Albert Einstein once said that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.

I say “a little paid search knowledge is an expensive thing”.

Paid search advertising and in particular Google AdWords has a pretty bad image amongst the clients I meet.

Most of these clients are SMEs who have a very tight marketing budget and many of them are of the opinion that Google AdWords ‘doesn’t work and is a waste of money’.

As an online marketing expert I know that this is not true and that Google AdWords does indeed work.

I have seen some businesses do very well by using Google AdWords.

So why is there so much dislike for AdWords amongst the people I meet?

I believe it comes from the fact that the clients who I meet and dislike AdWords ‘know how it works and haven’t had any business from it’.

Now unless you are one of the companies that works in a vertical that just doesn’t attract search engine visits (not many SMEs fit this category) then the fact that you are getting no business from AdWords suggests that you don’t know how to use it.

Take for example an AdWords account I reviewed last week.

It was a near perfect representation of what-not-to-do with an AdWords account.

This rendered the account a money wasting machine; a very effective one at that.

This is where I have my problem.

Seeing this kind of marketing waste makes me annoyed.

First I am annoyed with the client for being so ignorant and not bothering to learn how to use something that costs a lot of money if done wrong.

Then I get annoyed with Google.

I have seen more ineffective AdWords accounts that will clearly never yield results than I care to remember.

Google actively encourages small business owners to sign up and use their paid search advertising service but I don’t feel it does enough to make sure that people don’t completely mis-use it and waste money.

On accounts where lots of money (thousands of pounds) is being spent Google does get in contact with the advertiser to offer help, but what about the smaller business?

It may not be thousands of pounds but it is still a high percentage of the business’s advertising budget.

The most frustrating part of this story is that a group of clients still insist they know what they are doing and write off Google AdWords as a marketing fad.

A dangerous opinion.

The other day I wrote a post about the demise of Jessops.

After writing it I was speaking to a friend about the subject and I raised my point that the internet probably isn’t as much to blame as everyone seems to make out.

With this, my friend told me a story that is so astounding that I thought I would share it with you.

It goes something like this.

Just before Christmas my friend went into a branch of Jessops in search of a specific model of camera.

He knew the price that a rival store (Currys) was selling the product for.

Walking up to the desk, he asked the assistant if Jessops do ‘price-match’ – ie. will they match (or hopefully beat) the price offered by a rival store.

The response to this query was yes but the assistant’s skills stopped there, because they didn’t know the process involved to ‘match’ a price.

Cue manager.

Explaining his question, my friend posed the riddle to the store manager who was now standing in front of him.

The answer, again, was that Jessops could indeed price-match against a rival store.

With that, my friend explained that Currys was selling the camera for a lower price – this finished in him asking, “can you match that price?”.

This is where the story gets good.

The manager said that they could match the quoted price however in order to do so they will need proof.

Fair enough.

Except that this proof had to come in the form of a receipt from the rival shop.

That’s right, the Jessops manager told my friend that in order to match (not beat) the price at Currys my friend would have to go to Currys, buy the camera, return to Jessops with the ‘proof’ and then they could match the price.

The manager even explained that following the events above my friend could then return the spare camera to Currys, thus completing the price-match process.

What loony planet is the Jessops store manager in question living on to think that someone would buy a product from a cheaper shop in order to pay the same price at Jessops and then return the original purchase?

Astounding.

If this isn’t proof that Jessops dropped the customer service ball prior to their demise then I don’t know what is.

As a parting shot, upon leaving the shop my friend told the Jessops manager, “this place wont last January”.

On another note, it is worth mentioning that HMV has also gone into administration this week. More sad news for the many staff.

In contrast to Jessops, I think it is fair to say that the fall of HMV is perhaps more attributable to the internet.

The core product that HMV sold (music) changed from being consumed via physical media to being purchased as a downloadable product.

HMV has an excuse, I can’t find myself accepting that Jessops does.