Helping Others to Succeed

Put the pieces together to help your team be effective.
Put the pieces together to help your team be effective.

As an incredibly strong scheduler of my own time, it makes it very difficult for me sometimes to understand that not everyone else’s lives revolve around Outlook.

I’ve found that there are types like me who are strong on the details and their are other who are strong on the creative side instead. Finding the balance to help those who work for you to be effective and enjoy their job with you is crucial for business growth.

I’ve found that not every great creative person is a good match for my business. There may be some terrific writers out there, but if they can’t make a deadline so your business gets paid they may not be the best match for your needs. On the other hand others who are highly creative but can be worked with to perform within somewhat flexible guidelines may be strong business partners in the long run.

This is what I’ve found. There are some things that you as a business owner can be flexible with and other things that you simply cannot be flexible with.

Maybe you can be flexible about when a contractor sends their invoice to you.

But maybe you can’t be flexible about a contractor missing a client’s deadline.

Maybe you can be flexible about the time of day a project is turned in.

But maybe you can’t be flexible when other people are waiting to work on this same project.

Working with others is a balance. By trying to create an environment where others that work with you have a degree of input and you yourself show flexibility for their needs, you develop loyalty and trust. It can be a win-win for workers and bosses.

Turning AdWords On and Off is a Recipe for Disaster

McCord Web Services is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company and Google AdWords Certified Partner.
McCord Web Services is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company and Google AdWords Certified Partner.

As a Google AdWords Certified Partner, I make my living managing Google AdWords accounts. I work in a wide and diverse sectors of business. I’ve been managing Google AdWords for over nine years and so can speak on this issue authoritatively.

When I have a client who turns AdWords on and off regularly sometimes just for days and other times for long periods, I have to say that it is very difficult to effectively manage a program and generate a return on investment for the client.

Turning your AdWords account off for the weekend or when you go on vacation is not necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer to instead move a client’s budget setting down versus pausing the program. When an account has been on and off and on and off, this is what I see.

  1. Google does not know how to serve the program as history is spotty. In many cases managing a program like this will require the same amount of time in the first month (typically 8 hours of more of management for about 5 ad groups) when it has been restarted as it is like creating an account history all over again.

  2. Conversions will not start back up again at the level they were at before the account was stopped. It can sometimes take two or three weeks once an account has been off for conversions to start rolling again.
  3. In many cases page placement and cost per click will be significantly different than when the account had previously been running. As AdWords is an auction when you move out of the auction and then move back in after a month or two break, the auction prices may all have changed – higher or lower.

I prefer instead to take a great performing program that needs to be paused to a low level budget to keep placement than to totally turn a program off. It can cost so much more for your account manager to bring around a stale account than to move to a maintenance mode.