A Call From Google (Not a Question but the Moderators said to Put this Here)

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Jacob,

They're definitely upselling, that is just their sales business ;-). I've received a couple of calls over the years as well to incentive me to spend more money with them. I don't have a problem with it personally as any other sales department of any company would do the same probably.

You might want to also have a look at this one: http://webmarketingschool.com/should-you-trust-google/

I must say that she had a point that upping your bid doesn't mean that you will have to fully spend that amount on display advertising. It could also be that she sees that you just have to spend just a bit more to generate more top placements and so on receive more conversions and lower your CPA. But it's a hard guess if that would really be paying off for you.

[PM_Academy]

I have a meeting with our Google Rep weekly.  They do enjoy spending your money, however most of the suggestions are worth it in terms of ROI in my experience.  Guess it all depends on the size of the marketing campaign. Interesting they are reaching out in this way though.

[SoleGraphics]

I say play with it. If your hunch is true then you'll pay more and get the same results. If your hunch is not then you'll pay the same or slightly more and get better results. PPC campaigns are all about testing, analyzing and improving. Maybe this is one of the ways for that to happen.

[BrettDixon]

Google AdWords seem to be having a massive push on customer retention at the moment. We've had clients that spend 20-30K and 1K alike per month receiving calls offering "advice" (often VERY bad advice). We (and some other Google Partners) have complained to our account managers at Google and ours in particular mentioned that they have some teams calling advertisers working from prompt sheets (basically offering them all the same advice).

So take it with a pinch of salt, experiment but don't fall into the trap of thinking because it's Google they're 100% correct. Often google uses outside agencies for these types of things - one in the UK is called Capita I believe.

[JacobEdward]

It wasn't great advice and really wasn't applicable. Pretty weird - hopefully it's not driving up the bids which if everyone followed it the advice would.

[BrettDixon]

Yeah...seems it's a common problem. There's a Google Partner group Google set up on G+, Lots of complaints and examples of terrible advice.

Good luck!

[JacobEdward]

We have a term that is performing really well and showing to the maximum amount of people on the content network - she wanted us to limit the people it shows to and up the bid.

[DennisSeymour]

cant believe they are still doing this till today.

Thanks for sharing Jacob

[JacobEdward]

They will keep doing this and eventually it will up the price for all terms (I am sure this has already).

[JacobEdward]

I have played with it - I know exactly what is going on. That is not the problem. The problem is their suggestions. We spend enough to know about raising budgets. They want us to raise the budget for something specific that is already maxed out - it is set at 500/day and coming in at much less - they didn't even look at it. The problem is they want us to raise the budget as a suggestion without any looking into. This is dangerous.

[JacobEdward]

We are number 1 btw - that is the average - they just suggested to raise the bids. I should have mentioned that.

[JacobEdward]

The budget is maxed out for this term - they just wanted us to up the bid (which we are spending .25 of the current bid).