Close Doesn’t Count in AdWords

If you have ever heard the expression “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”, you know exactly what I mean when I say that close doesn’t count in AdWords. If not, let me explain.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to review a Google AdWords account that was setup late last year and ran for all of 3 months. Unfortunately, after dropping nearly $30K on advertising, the advertiser pulled the plug on the project because they weren’t happy with the results.

Ouch. What went wrong? First, let’s start with what the advertiser did right.

After reviewing the account, it appeared they had followed all of Google’s best practices such as creating separate campaigns targeting different themes and implementing tightly knit ad groups with relevant ad copy. They even threw in some negative keywords for good measure to prevent their ads from coming up for irrelevant queries and went so far as creating custom landing pages for each campaign.

So far so good, right?

Well, upon further inspection of their keyword terms, I quickly realized exactly where the advertiser had taken a turn for the worse. And no, this wasn’t your typical single keyword broad matched scenario that plagues most AdWords accounts. Actually, the problem didn’t have anything to do with keyword match types.

As it turns out, this was simply a case of the advertiser doing everything right but the thing that matters most: keyword selection.

Although they were bidding on relevant terms, they were wrong for their business. Keyword terms that were way too broad and hyper-competitive with no real intent to buy or take action. Keyword terms that pass quality score filters but don’t produce results. Keywords that cost the advertiser $30K with nothing to show for it.

This just goes to show that even if you do almost everything right in AdWords, you might come close to getting results. But as the saying goes, “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”.

I'm a Google AdWords Certified Professional from Los Angeles, CA, specializing in paid search (PPC) management and optimization. I help small business advertisers get better results from their pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

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