Every day I come across people who are frozen with terror. I talk to people who are scared, nervous, and frightened of their own shadow. Coming across this level of fear on a regular basis is surprising, because all I do is help business owners with their Google Ads campaigns. You know, show an ad here show an ad there, it’s not scary stuff. But the fear I run into on a daily basis is palpable.
Every week I find myself talking to business owners who are too scared to actually start a Google Ads campaign. They know all about Google Ads, they know about search terms, and ad groups, and bids, and keywords, and ad copy, and clickthrough rate, and just about everything. But they haven’t started running actual ads yet because they’re stuck in neutral, paralyzed by fear.
Instead of actually starting to run ads they want to talk for hours about income targeting, zip codes, SKAGS, and landing pages.
I get questions and comments like:
I want to turn my campaign on but do I need to rebuild it and put it into SKAGS first?
I’d like to start running but I’m scared the people who click on my ad are going to be too low income to have big moving jobs.
I can’t start running until we get tons of landing pages built out first.
Other fearful comments I hear have to do with controlling budget, knowing what to bid, and trying to figure out if they’re missing any keywords.
Fear, fear, and more fear. That’s what I encounter every week.
The saddest part is that none of this is warranted.
Yes, you can be successful on Google Ads without SKAGS.
No, you don’t need tons of any landing pages before you start running ads.
Yes, you can control your budget, it’s very easy.
And you don’t have to know what to bid either. Just set it on automatic bids with a decent cap in place, or start with low manual bids and work your way up.
Advertisers need to relax and take advantage of the flexibility Google Ads offers. You can set your budget to a small level, start small, and then adjust it up anytime. You can do the same thing with bids. And you don’t have to know every keyword before you get started. Pick out some good keywords, throw them in there phrase and broad match modified, and review your search terms regularly and you’ll find some good new keyword ideas as time goes on.
Google Ads is a long-term never-ending game. There’s always another search to get new business from. There are always ways to improve. And there’s always ways to experiment and take things to the next level.
I know advertisers who have taken their businesses to the next level and changed their lives from Google Ads. They’ve grown their businesses, profits, and market shares, all from a great Google Ads campaign. But none of these amazing things can ever happen if you don’t actually get started.
So go start!
