Google AdWords Jumpstart Service

January 23, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, A service, SEO/SEM

What is it?

Google AdWords Jumpstart Service: I've already given Google AdWords a 5 star review here on WorkHappy.net, but this is little-known about service that Google offers new AdWords advertisers where for a $299 advance toward advertising fees, they'll set up your first AdWords campaign for you. It's for people just starting out with AdWords. It helps absorb a little bit of the learning curve and saves you some time.

I've set up lots of AdWords campaigns for my clients, but had never used this service. So I decided, that for you my dear readers, I would so venture. I'm setting up and managing some campaigns for our main local university here in Spokane (Gonzaga) and decided to give it a whirl and see if the "Jumpstart Service" lived up to it's name.

Who makes it?

Google

Why is it the killerest?

It mostly lived up to it's name, with an emphasis on "start." I needed a geo-targeted campaign in a very tough keyword market. I submitted my Jumpstart request and a couple days later received a phone call from a Google rep who informed me she'd be setting up my campaign and I'd hear back from her in a few days. Total time to set up the campaign was about 1wk from when I made the request. She created a campaign with three ad groups, wrote some ads, set bid prices and selected keywords.

After she set up the campaign, she carefully and helpfully walked me through what she had set up over the phone. Explained everything, invited me to engage the campaign and said she'd call back a week later.

Which she did. She was then ready to talk to me about all the basic mechanics of AdWords. She walked me through how to manage bid prices and ad writing. She gave me ad group creation strategies, phrase matching advice (with information that wasn't entirely true, but it was close), and answered some tougher questions I gave her, with not just mechanics advice, but good "best practice" advice too. It was entry-level, but it was helpful. She also gave me the Google AdWords phone number, and said she'd check in on me in another week. A few days later I received a brief survey via email from Google wondering how things went.

Overall, not a bad way to start AdWords if you're going to do it on your own -- so long as your expectations are that this is only to help you do the initial setup. It helps with about the first 15% of what you'll need to do if you want to be successful. For example, I had two different mini-sites for which she set up three ad groups with about 15-20 keywords in each. After nearly a week I had almost no impressions and zero click throughs. Her reasoning for the low results was that it was geo-targeted (small audience). Quite valid indeed, but I've since spent hours adding a few hundred keywords, playing with bids, adding ad groups, rewriting ad copy... and traffic is beginning to flow.

What could be improved?

This is only a start (as the name implies). You'll still need to invest the hours, blood, sweat and tears to make your campaign work. It's not designed for people who wish to have someone else set up and managed it for them. It's for people who are willing and able to figure it all out and manage the nitty-gritty themselves, but need a little hand holding to get started.

On the geo-targeting she didn't advise me to create a global campaign and use the geographic terms to compliment and target AOL users and others who don't represent valid IP information to Google's geo-targeting servers. (Which is a must with any effective geo-targeting campaign).

Note: when compared with Yahoo's paid listings particularly their so-called "local" listings, there's no comparison. Google rocks the house by comparison, Yahoo! doesn't even warrant a review here on WorkHappy because it's so abysmal.

How much does it cost?

Nothing extra, but they do charge a $299 advance on your advertising spending

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

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