In October 2015, PICS International became a full-fledged “Google Partner”. This means we can now be searched for and found in the Google Partners database and now show the Google Partner “badge” on our website and in our marketing material. Google says: “The badge recognizes companies we trust to help you succeed on the web with our products”. Some of the benefits of being a partner with Google is that PICS now gets dedicated help from Google on all things relating to Google Adwords. Is this help the same customer service any Adwords customers can get by simply calling? Not at all! This type of high level support is intended to work with a full blown agency like ourselves – intended to maximize the cost savings and profits for our customers. Before discussing these benefits, first we must go back a few years…
… PICS history is one of playing “Robin Hood” (for our customers) to Google’s “King and Castle”. So much so that in the past we long advocated minimizing and/or outright avoiding Adwords – if our customers could use OTHER Google search assets to bring noticeable returns to their bottom line. For more than 10 years, solid website SEO on a website could do what Adwords could do, for a fraction of the cost (this opportunity is now somewhat lost). More recently – solid LOCAL SEO optimization in Google+ or “Local Maps” could greatly diminish, or even eliminate the need for participation in Pay Per Click or Adwords. Not so much anymore…
It’s 2015, and Google now has what amounts to a “real time” and extremely firm grip on it’s search algorithm and search engine results pages (aka SERP’s). Today, there are scant few SEO opportunities outside of Adwords. The “organic” real estate on Google’s SERP’s is steadily dwindling and changing (in Google’s favor) each month. The result is that SMB’s have to “play ball” with Google if they want to continue to profit from online opportunities. In a nutshell, the cost of trying to “SEO optimize” organic pages in a website has, in almost all cases, become greater than the cost of running a well managed Google Adwords campaign. Businesses that want to succeed in a mostly “Google world” must adapt their marketing strategies and act swiftly in doing so. Along with “Organic SEO” and “Local SEO” – we now recommend that a business add Google Adwords into their marketing mix.
Strategic Adwords:
Still skeptical? While it is true that many small businesses who have tried PPC – think Adwords is too expensive, wasteful, or both – there is an art and skill to properly managing and optimizing a Google Adwords account. When done properly, the ROI resulting from Google Adwords becomes a “no brainer”. When done improperly Adwords can wreck a marketing budget.
Becoming a Google Partner brings some fantastic things to the Adwords accounts PICS manages for our customers. First, we are a phone call away to dedicated help from an engaged and familiar (with our accounts) full-time Google employees located in Mountain View, California. Google calls these folks “Google Agency Account Strategists” and their full-time job is to help us – help our customers. For zero cost to our customers – they analyze the Adwords setup and optimization work we have done for each account we manage, and let us know if there are ways to 1) increase conversions 2) lower click costs. One of our main Google reps is is “Martin” and calling him “evangelical” about optimizing a Google Adwords account (so completely, that the effort makes more money for our customers) might be an understatement. Our feeling now is that if Google really wants to help us lower cost for our customers – to their own profit detriment – we are “all ears”.
Before ending let’s include with some history about us – PICS International managed it’s first Google Adwords account in 2001. That first customer grew to a multi-million dollar company with Pay Per Click spending over $80,000 a month. PICS has since managed a lot of companies “PPC” campaigns and a lot our customers routinely spend under $500 a month. Simply put – none of our customers keep an Adwords account running – unless it works. The ROI has to be obvious and very profitable. The sooner we make that obvious to our customers, the better. “Profit generating” for our customers is what we do when we work this close with Google.
And so, fourteen years after managing our first Adwords account, we now work for scores of customers located in the USA and Canada, in any market. To date,we have managed well over two million dollars in Adwords “click” spending – resulting in sales for our customers of at least fifty million dollars. ..oh, and if that’s not enough – we finally got our official Google Partners badge!
