Has anyone been to one of these? There is one coming up in Raleigh on May 23-27 and I was wondering if anyone here had first hand experience.

(Yes I realize that these are not put on by google)

1/31/2011 2:20:43 PM

I went to one a couple of years ago but don't remember many details other than it was all pretty simple. Mine was Google sponsored though so I'm not sure if you're looking at something different or not. Basically they just introduced Adwords, explained it a little bit, and then took questions. I think a lot of the people there left without a clue about most of the stuff but they were mostly small business owners and stuff that didn't do much with tech (one guy didn't even have a website). Part of it was the poor choice of presenter (recent grad that seemed to have been picked to wow the hicks with her Harvard degree that was mentioned a few times but didn't have the material down 100%) and that some of the people were pretty much completely inexperienced in anything tech related (one guy didn't even have a website). The whole thing was only 2 hours or so. Is the one you're talking about a 4 day seminar or just offered multiple days?/

2/1/2011 3:16:42 PM

http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/awseminars are what i'm talking about

2/1/2011 10:34:23 PM

There's nothing at those seminars that you couldn't get from visiting the Adwords Learning Center, especially considering that most of the lectures are video/slide decks. http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs&rd=1

There's also a dedicated new account team that's basically a personal training/support group to help get new accounts off the ground. Furthermoe, general Adwords support is pretty solid for answering questions on the fly.

For a solid blog on advanced strategies and tactics, visit http://www.ppchero.com

I've been in the search industry for ~5 years and have been hard pressed to see any takeaways for seminars of this style that justify the expense.


[Edited on February 1, 2011 at 10:43 PM. Reason : .]

2/1/2011 10:36:02 PM

yeah, definitely not what I went to. Have you used Adwords at all? I can't imagine paying $500+ for a seminar on it after using it and using resources online. Basically I agree fully with ^

2/1/2011 11:01:30 PM

i have used adwords, but nothing very in depth. the company i work for does quite a bit of advertising on adwords and is currently using a third party to manage the account. our click through and conversion rates are much higher than they were before the company took our campaigns over. i was thinking maybe the last few days of the seminar might help me bridge the gap between my current understanding and what management companies offer. I feel like the 101 class is probably pointless for me.

i don't think i would be interested in the seminars if i were having to foot the bill myself, but because work would be paying for it, it seems like it COULD be worth attending as it would allow me to spend a few days focusing solely on adwords without getting bogged down with other things.

the thing to do might be to set aside a few days in the coming weeks to go through the blog and learning center and see where i am after that.

2/2/2011 12:14:24 AM

The big ticket items most management firms bring to the table that have a quick and noticeable impact on campaign performance are:

Keyword research - the science of finding a happy medium between what the highest paid executive in the room calls your product/service and the verbiage potential customers actually use when searching. There's also the process of matching that verbiage against the UVP of the product or service you're pushing, identifying what terms are likely to convert and what's too broad or too loosely related.
Campaign Structure - this directly impacts quality score, cpc, and ultimately cost per acquisition.
Ad Copy - Better ad copy = higher ctr which in turn boosts quality score and lowers CPC + has the added benefit of sending leads that are more qualified

There are dozens of tactics beyond that above that can exponentially improve campaign performance over time--landing page optimization, multivariate testing, etc; but in terms of campaign adjustments that literally take a campaign from hemorrhaging money to yielding a decent return in a matter of days, the odds are strong that it's some variation of what's listed above.

2/2/2011 3:38:01 PM

I work quite a bit with the company, WebShare Design, that is putting on the seminars. The people there are wicked smart but they'll be the first to tell you these aren't advanced classes by any means. There real bread and butter is analytics. Let me know if you have any specific questions

2/2/2011 7:23:48 PM