Continued from Monday.
When is it time to fire your AdWords manager? When you see things in your account that do not jive with what you have told your account manager to do.
Budget
This is a huge issue. Look at your account from the campaign tab. Look to the bottom to see what your AdWords manager has set your account to spend by day. Multiply that number by 30 and that is your scheduled 30 day ad spend.
In the case of the review I was doing for a client to evaluate the performance of their AdWords account manager, the daily budget was $2,000. That means the client was scheduled to spend $60,000 per 30 day period. I asked the client did they want to spend $60,000? The client said NO, their budget was $30,000 a month and they considered that a scary number already.
Based on a last 30 day review of the account the client had already been billed by Google for $54,000. Well over the $30,000 cap the client thought they had.
This is a huge issue and one I see frequently taken by so called professional AdWords managers. When they do not get performance in an account, they increase the budget hoping that in reality Google will not spend that amount thinking that poor performance is an issue of ad serving. Instead the action to optimize the account should be taken. In some cases a total revamp of keywords, landing pages, and ad text should be done and a new bidding strategy taken. If the issue is budget then buy-in from the client for a limited time period test with statistical evaluation provided at the end of the test period should be done. I never advocate creating a “fake” budget for AdWords.
In my experience AdWords can spend all that you have scheduled it to spend. If your account manager is fooling around with your budget hoping Google won’t charge you, I consider that grounds for firing.
If you need professional help with your AdWords program from an experienced AdWords manager, certified professional and member of the Google Partner team at McCord Web Services, I encourage you to call now!
