An interesting comment was made on PPCChat this week that embedded itself into the recesses of my brain and kept right on burrowing. The conversation was regarding a blogpost written by Steve Cameron of Advent Communications in which he pleaded with SMB owners to stop listening to Google's "5 Minute Setup" line and be willing to hire the professionals to manage their campaigns.

It is an engaging blogpost and worth a read: Why AdWords Biggest Advantage is also their Biggest Disadvantage.

‍However, the twitter comment that has continued to bounce around the mostly empty abscess in the Northern Hemisphere of my person is what officially precipitated this open letter. The comment was also by Steve (bonus points for you, Steve!) in which he said:

@gravymatt In truth I think they burned themselves with the “free lunch” of the coupon… #ppcchat

‍— Steve Cameron (@adventcom) February 19, 2014

Now, we agencies have long voiced our opinion regarding the continued emphasis by Google on the "easy" setup and management of Adwords. There are multiple reasons, and it wouldn't be difficult to find many a blogpost frustrated by the treatment of PPC as if it were a simplistic process. However, Steve has hit upon the key point that must make Google sit up and consider these oft-ignored agency complaints. That is, as a business, how is this strategy affecting their bottom line?Here is my open plea with them to consider the negative long-term, big picture effect this is having on them.

Dear Google,

I am the owner of a PPC agency in Montana. You may be surprised to hear of a PPC agency in Montana, since after all, we ride around all day in wide-brimmed hats on horses and strain coffee with our teeth.

However, there is in fact a market here (like everywhere) for PPC marketing since as you well know, PPC marketing is virtually a business Sine qua non in the 21st Century. Y

ou have seen and directly contributed to this growth and have continued to evolve in your practices and strategy.

Most specifically in identifying your chosen strategy, I would make the claim that as proved by your marketing energy and resource attribution, you believe your key target audience is all business owners and marketing managers everywhere.

At some level this makes perfect sense since, in reality, nearly all business owners would benefit from utilizing your services well.

In fact, thus far, you have been able to take advantage of two sides of the revenue coin. On one side you gain the benefit of us agencies who seek out clients to invest in your services.

On the flip side, you gain the benefit of more "direct" sales by all of those business owners you lure in with promises of "easy setup" and "easy online resources".

At an initial level, this seems like a sound plan, and undoubtedly has directly contributed to your rapid and explosive growth.

However, like with all strategies gone awry, it is coming time to pay the piper.

I am probably guilty here of over-simplification, but in essence, your business is relevant information. You stay in business by offering the best results to the best targeted terms of the best targeted people as they search. However, this brings up:

Brand Problem Number 1.

What if those results are continually skewed by amateur ad managers?

What if, a lack of a comprehensive negative keyword strategy and an overabundance of broad match terms (common mistakes among the uninitiated) continues to reduce the quality of search and paves the way for your competition to accept your disgruntled users?

Sure, this might be scoffed at now since you continue to own 68% of the market share, but the majority of people I run into off the street uphold this notion of a degradation in relevancy.

Perhaps it's just the people I talk to, but frankly, your ads (even though, yes, they are still clicked on) have a habit of carrying a bad name. I wonder how long it will be until people just stop clicking on them since they can't trust them?

‍Perhaps rather than opening the floodgates to everyone, it would be better for your brand to begin limiting the management of your ad campaigns to those who can consistently uphold the Google brand with highly relevant and engaging ads?

Brand Problem Number 2.

Even more alarming is your choosing to invest your advertising energy and budget into the misconception that anyone can sit down and do it.

The problem with this, and one in which I believe we are beginning to see the fruits, is that you have created a culture of disgruntled SMB owners.

The more I talk to SMBs, the more I hear a similar line "yeah, we tried Adwords but it just didn't really work for us."

Curiously enough, these nearly always admit to "trying it themselves." When they are told that they can do it easily by Google (whom they trust), they will try it.

Why wouldn't an SMB try it if they believe they can do it themselves, rather than paying a professional agency?

The problem though, is that you will eventually see it biting into your bottom line if you continue to create a culture of apprehension towards your advertising.

‍We agencies are on your side, attempting to dissuade these owners and marketing managers from giving up on Adwords completely, and yet we are those who suffer the most from the "anyone can do it line" since we directly lose that opportunity for business.

A solution to this, I believe, is to begin turning away from the marketing notion of "anyone can do it" with your Adwords campaigns, and begin a comprehensive strategy that is more agency focused.

Advertising on Google is a privilege, it is specialized and when done correctly can reap extensive rewards for a company. A few specific suggestions I have are:

1) Highlighting of and advertising for agencies, especially geo-based agencies.

Beginning a culture of agency support in which your Youtube, TV, GDN, and SERP ads highlight and emphasize the importance of a good agency rather than the current emphasis of "you can do it yourself."

2) A genuinely qualitative measurement for Agency Partners.

Admittedly, I don't have a specific strategy in mind here other than the general idea of some sort of agency program that is truly trustworthy by its ability to measure qualitative management. If certification/partnership became more than simply passing a test then you could advertise heavily for agencies who are accepted into the program as agencies that could be trusted and they would be in high demand... and they would love you for it! (EDIT: I went ahead and wrote my thoughts on this later on in the year! They can be seen here: Is It Time for An Agency Quality Score?).

3) Send client leads to agencies rather than your own reps.

First, you won't have to have so many people taking phone calls anyway (so your agency-centered reps could be more heavily trained in deeper strategy and optimization suggestions), and second you are demonstrating the value of your platform by encouraging those who need help to go with a qualified agency rather than convincing them to try it on their own only to have them fail.

Now admittedly, that's just scratching the surface of possible strategies here, but the key point I believe will help your business long term is to cease the emphasis on getting every SMB to "try it free" and to become more agency-centric in putting the right agencies in front of those SMBs.

You may not pick up as much initial profit, but longterm, you will be (1) helping turn back the negative brand image you have created among SMBs and will be (2) increasing the relevancy overall of your ads creating more satisfied Search users.I really do love my job and working with your platform, but I would prefer to spend more time helping SMBs succeed with Adwords, rather than trying to convince them to give it another try with me after their own personal failures in that regard.Respectfully,Kirk WilliamsZATO