There has been little flurry of activity online recently of people complaining the Google AdWords doesn’t work, that it’s a scam, and that Google have got us all hoodwinked into thinking that if you’re in business you must be running an online advertising campaign.
The evidence for this seems to boil down to the same fundamental argument in most cases – “I’ve had so many dozens/hundreds/thousands of clicks to my website and not a single sale/form completion/phone call.”
The conclusion? It’s Google.
There is a saying… which I imagine is based on truth, although I have no personal experience… You can lead a horse to water, but you can ‘t make it drink.
The same is true of website visitors.
You can bring them to your website in droves, but you cannot make them buy from you. Or let me rephrase that. You can bring them to your website and then your website has to take over and convert them into paying customers. Bringing them to the page is not enough.
If visitors are not converting through your sales funnel then simply pushing more and more of them in at the top is not going to help. Anything multiplied by zero is still zero.
But it is often easier to shoot the messenger.
Consider the process of online advertising – in particular search advertising. Someone deliberately goes to Google and types in a search term. Then they read the ads that are triggered (remember, you selected the keywords for which your ad would qualify) and they click on yours.
As an advertising medium, Google has done it’s job at this point. If people are getting to your website and then not converting there is only one real explanation… your site did not meet the need they had when they ran their search.
Google will bring horses to your watering hole, but if they find it empty, or the water is tainted, they will not drink. Instead of blaming Google perhaps you should clean up your water and make sure it is there in abundance.
