One of my friends emailed me to say they were pitching for a piece of consulting work. They were tendering social media while the competing agency was offering an SEO solution.

Consider this for a moment.

The question for the potential client has come down to two opposing offers. Social or SEO.

What sequence of events caused the client to be in a situation of choosing between tactics. Why one or the other? How do you even decide that choice?

Really the answer should be “all of the above”, but in truth it should be about the real goals and challenges of the organisation rather than like choosing between takeout menus!

• What is the overall strategy?
• Which problem are we solving?
• What do we need to achieve?
• Are there tactics that are already in place or need integrating with?

When I hear SEO versus social media it always seems to be a “we need more traffic/visibility”. And when I hear that it is usually a deeper issue rather than just visitor count.

If you are ever confronted with a “we need some of that social, or maybe SEO” type question then you need to drill down why. Then keep asking why until you get to the real core issue.

Want more customers? Build a real lead generation engine, don’t start picking tactics from a menu.

HELP US!

Since the start of my career, I have had a never ending feud with Google about their double ad serving policy.  For starters, Google’s customer service team is setup in such a way that they help first time search rookies the same way they help Google certified companies.  There should be some benefit to being a Google Adwords certified company other than just being able to showoff their logo.  I personally believe that these folks should be escalated up the ladder a bit; why else did we spend the time to take your certification.  It’s annoying that every time, I ask a question, I start at the bottom with the same canned answers.  Not to mention, that we spend in excess of a million dollars a year with Google.

Google doesn’t allow for the same company to advertise on Adwords with the same keywords.  I totally understand that.  The problem is that we work with so many different affiliates that sometimes they jump on Google trying to make an extra buck advertising our product and we get knocked off.  Affiliates advertising against us on Google is a violation of our affiliate marketing terms however tracking the affiliates down and requesting that they remove their links can take hours and sometimes days.  During that time, it’s a major loss of revenue for our company.  It’s scary that Google has that power.

I’ve been on the waitlist for an account executive at Google and I’m staill waiting – it’s been over a year.  I would think that spending a million bucks a year with them would get me a direct phone number to somebody that can make a decision at Google – hasn’t happened yet.  It’s frustrating that with current market conditions their not trying a bit harder to satisfy their customers.

If anybody has any advice on how to expedited the process of getting a Google Adwords account executive, please let me know.