The better is the enemy of the good
Tools for planning and monitoring online marketing activities, search engine optimization, and AdWords campaigns in particular are useful for our work. However, they can make us forget that success in online marketing isn’t based solely on tools and data, but also on spontaneous inspiration and creative ideas. By Martin Caduff & Nicolas Kaufmann, dotpulse Webagentur AG.
Google Keywords Tool, AdWords and Web Analytics make it possible for search engine optimization or AdWords campaigns, among other things, to pick out exactly the keywords that bring qualified visitors to the website, to analyze visitor behavior on the website until we only present the visitor with the information he (supposedly) wants to see, to uncover the channels through which interested parties come to the website before they trigger a conversion, and to advertise where potential customers are, and finally to find the approach that activates our consumers.
We are advocates of these tools, but are opposed to the boundless trust that is sometimes placed in them. This can ultimately lead to bureaucrats and controllers taking the helm and displacing professional online marketers, lateral thinkers and creative minds. We can already see where this can lead with AdWords campaigns: different providers advertise the same offer with identical ad texts. This ignores the fact that providers are interchangeable without clear differentiating features. If AdWords is used in this way, the market will soon dismiss this tool as bad advertising.
Controlling and optimizing online marketing activities with data is certainly the right thing to do. However, we would like to point out that this data comes from the past and is partly accessible to everyone, such as the Google Keywords Tool.
The Google Keywords Tool is valuable for the selection of keywords for search engine marketing, as it shows us how the general public searches. It helps us to recognize the possible keywords for our offer to a large extent. But beware: our competitors also use exactly these keywords. That's why we recommend setting a large pot on "general keywords" that Google Keywords provides us with. A small pot is placed on "own keywords", which are evaluated by examining the offer, creativity and gut feeling. This is how we find attractive niches that are free of competitors.
We recommend the tactic of large and small pots not only for search engine marketing, but for online marketing in general. The numerous tools and databases enable us to quickly lay the foundations to create scope for creativity in conception, planning and implementation.
We advocate creativity. With AdWords, we already see identical ad texts that differ only in the provider name. Without clear differentiation features, the providers are interchangeable and, ultimately, AdWords advertising is dismissed by the market as bad advertising.
