Today’s blog, or rant, is about ‘The Myths of Internet Marketing’. In fact, it is equally about business in general as it is about marketing your products or service. We had a new graduate start yesterday to do AdWords Management and she’s brilliant… at least we hope she is. She has the right degree in marketing, specialises in social media (they all do) and has a strong can do attitude. She probably believes marketing is about being agile, dynamic and entrepreneurial… unfortunately, that is wrong.

The Unpleasant Truth

I have run a business for longer than I care to remember and each time I try becoming “Entrepreneurial”, “Edgy”, or “Dynamic” it blows up in my face and often very painfully too. The truth is, to be a successful business manager or marketing manager you need to do a whole raft of boring tasks repetitively to deliver a consistent outcome. You don’t need any black magic SEO skills, a creative talent or mad skills in Web Design. You just need to know what needs to be done, then execute the task, measure the outcome and finally adjust to hone in on your target outcome.

Sure, you have to take risks (running a business is the biggest risk you will ever take!) and be a disruptor in the market, but this is usually when you launch a new product or a new business and this phase only lasts a short time. Once launched, it is back to the plan – Execute, Measure, Adjust and Repeat. The problem comes when we ask humans to execute the plan and this goes further than AdWords Management and even Marketing in general. We are not very good at execute, measure, adjust and repeat. It bores the living day lights out of most people and the new generation of millennials are all looking for that rewarding job that “they simply deserve” or too busy swiping left and right on Tinder.

The Chainsaw System

In the States, we have a telesales team who are using an in-house system that I created. It’s a bit like a chain saw… let me explain. It is not very smooth in its interface, but it cuts through trees like butter. The system requires staff to follow a set process each and every time – and guess what, they don’t like it. Each time we recruit a new salesperson, they will go on about PipeDrive or some other CRM system and extol their sales ability. You could compare them to very capable skilled lumberjacks – they sharpen their sales axes and work on their cutting technique day in day out.

However, take a new younger sales person with some experience and provide them with a little bit of in-house sales training using the Chainsaw System and pit them against the experienced sales person. The young sales person just wanders around with the chainsaw cutting through trees whilst we point them towards even more trees to cut down, whilst our experienced lumber jack is still on the first tree! The system wins hands down.

Contact us to create your own system today »

By following a system, great results can be achieved. I admit that developing the system is very expensive and difficult. It takes time and experience working on hundreds of accounts and years of experience. Something you just cannot wing with entrepreneurial flair. My sales manager has always said about The Seven P’s: Prior planning preparation prevents p%*s poor performance! And, it’s not just for his sales team that this is followed in the business, it is a mantra we take into every department.

Spotty Teen to Working Machine

Take McDonald’s, how amazing is it that they can take spotty teenagers who cannot clean their bedroom let alone plan or organise their job role and turns them into valuable employees in a system that delivers consistent, perfect fast food every sale! That system took time as did our approach to Google AdWords, Bing And Facebook took time. I remember running a gift company and my key problem was I didn’t know how others were doing. Was my performance great or dreadful? I just didn’t know. But what I did know, was that if I followed my system I could get consistent results! I just needed more visibility and experience to refine performance.

After all these years of AdWords Management, running my own and countless other AdWords accounts for clients, I know that one size does not fit all. Yet, I know that if you execute a series of steps, from understanding the products, why people buy, what your USP is to your Conversion Value Cost, it is possible to create a system that works for your AdWords and gets the right people to your website. I highly recommend that you begin to systemise your marketing. Start with a marketing plan and work step by step through your entire process to conversion. Even consider what happens once a customer buys.

After all in today’s marketing, we all need repeat customers as well as a repeatable marketing system to make a profit. A schedule of work for your PPC campaigns is a great start point, the tasks you need to execute each day and each week. Don’t forget to set up alerts in case your shopping feed fails too, one of the best AdWords tricks I have ever learnt! True AdWords Management even goes to having a plan for what happens when a conversion occurs – do you increase bids? examine impression share? Even more important, consider your plan for when things don’t go to plan. It is easy to increase budgets when the numbers are all in your favour, but when numbers such as conversion costs or ROI are too low what do you do? If you are spending but not generating enough sales or AdWords just isn’t working… what should you do?

Now I’ve told you the easy part – you need to create a plan and consider the available techniques that evolves into your own AdWords Management strategy, but you must place just as much importance on implementing the plan.. If you to make the plan work, our key sales point is: We make AdWords work. Even if it is working, we will make it work harder for you. It is our systematic approach and experience combined that enable us to make this promise to our clients.

Let’s Get Started

If you like talk about how you can start systemising your AdWords Account and AdWords Management so it works harder for you, please fill out the form below or give us a call.