5 Life Lessons I Learned from AdWords

Google AdWords isn’t just the game-changing online advertising platform we see it as. If you spend years working with it, you’ll realize that there’s more to it than just clicks, conversions and cost. Here are a few life lessons you can take away from the not-so-ordinary advertising monarch.

1. Fear is an illusion

AdWords, as a platform, pushes you to experiment. The launch of campaign drafts and experiments is a case in point. Unlike traditional advertising, where you fear a cost-intensive experiment failing, AdWords allows you to test and learn without wasting too much money. In the case of drafts and experiments, you can measure and compare results of your original and experiment campaigns and apply changes accordingly. Therefore, there’s less to fear in AdWords when compared to traditional advertising.

2. Don’t judge a book by its cover

Reporting and data analysis run deep in AdWords. A smart AdWords strategist is someone who digs into this data instead of considering the numbers at their face value. For instance, at the top level, a campaign may not be meeting its CPA target. However, through data analysis, you may find a campaign’s keywords, day of the week or even audiences that are non-performing. There are so many layers of data that AdWords can provide in its reports section that simply ignoring it is a pitfall.

3. Appearances matter

Clients love pretty reports — and they love visuals that make data easy to understand. Before, agencies invested resources in creating visually-appealing reports, but with AdWords’s Report Editor, this is made much easier. With the Report Editor, you can effortlessly pull data into charts, graphs and tables and drag-and-drop dashboards to fit your aesthetic needs. You can even sort data and apply filters as needed.

4. You aren’t always right

AdWords teaches you that one mantra does not work for one industry. An FMCG brand that assumed its audience comprised only young, urban males, was in for a surprise when demographic data was analysed. A good portion of its audience included females as well as 50-year-olds and older. Excluding such audiences while targeting ads would have led to lost opportunities.

An ad that worked for a previous real estate client of yours may not work for another. Keyword insertions may work for some, but not for others. Therefore, what we assume to be true for all cases may not always be right.

5. Change is the only constant

Constant changes in AdWords sometimes draw the ire of many professionals in our industry. When AdWords launched in 2000, ads ran only on the right sidebar on SERPs, but soon enough, the mainline area got consumed with ads, too. It’s 2018 and we’ve now moved away from the sidebar ads completely, reducing the number of ads that can appear on SERPs from 11 to up to seven. The changes in device bidding are also known to all. Staying on top of these constant changes is perhaps the primary criterion of an efficient search marketer.

That’s the reason why working with AdWords can never get boring. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, may have dropped its motto of “Don’t be evil” in favor of ‘”Doing the right thing,” but for those with a keen eye and a sense of humor, there’s a life lesson even in that.