Online Businessman's Dilemma: Trapped Between Rival Technicians
In Poor Richard's Almanack, over 200 years ago, Ben Franklin wrote this:
A man caught between two lawyers is like a fish caught between two cats.
Today, this describes a humble buyer of software. He is caught between at least two teams of technicians.
Let me describe my recent experiences. See if this sounds familiar.
If you want to make money as an online businessman, you have to master Google AdWords. This takes knowledge. Most people do not have this knowledge. He who gets it has an advantage.
Here is the biggest barrier to entry: Google. Google makes a lot of money, but it is not a user-friendly company.
Its big money-maker is AdWords. That is its bread and butter. But the front end is extremely difficult to use. There is nothing intuitive about it.
Why? Simple: genius programmers designed it. Genius programmers have no clue about how normal people access the Web and use Web pages. They have different mindsets, which is why they are programmers.
A man who spotted this early is Perry Marshall. He wrote a book on AdWords a decade ago. He has sold a lot of books. He has sold a lot of high-priced seminars.
He is at the other end of the spectrum. He has great marketing ideas, but his digital support staff is truly incompetent.
Let me provide an example. I noticed that the book's third edition no longer matches Google's AdWords pages.
On February 28, I sent an email.
The AdWords book is great, but Google short-circuits it. What we are forced to do to sign up is really messed up. We have no control. They shove keywords down our throats. We cannot get rid of them. The customer support girl could not solve it. I sent screencasts, on request. No response yet.Be aware of this.
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I received this reply from Rebecca on the same day -- short response time.
I know that Google added a few other keyword tools, have you tried those ones? Once you get into your actual campaigns, I think you can add or remove any keywords you like.
On March 1, I sent her an explanation of my problem. I included a screencast.
Perry's book does not deal with this. This is how we are required to sign up. His book does not say "skip this procedure by going here…."Google compels up to use these terrible keywords. Google support does not know how to get rid of them. This advice does not work, which means that I cannot begin. This is not a trivial problem. When Google tech support cannot solve it, then Perry needs to do a report for book buyers on how to get around this. This thwarts the reader. If a reader cannot sign up, he will not buy Perry's follow-up products. That will hurt Perry's income.
I sent her what I had been sent by Google -- pure techiebabble.
Thank you for calling the Google Adwords Team, and giving us an opportunity to assist you. My name is Philip from the Ann Arbor Google office. I am working on your case with Kayla regarding your deleting keywords issue.Thank you for sending in those screen share videos. Sadly I was only able to watch the second one but I do feel like I see what is going on here. Once you are in the keyword section like where you can enter in new keywords. You should be able to delete any of those other keywords that you do not want by clicking the "X" to the right of the keyword. If for some reason this does not work I would suggest try clearing your cache and cookies on your browser. If this still doesn't work I would actually suggest finishing the setup of your first campaign by putting in the billing information. I suggest this because it will then take you to the typical interface of AdWords. Here you for sure will be able to delete those keywords. You would just navigate to the keywords tab and click into the check boxes next to the keywords you would like to delete. Once you have selected the keyword you want to delete you will click on the edit button which will open a drop down menu with an option for delete.
None of this worked.
You get the idea. Google cannot deal easily with normal people. But Google makes its money from normal people.
Goog;e keeps buying companies. It launches new products. Some work. Most don't. Google needs to make AdWords more usable. That would make a lot more money for the company. But Google is trapped. It is run by techies. They cannot make things user-friendly. So, they launch new ventures that don't work, and which are abandoned. I used Google to find lists of these failed projects.
I got this reply from Rebecca.
Ah, I see what you're talking about. So were you able to get rid of the suggested keywords by using the X's in the end?The reason Perry's book doesn't deal with this is because Google changed their keyword tools since the last book came out. He's got a new book coming out in the next couple of months that will be updated to include use of this new keyword planner since the old tool is gone now.
So, the third edition no longer solves this crucial problem. Google played "let's improve things," and thereby made things worse.
On March 6, I sent this suggestion.
For those of us who bought the 3rd edition, we need help.If he has a list of book buyers, he should sell a report on keywords today for a few dollars.
Rebecca replied on March 6.
I think that's an excellent idea. I'm suggesting it to the authors now and will let you know if anything comes of it.
On May 16, I received a letter from Rebecca. Perry had taken my advice.
It's ready! Here's the keyword planner guide. =)
The link takes you to a well-written ad -- a model of how to write ads. The price is right: $5.
I ordered it.
Within seconds, I had a response. Actually, I had seven responses. They were promotions for a free Webinar: a different email for each day.
There was no link to the report I had just ordered.
I wrote back on May 19. Where is the report?
This offer looks great. I ordered it. But I did not get it. Instead, I got six confirmations for a Webinar. That looks good, too, but I wanted the AdWords Planner.
I was sent a link to a page. I had to log in. I had to have a password. I had paid my money, but I had to have a password. I had no password, as far as I knew.
I wrote back: no password.
I was sent a password. I logged in. I got this:
Not Found, Error 404The page you are looking for no longer exists.
The next day, I tried again. Same page, same message: 404.
I had figured this would happen. I was prepared. I made a screencast of my attempt.
I sent a copy of the screencast to the support staff.
This explains my problem. I ordered the $5 report. It is not there.http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/c2hY6lna8R
This is day two. I reported on this yesterday.
It is clear that no one beta tested this.
It is clear that no one responded to my warning yesterday.
This gives the impression that no one is minding the store.
The impression is accurate. No one was minding the store.
Perry Marshall writes great ads, but he makes the marketer's #1 mistake: he does not personally beta-test his own ads. This could not have happened if he had tested his ads. He trusted the technicians to get it right. He ignored Ronald Reagan's rule: Trust, but verify.