Is Google AdWords Advertising Itself Honestly?

I’ve been working on PPC for my dad’s dental seminars business, and I have to admit that while I like a challenge, the system is really overwhelming. It makes me wonder whether Google AdWords – the PPC traffic/platform we’re buying/using – is honest in how it promotes itself.

Consider these two claims that AdWords makes:

1) Get started in minutes.

2) “You specify how much you’re willing to pay per click or impression. There are no minimum spend requirements.”

The first claim is obviously nonsense.

There’s a load of workflow to be done before you get your first click!

First, you need to have your landing page’s graphics designed.

Then you need to have the pics sliced and coded into html, which takes at least a day for even the highest volume shops at their most expensive. Otherwise it’s a few days.

Next you have to do keyword research and plan out how you’re going to organize the campaigns thematically. Yes, campaigns is plural, because everyone knows that to manage AdWords efficiently you have to make liberal use of campaigns in your account structure.

Assuming you want a good quality score, you’ll probably want to further organize campaigns by match type, and subdivide adgroups into plurals and singulars.

Then, naturally, you’ll need to brainstorm ad copy that matches the particular nuances of each campaign’s keywords and match types.

That copy has to be reflected back on the landing pages, which will also need additional copy.

Note: If the landing pages do anything but simply email you the form, or funnel traffic deeper with a click, you’ll need to tie the landing page to an email marketing program or to a CRM system.

Web analytics have to be integrated, and you’ll likely want to use a split-testing solution immediately to increase your conversions

…

The second claim also is laughable.

First, Google has this arbitrary algorithm known as Quality Score.

With landing pages, ads and keywords that the system all rated as fine, along with decent CTRs between 1-4%, Google still decided that my dad’s Quality Score on some keywords should be 4/10.

Second, Google has a ‘minimum first page bid.’ That’s a variant that also plays with these and other factors.

How in the world is that not a minimum spend requirement?

On PPC Blog’s private forum, people are calling it price gouging.

And in all this, there’s of course the auction system which is ridiculously more advanced than most of us realize, let alone have even time to understand.

Which is all, naturally, assuming you’re not mislead by common PPC myths.

This is a system small business people can just hop into??

This black box of a system is bloody hard to deal with. What have your experiences been?