Flipboard on iPad – now Google should be scared

It doesn’t take a lot of justification to invest in an iPad but the decision has now been made a lot easier with the launch of Flipboard.

There is plenty of info on Flipboard on the page http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2010/07/23/flipboard-shows-us-the-future-of-content.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter but in a nutshell the app allows you to aggregate social media and other online content all into your own personal magazine.  That magazine is always updating and the real benefit is not having to plough through loads of junk to see the stuff that you’re particularly interested in.

So why should Google be scared?  There’s little doubt that Flipboard will be a significant influencer in people buying iPad – the chance to have totally customisable content on an easy-to-carry screen is a dream come true for many.   People could become locked into their own little communities and areas of interest and could become more receptive to advertising messages and input from those within their Flipboard than from the more traditional channels such as Google.   In short, there could become less reliance on going to Google to find answers when many of those answers could be available within Flipboard on the iPad.

Need something and would have previously gone to Google?   As Flipboard evolves it could allow much more interaction with those you’re connected with and the answers will come via those channels.  And if those answers come from people you trust/respect, then that takes revenue from the mouths of Google.   New advertising models will undoubtedly come out of Flipboard as well and because trust will have been built up (through the usefulness of the application), those advertising messages may have more impact than would normally be expected.

Perhaps it’s not just Google that should be scared.  Perhaps it should be businesses in general.  The majority of businesses have barely grasped the concept of having a strong website and effective online advertising – what’s going to happen to them as evolutions such as Flipboard start to move the goalposts again?   As always, we live in interesting times and the ability to respond to change will continue to be of paramount importance in business.

England Flags – Stock Control, Stupidity, and Opportunity

Walking past a branch of a sports store chain last week there was a huge stall outside selling large England flags for 10p each.   Clearly, the store had overstocked, hoping for a better England performance and hadn’t negotiated a sale or return deal.  At 10p each they’d still have been making a fair loss on each transaction.  That got me thinking about incompetence both offline and online when it comes to event-sensitive sales of products.

I had a search online under the phrase ‘England flags’ and although many PPC adverts were still relevant (i.e. they weren’t focusing purely on the World Cup market), two adverts stood out as demonstrating PPC campaign management incompetence – nearly 2 weeks since England dropped out of the World Cup …

Looking at the Woolworths advert first, the high street store died not too long ago and out of the ashes came an online incarnation.   Woolworths died because it didn’t move with the times and it would appear that some of that spirit has translated to this website.    Would it have been simple to make a diary note to take down the PPC advert when England were knocked out of the World Cup, instead of, nearly 2 weeks later, having an advert asking us to ‘Support the England team with flags from Woolworths’, which looks just plain stupid?   Of course it would have been simple but instead, they could be wasting clicks (although it’s hard to conceive who would be buying England flags to support the team right now) by being visible.   They also make the woolworths.co.uk online presence look out of touch.

Onto the other PPC advert.  In this case, they’re not offering flags but a World Cup Poster.   Clicking on that advert takes you to a page that has a poster that’s totally geared around the World Cup, so has limited interest now that everything is all but over.   What’s really interesting about that page though is the number of those A3 posters they have in stock:

Yes, 5,000 A3 posters in stock.  Highly unlikely to be used and destined for recycling.  So who has paid for those posters?  The people who fund Keep Britain Tidy of course.   Who was responsible for thinking there’d be a high demand for such a poster?  Probably someone who is funded by those who put money into the charity.   And then there’s the person responsible for keeping the PPC advert live, possibly attracting clicks, when there’s no point at all.   As with the Woolworths example, it’s just lazy PPC management.

So I’ve covered the stock control and stupidity, now onto the opportunity …

Going back to the sports store with all the 10p England flags for sale.   A week later those flags still haven’t been sold and are still there for 10p.  Where’s the innovation in this country?   Why doesn’t someone buy them all up (and more if they’re available), store them, and then sell them at the appropriate time?   White background with red cross – it’s an England flag – it’s not going to change between now and the next big England event.  At 10p a time it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that they could create an ebay page, offer them for sale at prices much lower than typically sold elsewhere, and just let the orders trickle in.    If there are still flags left a couple of years down the line (for the European games) then demand may be higher.   If unlucky, they’ll still be in stock for the next World Cup, but what’s been lost by making those purchases at bargain prices and just waiting til they sell, undercutting the competition?

Barely a day goes by when I don’t hear someone moaning about how much things cost, or how hard it is to get business.  This is especially true with teenagers.  Perhaps it’s easier to moan than to innovate.  Perhaps the concept of buying up a stock of England flags isn’t the biggest short-term profitable activity to undertake and we’re living in a world where everyone wants quick wins and big bucks now.   But from small opportunities generally come bigger ideals about what’s possible to achieve and when sites like ebay make it so simple to start from those small beginnings, the opportunities open to people are limited only by how blinkered they are.

No More Botox In Adwords – How This Will Affect Google

For those companies wanting to use the word Botox in their Google Adwords (PPC) advertising campaigns, this is no longer possible.  If you type a phrase such as ‘botox courses’ into Google you’ll see no Sponsored Links at all.  A veritable desert of adverts, which looks quite strange compared to the norm.

For some time, Google had been awkward about allowing advertisers to use the word ‘Botox’ in their adverts.  At that time advertisers could use keyword phrases that included the word ‘Botox’ but couldn’t actually use the word in their adverts (although some advertisers were allowed, for reasons that Google never explained).

But none of that matters now because the playing field is totally level – no advertisers at all are allowed to use the word ‘Botox’ in their campaigns.  The reasons for the ban on Botox appear to be related to the medical nature of the product, not helped much by legal cases related to its alleged misuse.

Historically, Google has always called the shots when it comes to what advertisers can and can’t do with the Adwords system and although Google is really annoying sometimes, it’s rare to see it completely ban a keyword phrase from being used by advertisers.

So where does this leave companies who are providing Botox-related services or products?  This depends on how much foresight they’ve had.  If they’ve got poor natural search engine positioning or are doing little else in the way of marketing, they’ll find themselves with a big hole in their enquiry levels.   A hole that could mean the end for some companies.

Let’s look at this from the viewpoint of the companies that provide Botox-related services and products.  Their options (online) are:

1. Go to the competition (principally Bing and Yahoo) and use their PPC systems to try and pull in traffic.  Unfortunately, the challenge here is that those systems have paltry levels of users compared to the mighty Google so although some clicks could be gained, they’re going to be minute in comparison to what was possible with Google Adwords.
2. Rapidly look at their organic SEO to see what can be done to enhance their Google positioning.  This will be extremely painful for those companies that have had their heads in the sand for so long, assuming that PPC will forever bring them business.  Those that had no concept of sales risk management will have a nasty wake-up call.
3. Get more into other forms of online visibility raising.  For example, banners on relevant websites, becoming more active in online forums, on Twitter, and email marketing directly to potential customers.

So, limping away from Google Adwords advertising, licking their wounds, what’s going to happen with these companies and how will that have a negative impact on Google?  Here are some thoughts:

1. Companies will get better at organic SEO and other online visibility activities, will get their levels of business back, and will tell all their contacts about how they don’t need to spend money on PPC advertising anymore.  That will raise the awareness of PPC alternatives with other companies/contacts, who may well decide that PPC represents too many eggs in one basket, they’ll start to look at other forms of online visibility, succeed at it, and that leads to less PPC revenues for the likes of Google.
2. Those companies that decide to use PPC on other systems such as Bing or Yahoo will become less loyal to Google, may even start using those search systems more, and so take eyeballs away from Google.
3. Some advertisers that have had their Google Adwords Botox visibility taken away by Google will fight against the system and may refuse to click on adverts themselves (on principle).
4. Those companies (such as Custwin) who use PPC as one of the methods to help clients gain more business, will start to advise clients to focus less on Google PPC (or PPC in general), which takes revenue away from people like Google.  Multiply that up by several companies similar to Custwin (that have had clients go through the same challenges), and you start to see dents appearing in the Google revenues.

At the end of it all, Google stopped the use of Botox in Adwords for reasons that they consider to be best.  What this proves though is that advertisers are very much at the mercy of Google decisions and so, as always, it’s vital for any company to have in place a good mix of marketing activities, online and offline, so that any such storms can be weathered.

Man and van Canterbury – why businesses fail

It’s obvious that the best way to source a product or service is to ask around for personal recommendations.  That’s what was done recently when looking for a man and van to do a house move.  It didn’t come up with any decent results so Google became the next port of call.

The original phrase typed was ‘man and van Herne Bay’ but the search results were so poor that it was considered ‘man and van Canterbury’ (bigger area) would get better results.  How wrong can you be, and what a perfect way to demonstrate how backward many businesses are.

Having typed ‘man and van Canterbury’ into Google, there were many Sponsored Links results, plus the naturals.  As PPC experts, the first focus was on the Sponsored Links to see what was there and there wasn’t a single advert that referred to Canterbury – but several other more generic or ‘outside the area’ adverts displayed.   Lesson number 1 for all those advertisers: wake up – you’re wasting budget and probably haven’t a clue why!

Having seen how inept the average PPC advertiser is, it was the turn of the natural Google results to come up with the goods.  Top of the list was www.manandvankent.co.uk, which looked really promising until clicking on it brought up a message of ‘The site manandvankent.co.uk has been disabled. Please contact support’.   It’s always good to see that Google are providing a quality service allowing such rubbish to be top of the search results.

The next search result led to http://services.vivastreet.co.uk/removals+canterbury, which had a few small adverts so inadequate that they weren’t worth exploring further.

The following search result (http://www.helpiammoving.com/removal_companies/CT.php) didn’t have anything local enough, even though the page was supposed to be about Canterbury.

A few chuckles came from the site http://www.alternativetransportservices.co.uk/, which was a really cheesy, noisy website in geezer speak using phrases such as ‘Get cheap moving products & services for the geeza’s and the birds too..cheap cheap’.   OK for a laugh but utterly useless in the search for ‘man and van Canterbury’.

The search went on and on – poor result upon poor result ended up with the thought of “so how do all the genuine man and van companies in Canterbury actually get business?”.   This applies to many types of businesses in various areas.  It’s not hard to get good natural Google positioning for a business that’s geographically focused.   For a man and van business in the Canterbury area it would be a piece of cake to get plenty of enquiries purely on the basis of the surrounding search results being so poor and irrelevant – even if not in top Google position.  Equally, PPC adverts would also get great results because there’s no competition that refers to the Canterbury area.

This is just one example of why businesses fail and covers 3 areas of failure:

1. Those businesses that advertise with Google Adwords but do it inefficiently will find themselves with irrelevant clicks plus campaigns that gain impressions but few clicks.  That marketing investment will largely be down the drain.

2. Those businesses that appear in the natural Google results but aren’t switched on enough to realise that they could be cleaning up because of the poor competition around them.  How much effort does it take to type in the phrases that apply to your business and take a good look at what appears in the search results and then decide how to beat that?

3. Those businesses who aren’t at all focused on being visible within Google when people type phrases related to their type of business.  Those are the ones sitting around with time on their hands, accepting that the economy is down, or there’s too much competition out there, or whatever other excuse is convenient.

In all three cases above, businesses that fall into those categories deserve to wither and die.  While no-one expects companies to be experts in how to win business from their websites, it’s not rocket science to write down a few notes and work out where business isn’t coming from, and then to start investigating how to turn that round.

How many man and van services that cover the Canterbury area will be sitting around with no work in a weeks time?   There’ll be a few without a doubt but who knows who they are because they’re invisible to those of us who typically turn to the web to find such services when there’s no personal recommendation that comes up trumps.

PPC for restaurants – amazing first day results

It’s not often we boast about the results we get for clients but today surprised us enough to share the success.

The client came to us by referral, as most do, and their concern was that their restaurant wasn’t visible in Google when people looked for them.  They’d often get enquiries on the phone and people would say words to the effect of “we had a job finding your details in Google”.

So, thinking that there wouldn’t actually be that many people searching for them, we set up a PPC campaign focused on their restaurant name, the intention being to expand it out to other phrases that would bring business into them.  It was probably the simplest job we’ve ever done.

We looked at the statistics for the first day – 46 clicks on their advert.  Wow! We weren’t expecting that to happen.   We rang the client and said that their original clicks budget probably wouldn’t be enough over a month and asked their views.  They were ecstatic to say the least, and had taken 20 bookings during the day – much higher than usual.

And the cost of those clicks that led to all those bookings?  £7.51.   Does make all the print advertising look a bit expensive in comparison!

The point of blogging about this is not to say we’re brilliant – this was actually really easy to do.   But that it’s sometimes surprising what can be achieved with PPC advertising and that Google invisibility can be turned round overnight and put serious revenues onto the bottom line.

The future of those in the web industry

The web world evolves very quickly and those of us within the ‘web’ industry itself may benefit from looking inwards at how things are likely to change in the near future.

There was a time when a one-man-band could say to potential clients that they were experts at website design, programming, SEO (including PPC advertising), and more.   This is actually an impossibility.  They could be ‘ok’ at a mixture of all those and be stronger in some areas but they couldn’t profess to be experts at everything because there’s just so much to stay updated with.

In situations where a web company has a few members of staff and each one has an expertise in a certain area, then such claims of being a ‘one-stop-shop’ for website success could be justified.  But the majority of the web industry are one-man-bands or two to three people working together.

Looking at what makes a website successful, there are, in the Custwin view, a few important factors:

1.    Analysis (including statistical evidence) of how well a website is performing compared to the levels of traffic going to that website.  Recommendations for change would come out of that analysis.

2.    Website design and development expertise that converts recommended changes into results on the live website, or initially creates the best possible website in the first place.

3.    Strong skills in promoting the website through ‘mainstream’ channels (i.e. SEO, including PPC where appropriate), and in analysing the results from that promotion.

4.    Expertise in building on the website strength through blogs, Twitter, and so much more.

When you consider those four factors above, particularly how much expertise is needed for each, then it’s clear that one or two man companies/individuals can’t be at the top of their game in all those skills.

In our view, the future for companies and individuals working within the web industry is simply one of two things:

1.    Success through honesty and complementary relationships

2.    Failure

Failure will come to those companies or individuals who don’t have the required skills to give a client company success from their website, but at the same time, don’t find a way of gaining access to those skills.  The end result will be a company that has a website that generates mediocre results.   A company website with mediocre results will lead to that company being more receptive to good quality advice and the incumbent provider of web services will lose that business in time.   They will also not gain any positive referrals from their ex-client because they will have been seen to have failed through not getting results.

The successful companies or individuals in the future will be those who are fully honest with their clients.  For example, if a company approaches a web developer and says they want a website that’s fantastic, the web developer has two choices:

1.    Go ahead and provide a great website.

2.    Say that they can provide a great website but focus the attention of the potential client on how that website will be promoted and analysed once it’s been created.

Many web developers won’t risk option 2 because they fear that the potential client will go to somewhere/someone that offers all the expertise under one roof.   The savvy web developers though will make it clear to the potential client that they’re really good at what they do, but although they have some knowledge of SEO etc. they would utilise the skills of trusted contacts to ensure the website gets the best possible results.

Turning this round the other way, there are numerous SEO companies or individuals who make great claims about achieving search engine positioning  but they don’t focus on whether the website is strong enough to warrant being promoted in the first place.  The end result there is that a website may well be highly prominent in the search engines but the numbers of people who actually make contact with the client company are relatively small because people just don’t get on with the website itself.   In this situation, the SEO company or individual should have the honesty to say to the potential client that they can definitely help but the client would be better off focusing initially on website strength.   At Custwin we’ve had many situations in which we’ve either passed potential clients onto our own web developer contacts or back to their own web developers, noting that we’d be happy to help promote the website but not until it’s been made stronger.

Companies are getting wise to the pitfalls of websites.  Most have had their fingers burnt and they increasingly have an expectation that whoever they deal with needs to get them strong results from their investment.   For those within the web industry who aren’t prepared to provide a full range of services, even if those services aren’t within their own levels of expertise (and so have to be outsourced to trusted contacts), then there can only be longer term failure ahead.

A day will come when most companies will understand that they have to ask certain questions of those who they choose to get involved in their web presence.  They’ll understand that a website is more than just the physical online presence but is about analysis of visitor patterns, promoting the website effectively, and more.  They’ll also understand that there needs to be an ongoing process of analysis and refinements and that a website is never complete.  The future winners in the web industry will be those who can provide guarantees that the client will benefit substantially from their online presence.   Such guarantees  can be effective by ensuring that a ‘team’ of experts is used, each focusing on their own type of expertise so that the client gets the desired result.  That ‘team’ may be made up of several individuals or companies but ultimately, responsibility would be on the shoulders of the main point of contact that the client company has.

For those in the web industry who don’t encourage potential clients to consider the bigger picture than their individual area of expertise, the future will be bleak.  For those in the industry who understand that nothing matters more than an online presence that gets results, and that tie-ups with complementary skills are vitally important, the future will be strong because the clients will gain the required levels of business, are likely to stay loyal, and are also likely to refer onto potential new clients.

Wasted money on PPC – Easter Peeps at Christmas

If there’s one thing that’s annoying it’s advertisers that are blatantly unaware of wasted money on their PPC advertising in Google.  Today brought yet another example …

Many of you will have heard of Peeps – marshmallow sweets full of sugar and stuff, very popular in the USA.  Some time ago while in the US, some boxes of Peeps found their way back home and were very much appreciated.   Fast forwards to 2009 and an idea pops into the head that it would be good to buy some Peeps because they were so well received before.   So, being in the UK, the natural search phrase to type is:

buy peeps online

The intention is to find a UK company that is importing Peeps and then reselling them.  Even at a premium, it’s not the money that counts, it’s a ‘must have’ buy in this case.

So, looking at the Sponsored Links in Google you see:

Ignoring the top result, the next two are adverts related to Easter.  There are a couple of points to make here:

1. Although Peeps are traditionally all about Easter, they’re actually made available for numerous ‘holiday’ type occasions throughout the year.  This begs the question of “why, when someone types ‘buy peeps online’ is an Easter advert appearing?   We’ll come back to this point.
2. Google is displaying two adverts.  Does anyone want to hazard a wild guess about whether those adverts are from separate companies or just one?  Apparently, according to Google, the PPC system isn’t supposed to allow advertisers to abuse the system and have more than one advert displaying under a single keyword phrase.  On the surface, SupaPrice.co.uk and Hot-Prices.co.uk are separate companies but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that the adverts are very similar and when you click through to those respective websites, the content of them is remarkably similar as well.   This does kind of make a mockery of Google making big claims about ‘quality’ being an inherent part of the PPC system if the system itself is not intelligent enough to identify when two adverts are related to the same company.   This has long been the case and we’ve done it ourselves, very successfully, getting a client listed several times for the same keyword phrase, but getting three adverts visible at a time instead of the one when supposedly the system is intelligent enough to work such things out- fantastic for locking out the competition.  

Anyway, the purpose of this blog isn’t to highlight the significant flaws within Google’s perception of what is ‘quality’ and what isn’t (in Sponsored Links results) but is instead on point 1 above …

If interested in buying Peeps online and seeing an advert about Easter (even though we’re approaching Christmas 2009), there are two knock-on effects for the advertiser who is displaying their adverts:

1. The majority of people who search for such a keyword phrase (or probably many similar) are going to see the advert, think it’s irrelevant, and won’t click.  This has the impact of reducing the click-through-rate (CTR) of the advertiser, which means their advert positioning and cost per click will also be negatively impacted.
2. Those people who decide that they really want to get hold of Peeps (as was the case this time) click through on the advert (actually, both of the adverts) and find that the websites have absolutely no reference to Peeps at all.  Yes, they have references to Easter products but no reference to Peeps (wrong time of the year in this case).   The end result: clicks on both of those sites cost both advertisers click costs and they get nothing from it.

So, the lesson here is that anyone who has either in-house PPC people or is outsourcing their PPC and basically have people running it that are extremely lazy, and frankly, stupid, is losing money and damaging their PPC campaigns in the process.   So what’s the answer for www.supaprice.co.uk and www.hot-prices.co.uk, who would appear to be German owned?    Roll out the firing squad and shoot whoever is responsible for this embarrasment of PPC advertising that contributes to people saying “I never click on the Sponsored Links because they’re often not relevant”, while wasting the budget and success potential of the advertiser.

What’s your Jackpot going to be this Friday?

“It could be you” is a familar phrase to those who do the lottery.  That phrase can equally be applied to any company because every company has the same opportunity to succeed, but come the end of each week, which companies are going to be big winners and which will face a jackpot of:

?????

We thought up this lottery analogy earlier this week when we visited a new client.  An established company, they went through a rough patch about 18 months ago which resulted in them needing to shed staff and since then their levels of business had declined further.  They are experts in what they do and had little concept of what could be gained through website enhancements and online advertising.

Their view was that the market was in a downturn (not a bad assumption) and that everyone was suffering the same.  They must have got to the end of each week thinking that their lucky numbers would never come up.  Subjects such as website strategy and online advertising were a mystery to them. 

Luckily (for them) we got involved and within just one short month they had the highest level of enquiries they’d had for at least the past couple of years.  The point of that sentence is not to blow our own trumpet but to note that the client company can now look forward to each Friday with the prospect of enquiry levels and orders being higher than each preceding week.  All from focusing on website strategy and online marketing.

While we’re always happy to see clients gaining plenty of business through what we’ve done, it never ceases to be surprising that so many companies are gradually declining and have nothing to look forward to at the end of each week.  Of course, it’s not necessarily just website strategy and promotion that can work for a company – it can be a multitude of other activities that make a difference.  But the point is that it’s easy to get into the ‘recession’ mentality and not dig deeper into the options available to create that Friday Jackpot feeling.

Or, to put that another way, it’s like knowing the lottery numbers for the upcoming draw but failing to go and buy a ticket.  Is British business suffering?  Certainly!  Is it avoidable?  In most cases, there is tons of business to be readily gained and the buyers are just waiting for potential suppliers to pop into their field of vision and impress them with their websites.

PPC – the 0.1% vs the 99.9%

Winning business from a company website is usually achieved through both of the following together:

1. A website that’s strong enough to encourage visitors to make contact/buy after visiting it.
2. A website that’s well promoted both online and offline.

For 99.9% of companies that’s the situation.  If a website isn’t strong enough then there’s little point in actively sending traffic to that website and because most companies are in competition with others, it becomes a constant battle to not only raise the visibility of products/services but to ensure that people buy when they visit the website.

So it’s quite unusual to see a situation that isn’t ‘the norm’ but that’s what we’ve had for some time with a client.

We started working with this client some time ago and our brief was originally to send PPC traffic to the website, which we did.  Client feedback has always been that good levels of enquiries/business are gained and so in theory, everyone should be happy.  But not us …

Our focus with clients is to ensure that the maximum possible benefit is gained from PPC traffic to the website and if we identify weaknesses within a client website then we will highlight them as opportunitities for improvement.   This is what happened with this particular client because we could see numerous options to expand the PPC campaign but didn’t feel confident that the website was strong enough to convert that extra online visibility into enquiries/business.   After a period of time we had a meeting with the client to discuss further and discovered something very unusual …

This particular client sells a product that is fairly niche but has quite a high potential customer base.  In short, those people looking for the product (or phrases related to the product) are already in a position where they have little choice but to buy the product and so, regardless of the strength of the website, they end up buying anyway.  In normal circumstances, people would land on a website, not like something about it, and would go to the next website in the Google results and so on until a company fully impresses them enough to buy/make contact.   In this situation, what I refer to as the 0.1%, the lack of strength in the website doesn’t have a massively detrimental effect on the amount of business gained because the potential clients have no choice but to buy.

Of course, it’s true that if this client wanted to gain even more from the traffic to their website then through website redevelopment work, that could certainly be achieved.  But for now, being in the very small minority of companies that has no competition for their products, they enjoy that position of being what’s probably 0.1% of all company websites that don’t have to be strong in order for PPC to succeed.

Back in the real world, for the other 99.9% it’s as ever important to ensure that the company website is incredibly strong before spending too much money on advertising such as PPC.

Google Adwords Trademarks – The Unlevel Playing Field

Although Google have relaxed the rules on Adwords advertisers being able (or not) to use trademarked phrases in Adwords adverts, there is still an unlevel playing field in some situations.

For those that don’t know, it used to be possible to register a company trademark with Google and although that wouldn’t stop people having adverts appear when that trademark phrase was typed, it would at least stop the advertiser from using that trademark phrase in the Google search results.   For example, if you type a phrase such as ‘Toyota Hilux’ you may see adverts appear in the Sponsored Listings but it would be rare to see the word ‘Toyota’ in those adverts because it’s been registered as a trademark with Google.

Where it becomes more complicated is when phrases are deemed (by Google) to be linked to medical issues and Google are pretty hot on stopping advertisers from using such phrases in their adverts.   Here’s a story about Botox …

A couple of years ago, as an advertiser, if someone typed a phrase such as ‘botox courses’ you could have an advert appear in Google Sponsored Listings that had the word ‘Botox’ in it as much as you wanted it to be.  Then (I suspect through a combination of the Botox trademark owner and Google also seeing Botox as being a medical-related word), Google stopped advertisers from doing this.   If you type a phrase such as ‘botox training’ into Google (UK) you’ll see adverts appearing for advertisers that aren’t allowed to use the word ‘Botox’ in their adverts, but have found creative ways around the problem.   For example, look at the screenshot below to see how two advertisers have used ‘BTX’ instead of ‘Botox’ to get round the challenge:

It’s not ideal, but using BTX does at least give those advertisers some options.

However, there’s an unlevel playing field because one of the other companies that displays in the Sponsored Links is displaying with the word ‘Botox’ very much prominent in their adverts, as you can see below:

So it begs the question of why it’s possible for one company, offering the same type of service as the other advertisers that appear when the phrase ‘botox training’ is typed, to be allowed to use the word ‘Botox’ in their advert text?

On behalf of our client who also offers Botox training courses we contacted Google by email and phone.  Four times in total over a period of months.   Each time we were told that Google couldn’t comment on the adverts of other advertisers but that yes, Botox was a phrase that shouldn’t be allowed in adverts and that they’d get it rectified.  As can clearly be seen here, it hasn’t been rectified and, understandably, the other advertisers are losing out because of the unlevel playing field that penalises them as follows …

1. Someone types the phrase ‘botox training’ (or variations of).
2. They see several adverts appear but only one has the actual word ‘Botox’ in it.
3. They click on that advert as a preference because it’s clearly what they were looking for, whereas the ‘BTX’ type variations don’t have that same ‘feel good’ factor.
4. By clicking on that advert more than the other adverts, that advertiser gets not only more clicks to their website, but their click-through-rate (CTR) becomes stronger, which means that the competitors end up spending more budget to try and keep their advert positioning high.

Yes, we’re looking at yet another example of Google failing advertisers and in this case it’s all about them having poor processes to deal with advertiser concerns.   The situation is simple:

1. One advertiser is being given priority treatment over other advertisers.
2. Complaints have been raised and supposedly the situation is being reviewed.
3. Several months later, nothing has changed.

And Google wonder why their advertising revenues are down!  Yes, it’s got something to do with recession but much of it is down to the fact that they are clueless about understanding what their advertisers concerns are, and then acting upon them.  This leads advertisers to look at alternative ways in which to promote their businesses, which leads to decreased revenues for Google. 

This is just one example of advertiser disatisfaction, solely related to the unlevel playing field in the Sponsored Results, but add this to the issues that many advertisers have and the fact that those advertisers will find other ways to promote their businesses, and you will see the gradual decline of Google due to the fact that it just doesn’t understand that its real future success comes not from the big boy advertisers but from the millions of small companies worldwide.

And if Google don’t listen to those ’small’ advertisers now then by the time the Google heads are out of the sand, those small advertisers won’t be interested in what Google are offering because they’ll have found other ways to generate business growth.