Confused by Google Rep Recommendations? Tips From a REAL Expert
If you have a Google Ads account, you know all about the Google account reps. They love to spam your inbox with catastrophic messaging about how your campaigns are “missing out on conversions” or need “immediate attention.” They also love to taut themselves as “strategic partners” when they are no such thing.
Let’s be clear about one thing: they are salespeople. And their only job is to get you to spend more money.
That is it. They are not strategic partners with your goals in mind. They will help you set up your campaigns to benefit Google’s goals, not yours.
It is vital that you keep this in mind while communicating with any of these people and that you don’t just blindly follow their recommendations. Do what truly makes sense for your business, not just what they tell you is best.
If you’re unsure about any of the recommendations, here are a couple examples of recommendations I always ignore - and you can, too!
Don’t turn anything on auto apply if you don’t understand how it works
So many of the auto-apply settings are literally there to make you spend more money. They might lower your ROAS goal to get you to spend more, causing you to lose too much efficiency to be profitable. Or add broad match keywords that cause you to serve ads on completely irrelevant queries. Automatic changes like these more often hurt your performance than help it.
Don’t switch all keywords to broad match
I’m not saying broad match is bad or should never be used. But I am recommending you don’t just blindly switch everything from phrase or exact to broad without understanding what that means for your campaigns. Broad match keywords can be very… broad! And for those with limited budgets, it just may not make sense to widen your targeting so much when you can keep your keywords on phrase or exact to focus your budget on very specific searches.
Don’t switch your bid strategy to max conversions if you have no conversion data
In my experience, setting a campaign to max conversions or max conversion value does not work until the campaign has historical data. I like to start my campaigns on max clicks until I’ve seen enough conversions come through that I feel confident in making the switch.
What’s wrong with max conversions? It often drives up your CPC as it tries harder to get traffic from users more likely to convert. On the flip side, it may hinder your campaign from spending if it doesn’t feel like there’s much conversion potential. Without enough data, the system just isn’t likely to make the best call.
Don’t fill in all the RSA assets just to fill them in
Write your ad with relevant context and strong callouts. Don’t just add a bunch of copy just to fill in all the fields. I typically add somewhere around 10 headlines to my RSAs; sometimes more, sometimes less. But I do what makes sense for the ad I’m writing. The more headlines and descriptions you have in an ad, the more possible combinations that exist to serve together and the more testing your ad has to do before it can figure out what the best combinations are. Trust me, you’ll get much better CTRs if you aren’t constantly in a testing mode.
Don’t increase your budget if you don’t want to spend more
How many times have you seen the recommendation to just increase your budget? Oh, if only it were that easy. I’m sure more budget would result in more conversions, but what if I don’t have any more money? Just ignore, ignore, ignore.
Don’t give any merit to your Optimization Score
It just doesn’t matter. You can literally close out all your recommendations without making changes and your score will go up. It’s just another flag Google has added to the account to make you think you need to make urgent changes when, in reality, you don’t.
Need More Help?
Google has a lot of different tactics to convince you to do what they say, but just remember that at the end of the day, this is your account and your business. You don’t have to listen to anything they say if you don’t think it will actually help your performance.
If this was article was helpful to you, there’s much more where this came from. Clicks By K helps lots of businesses everyday navigate campaign settings and testing strategies to set campaigns up for true success without Google’s reps butting in. To learn more, contact Kelsey at Clicks By K today!
