in other areas etc. – that significantly reduces the potential to get clicks.

The answer here is to add negative keywords into the Adwords campaign.   Words such as:

• Job
• Jobs
• Vacancies
• Vacancy
• Manchester
• Cornwall
• Employment

What this does is stop the adverts from being visible when people use those words in combination with the ‘security companies’ phrase.  If the advert is not visible then it’s not in danger of missing out on a click, which means that the CTR is not damaged.  In the example here, just having negative keywords such as job, jobs, vacancies etc. can increase the CTR substantially because the advert is only visible when you really want it to be visible.

The true cost of Google’s $9.72bn earnings

October 25, 2011 Google Adwords, Website Strategy No Comments

This month Google announced that their revenues for the quarter to September 2011 had risen 33% to $9.72bn, and profits had increased 26% to $2.73bn.

Big figures from a big company.

The vast majority of Google’s earnings come from Google Adwords, a system that, if used properly, can generate great levels of enquiries/business for advertisers.  However, used poorly, it becomes a money pit.

Unfortunately, the Adwords system is set up in a way that allows advertisers to squander money unnecessarily.  Working alongside that, any changes in the way that the organic search results work are designed so that companies are forced down the route of Adwords advertising if they’re to have any hope of visibility.

The more people using Adwords to advertise, the more costly it gets to pay for the clicks (because it’s basically an auction system).   If you sell widgets and pay £1 per click today and a competitor offers more cost per click allowance then tomorrow you could be paying more than £1 per click.  It becomes a never ending battle for Adwords positioning, out of which there is only one real winner: Google.

I could go on for literally weeks on the numerous ways that Google works against the interests of companies, while acting “holier than thou”.   For now though I can best summarise by saying that a huge proportion of the money Google makes is as a direct result of the Adwords system not being transparent enough, and allowing people to lose money.

This is no different to other media of course.  If you pay for a newspaper advert, which sends people to your website, and your website is rubbish, then that’s not the fault of the newspaper.  In the same way, Google will allow you to advertise your website and pay for clicks, even though your website may be woefully inadequate.  But is it ethical?

Let’s say that one company pays a relatively modest £300 per month in Google Adwords clicks. It generates them, say, 300 visitors (using round numbers of £1 per click) and out of those visitors, they gain 10 enquiries, which boil down to 3 sales.   Those sales may cover the clicks in terms of profits but are they worth having?  3 sales out of 300 visitors implies that something is wrong somewhere.  That could be:

1. Adwords is set up inefficiently (very common).
2. The website not being strong enough (also very common).

Usually, it’s a combination of the two.

Wouldn’t it be more ethical if Google ran some sort of system that, at periodic levels of Adwords spend, it asked the advertisers how well they’re doing from their clicks?  And if the answer to that is “not very good” then Google hold out a helping hand to help highlight where the weaknesses are?   Out of $2.73bn profit in the last quarter, surely a small proportion of that could be reinvested in helping Adwords customers gain some insights into where they’re going wrong?

Because so many companies are increasingly desperate for business, Adwords looks attractive to them because it can create instant visibility.  However, the vast majority of advertisers are wasting money because their Adwords campaigns or websites are inefficient.

How much of the $billions that Google makes could be linked to inefficient Adwords campaigns and/or websites?  The actual number would be scary but whatever that number is, so many companies are losing out through investing in Adwords clicks that can’t possibly get them the results they need, which impacts on money available within the business.

The really sad thing is that in a turbulent economy, companies who use Adwords are having to pay ever-higher click costs to attract ever fewer potential buyers.  While they do that, Google are becoming ever-richer from companies that don’t realise that they’re not benefiting in the ways that they should be.