Google ads is worse than Cocaine or why the house always wins [ part 1]
Part I
Many businesses would have a hard time trying to escape from Google in many parts of the world. Whether it’s a small restaurant down the road, an online retailer selling soap, or even a large conglomerate operating globally, they are all exposed to Google and how it tells the world about them.
If your restaurant isn’t on Google Maps, tourists are unlikely to find it in the same way as not showing your online store’s address in the search results will result in fewer potential buyers visiting it.
Even your neighbour’s Dog has an account with Google
Google is the gateway to the Internet for hundreds of millions of people. The gateway is almost the only game in town.
Unless you are Coca-Cola or Disney, the chances are very few people know your company unless they’ve already done business with it in the past. In other words, your business has a branding problem. It’s simply not popular. Nobody knows about it, and nobody seems to want to know about it either.
If nobody knows about you, nobody wants to buy anything from you. So, what can a business do to change this? Some have very flamboyant owners who tend to be a walking advertisement for the company. In contrast, others hire talented people, and they start spreading the message about the company and eventually, more people know about it.
Still, even if the business owner drives a pink Rolls Royse and has 50 dogs in it, or the newly hired head of PR manages to get your name in a few articles in the local newspaper, that’s not enough. Soon, everybody forgets about your precious business. You start thinking about what else you can do to tell the world about your business. The harder you think about it, the more obvious it becomes that maybe you should give Google a go. It’s cool. Everybody uses it, and they are all hyped up, so surely you could benefit too!
And that’s the part where I need to explain why I compared an ads company with one of the most popular drugs on the planet. You start using Google, and it delivers more leads, more calls, and more sales. Fantastic. Now you want more. Not a problem. Just pour some extra money in. Now you are going 300 miles an hour. You are the king of the hill. So many people call you that you can’t handle the calls anymore. You need to hire more people. You go on a hiring spree. Now you need a bigger office. Great, you are now popular. Everybody wants you.
Then the bill arrives. It’s not small, but it’s still manageable, so you continue.
Another few months go by, and you get even more popular. “This will never end”, you think. Then another bill arrives, and this time even the email it came with feels heavy. It’s a ton of money. Oh, well, it’s still working, let’s continue, as, at the end of the day, you can’t expect it to be free, right? So you carry on.
By now, everybody in the neighbourhood is doing it. Even your neighbour’s Dog has an account with Google. It’s addictive. You crave for more. Google knows it, and the price goes up again. This time it is just too expensive, even fo you. You decide to dial down a bit on spending. The phones go a bit quiet too. Your mailbox doesn’t seem to be as busy as it was last week. Suddenly you remember the moment you had last year when you were thinking about getting more popular.
You start thinking of ways to do it again, only this time without using Google. But you can’t, as your head is empty and you haven’t really done much all this time apart from sending cheques to Google, so it starts to sink in: You don’t know how to do marketing, and you don’t have any money left to hire anyone who does.
The story is just too familiar. Companies often tend to forget that a big part of the job is just to be known. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not easy. I’d say it’s one of the most difficult things for most businesses. Some try it, can’t get the results, and then they give up. Others try to pay their way with money and sooner or later pay the price they can’t afford.
Google is very good at giving you instant gratification. The results are immediate; no long-term work needed. It’s easy. In fact, it’s so easy that we even started calling people who bid for ads marketers. They may not know the product or the market strategy, as long as they can operate the Google Ads admin panel. That’s the ultimate drug for business.
When companies outsource all the marketing efforts to Google, they no longer have the skill. And like a muscle that is not being used, it eventually dyes. That’s why this relationship is so dangerous, and that’s why it’s worse than cocaine.
At this point, you probably think: yes, sure, smart pants, it’s easy for you to say, but what can we do?
Part II next week