1. You Pay For Clicks
Of course, you know that with Google AdWords you’re paying for clicks. This wasn’t a problem a long time ago when rates were more reasonable, you know, cents instead of dollars. The problem nowadays is that a startup or new business is dropping $2 or more per click to get people to visit their site. Sure. That may increase visitors because you’re appearing at the top of the Google search page, but it’s not guaranteeing sales. Some clicks can be as high as around the $50 range per click.
2. Hard to Compete With Big Companies
Because AdWords is a bit on the expensive side, most small businesses and startups are unable to compete with larger companies. Many years back, AdWords was effective for small businesses. Anyone could launch a campaign and drive in high-quality traffic at a fair price. However, as we previously mentioned, AdWords got dearer year by year. Which means, for a startup/small company, there’s no way that they can compete with established and well-known brands.
Because larger companies have a large cash flow, they can afford to spend well over $100,000 per month on an AdWords campaign. They have the resources and time to do that. This means by the time an up and coming business launches, all of their relevant keywords have been taken, which in turn, raises the price.
3. Limited Number of Characters
One gripe that you’ll hear about AdWords is that there is a limit on the number of characters that you’re allowed; 30 in the headlines and 90 each in the two description text. While this isn’t exactly the end of the world, this restriction can make using AdWords a bit tricky.
On top of all the other tasks you have to do, you now have to brainstorm and come up with an attention-grabbing headline, keywords, the benefits of your product and some sort of call-to-action. That can be challenging to accomplish with a set amount of characters. When I’m coming up with headlines, especially if I’m doing dynamic keywords insertion it becomes very hard to fit everything in there. This can be a large problem for companies with longer names or keywords that are 30+ characters in just the name…think of the medical industry? You may not even have enough characters for even 1 word.
In short, you have to choose your words very carefully if you want to get the most out of AdWords.
4. Mistakes Can Cost You Dearly
We’re all human and it’s easy to make a mistakes. For example, there has probably been a time in your life where you forgot to turn off your aircond. Adwords is much like the electric bill. You’re paying for electric no matter if you remembered to turn it off or not. I’ve forgotten to turn off ads for a client and cost myself thousands. I’ve seen clients wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on ad spend because they forgot to turn ads off.
Another problem. Let’s say that you made a spelling error in a keyword or neglected your landing page because you’ve been doing this whole AdWords campaign, Google is going to penalize you. While we understand that Google only wants to feature high quality websites, mistakes happen. And, you don’t want to lose your presence on Google because of a simple oversight.
And, that’s not even getting into making a mistake during the implementation of the AdWords Conversion Tracking, like confusing it with Analytics. What this means is that you won’t be able to get real-time information, which could cost in gaining those so-important conversions.
5. It Doesn’t Fit Your Niche
Just because you’re working with the largest search engine in the world doesn’t mean that your customers are going to find you. Why? Because AdWords can be broad because it’s focused on the most relevant choice on the page. So, let’s say that you’re a contractor that does everything from painting, flooring, partition and plumbing. How can you let people know all that information? They may search for “wall partition” and get results that don’t reflect all of the services that you offer.
Of course, you could use Broad Match Modifier, but Google probably doesn’t want you to know because you’d be giving them less money.
Before investing in an AdWords campaign, do some research on your customers and how to effectively reach out to them. It could turn out that they aren’t going to be effectively reached on Google.
Have you embarked on an AdWords campaign? If so, did it deliver results? Or, was it just a waste of time and money?