You know those feedback requests you get from Google after you beg for help and get a poorly trained “account rep” who doesn’t actually solve your problem?
Usually, I fill them out just to bitch about a bunch of stuff and let them know they’re welcome to contact me. No one ever has.
Until now!
An actual Google employee contacted me about why I was disappointed in my support interaction. I sent them a lengthy email walking them through what it’s like to go through their useless support process.
Now, do I expect them to care? No. Of course not. If they did, there wouldn’t have been a need for the email in the first place.
My team knows more about Google Ads than anyone on their Tier 1 or Tier 2 teams (and that’s the same for most agencies), so suffice it to say that we end up figuring out the issue one way or another. But then again, we’ve also spent a cumulative $100M on Google Ads since our company’s inception.
But what about smaller companies? What about the start-up Mom and Pop shoveling money into the Google furnace without resolve?
Google, as a Company, is Awful to Work With
Every encounter with Google is a frustrating mess. It takes –at a minimum– five or more points of contact before the rep even understands what the issue is. Assuming they ever do understand at all.
Google’s support staff is virtually powerless. They’re trained to regurgitate policies instead of actually doing any legwork to figure out what the issue is, let alone help you solve it.
And the “quarterly reps,” “growth teams,” or whatever other temporary account reps they throw at you aren’t any better. They basically just verbalize the recommendations pages, which all boil down to spending more money and giving Google more control.
I won’t even get into all of the other steps Google has taken to make our jobs impossible: removing raw query data, killing match types, and eliminating long tail keyword strategies in general…
But the thing is, to Google, our paltry $3-4 million dollar a year ad spend is nothing to Google.
Twenty years ago, Google evangelists made Google into the Goliath they are today. We made them into a trillion-dollar company, and they repaid us by firing competent agency account managers and replacing them with poorly trained international call centers.
And now? Google doesn’t care because they’ve become too big to fail.
So, What Can You Do as a Small Company?
At this point, we all know that Google Ads are pretty much a necessity for any kind of measurable business growth. And for the little guy, there are only a few options if you want to see any kind of success with Google Ads:
Become a Google Ads Expert
If you’ve got the time (and a fire under you), you can learn enough about Google Ads to get your ads live and running. Google has lengthy support pages that will walk you through setting up your ads account and running basic ads.
The more nuanced aspects of an ad campaign (the stuff that makes your clicks worth the spend) can be found through hours of YouTube tutorials or trial and error.
Hire a PPC Company
Enlisting a PPC company is the way most small businesses go that don’t have the resources to go through the slog of learning Google’s ever-changing platform or hemorrhage cash on ads that go nowhere.
A PPC company, like Google Ads, is an investment that’s far more likely to yield results for small businesses that don’t have time or dollars to waste.
So yes, there are options other than having to deal with Google support. It just depends on what you’re willing to, want to, or have time to learn.
Will Google Really Restore Their Previous Level of Support for Anyone but Billion-Dollar Corporations?
Realistically? Probably not.
As I said, Google’s become too big to fail. Google now only cares about Google. They’re not going to waste their time on drop-in-the-bucket revenue from businesses that are worried about putting food on the table; they’re focused on the companies that help finance their second and third vacation homes.
Stop Letting Google Waste Your Time and Money
If you want to run Google Ads and you want actually to see the needle move, give us a call.
We’ll go to bat for you when it comes to dealing with Google’s “for show” support team. Chances are, we’ll be able to solve the issue independently, which is what we’ve always done, anyway.
