How I Scared Off My Easiest Google AdWords Client Ever

Got a cautionary tale for you in this article about the role fear can play in marketing.

It’s about an old client of mine, George.

George was one of the easiest clients I ever done set up and managed a Google AdWords campaign for.

Cuz all George wanted was to show up #1 in the rankings for his keywords.

It was what I have dubbed “ego marketing” at its finest.

Now, managing an AdWords campaign where the only goal is to show up #1, is as easy as sliding off a greased log backwards. If that’s all a PPC management company had to do, anyone could be an AdWords expert and get incredible results.

Yet this is a monstrously horrible approach.

It’s not like I didn’t try to make my job harder and get ol’ George to track and measure his PPC results.

I mean, the guy was plopping down around $5K a month on AdWords. And I KNEW we could eliminate about half of that just with some simple call tracking (which would’ve cost maybe $50 – TOPS – to implement).

But he resisted.

So over the years my relationship with George morphed into something outta the movie Groundhog Day…

He’d call me up saying business has fallen off and asked me to check on his AdWords campaign.

I’d tell him I’d take a look but, without any tracking data, I couldn’t really tell if there was a problem.

He’d tell me to just make sure his Google ads were appearing at the top of the rankings.

I did.

And then we’d repeat the whole song and dance every 6 months or so.

Finally I’d had enough. I decided it was time to break the cycle and wake up on February 3rd.

So I told George…

… I wanted to help him.

I wanted him to stop wasting money on AdWords clicks that weren’t getting him business.

I wanted him to implement a tracking system that my other attorney clients were successfully using to keep track of where their moolah was coming from.

Laid it all out for him.

And then George disappeared like a teen camper in a horror flick. Haven’t seen or heard from him since.

It’s cuz he was scared.

And I get it. His fears are common. I’ve experienced ‘em myself.

It’s scary to actually measure the results of your marketing…

… Cuz it might prove what you’ve been doing ain’t working.

Having cold hard data might show you you gotta change your ghoulishly ineffective ways (assuming you wanna crack the code on making money).

It might show you’d be just as well off throwing your cash away as dumping it into bogus marketing tactics.

Listen, it’s much more fun to design a new logo, get a pretty new website, or invest in an ad campaign that’s only purpose is to scatter your name everywhere… and/or make sure you’re #1 on Google.

But when you don’t hold your marketing accountable, it’s just a nightmare waiting to happen.

Better to face your fears head on. Become a tracking and measuring maniac when it comes to your marketing…

… to ensure your marketing dollars are invested for good and not evil.

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Adam K
Adam K

Adam has been fascinated with online marketing, particularly PPC, since 2004 and opened his own PPC management company in 2006. Over the years he's written extensively about Google AdWords and online marketing on his own sites as well as partnered with/written for Perry Marshall, Ryan Deiss of DigitalMarketer.com and Neil Patel.