After 18 years of business, I have called it quits on Google Ads. They asked me to verify myself to them. I said: “No.”
Dave Volek’s Business English
In 1996, I had developed an English-as-a-second language program for learners of business English (BE). My innovation in this field was “numbers English.” This part of the English language was not being taught by the ESL/EFL profession. So I developed a few modules of business simulations centered around verbal communications with numbers. Part of these modules was about teaching the teachers a few things about basic business.
My primary marketing tool was sending manuscripts to the ESL/EFL publishers. There were no takers. I understood why: traditional ESL/EFL publishing requires material most teachers can easily handle. Most of the English teachers are not really “numbers people.” My material requires more effort from the teacher. My material was not for the mass market of ESL/EFL teachers. But I kept trying.
I started using Google Ads in 2005
When Google Ads came to my attention, I thought I could bypass the mainstream publishers. With internet advertising, I could find those elite teachers who would take on my more challenging material — and give their learners the practice they need for international business English.
So I set up a website with my current BE portfolio. I set up a Google Ads campaign. I had no trouble getting visitors to the website. But very few visitors went past the landing page. I was always puzzled why a business English teacher or learner would click on a business English ad and not bother to investigate.
Despite the poor results, I continued to develop more BE material, somehow believing a bigger portfolio would make my program more marketable.
After a couple of years of only a handful of sales, it seemed those elite teachers seemed to be in short supply. Or I could not reach them.
So I started developing business English material directly for the learners. I was putting up online activities for these learners to practice their business English, with lots of numbers. They were directed by Google Ads, which brought in many visitors. But again, very few visitors moved past the landing page to try out the online activities. My plan to find the elite business English learner had also failed.
In 2010, I consolidated all my inventions onto one website, to which I parked my business English program. I was no longer actively marketing this concept anymore, but it was “out there” if somebody wanted it.
When I made this parking decision, I did a little analysis. Was this whole project a big mistake? After some thought, I concluded that I could have sufficiently tested out this market with about ¼ of the time and cost. Going too big was the mistake.
Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG)
The flagship of my new website was my alternative democracy. To find adherents, I was using Google ads — big time. For about a year, I put a lot of money into Google ads. So much money that Google sent me a thermo-mug as gift of their appreciation of me being a loyal customer.
I got many visitors to the TDG section of my website. But again, very few went past the landing page. I experimented with different landing page formats and jingles. Nothing increased the penetration. Why people click on an ad that says something like: “Our democracy is broken. Here’s an alternative democracy” and do nothing after the click is a mystery to me.
After a year of Google ads and a lower bank balance, I parked my Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) as well. It was still on the internet, but I was no longer directly promoting it.
Other Inventions
I used the same website to introduce new inventions. I was putting something innovative up every two years. Learning simulations, online advertising, and a new social media forum were part of my invention portfolio.
With my business English experience, I developed a new business strategy. The three steps are: (1) Build the invention cheaply, (2) use Google Ads to test its waters, and (3) move on to the next invention if results do not come in quickly. But deep down inside, I was hoping one of my inventions would fly, and its fans would take more notice of my TDG and my BE program.
I had about 10 inventions altogether. I like being creative!
But nothing worked.
The Election of Donald Trump in 2016
It was time to bring back my alternative democracy: “Now maybe people will take me seriously.” Money again flowed from my bank account to Google’s bank account. While the results were the same as before, it seems I didn’t spend enough money to earn some more Google swag.
Different Advertising Platforms
Since Google Ads was not working for the TDG, it was time to try something different. I set up an advertising account on Facebook. I developed some memes and set up a marketing campaign. But not much happened with this campaign: little tangible engagement, almost zero traffic to my website.
I hired a professional FB marketer. She put together better memes and had them showing across the USA. The memes got many comments. But these comments were mostly liberals believing the TDG was a conservative plot or conservatives believing the TDG was a liberal plot. I tried steering conversation about a new democracy that was not about liberals or conservatives. Let’s just say the conversation remained shallow.
While there was more engagement with the new memes, there were few visitors to my website. After $1200, I let my FB marketer go.
Two years later, I finished the first of my TDG novels. These stories were about average Americans building this new democracy, showing, by example, how the TDG can be done. I put my novels up for a free read from my new website. I was going to use Google ads to find visitors to my novels.
But for some reason, Google decided not to take ads with a political message anymore. My title was “Diary of a Future Politician.” The 21-year-old kid approving ads just looked at the last word in the slogan to deem me as interfering with the American election. I clicked the “appeal button” but arguing with an internet conglomerate is kind of pointless.
I went to Facebook. But they too now had many rules about political advertising.
Then I went to BING. This advertising platform had no problems with political ads. I was able to market my first novel on their platform. I got hundreds of visitors, but only a handful reading the story. No one moving to studying the TDG concept. After six months of experimenting with different keywords, I stopped this campaign.
When my second TDG novel was ready, I used BING again. The different story allowed different keywords to find a different audience. But the result was the same as the first novel.
When my third TDG novel was ready in January 2022, I used BING again to find a new potential audience. About half-way through this campaign, BING asked me to provide some information to prove that I was a legitimate business. They were asking for a copy of my driver’s license and my social insurance number.
Up to this point, I had given internet entities minimal personal information. These entities — Google, Facebook, and BING — only had my business credit card, my phone, mailing address, and a not-so-important email address. When they asked for my birthday, I gave them a fake birthday. But this new information request was crossing too many of my lines.
I did not finish my third BING campaign.
Dave Volek’s Pandemic Simulation
I’m a great believer in simulations as learning tools. That probably came from many hours of card and board games, with friends and family. Many games require some critical thinking and decisions. With competitive players, one has to learn how to “manage uncertainties,” which is an important skill in life.
Many of my inventions were learning simulations. None were commercially successful. From my research, there is a fine balance to building a successful simulation. It has to be realistic enough for credibility yet be simplistic enough for easy participation. I guess I did not find that balance.
I really felt sorry for politicians trying to manage the unwinnable COVID crisis. Too many COVID deaths meant loss of political approval; too many interventions to prevent deaths also meant loss of political approval. I could not help but think many more people need to experience pandemic-related decisions — and my simulation could give them that experience. When more of the public understands the difficult decisions, maybe our elected politicians would be making better decisions.
After about a year of thinking about a pandemic simulation, I came up with a mathematical model that should have been cheap to build. While it went 50% past my budget, I and my PHP developer finished it a year ago.
My business plan had Google Ads to take the message to the world. I had three Google campaigns planned out, targeting small populations to build brand name, eventually leading to serious trial. When one campaign proves to fail, I would just start up the next one. The next one would benefit from brand name building of the previous campaign.
With no “politics” in the ad copy, Google Ads quickly approved these pandemic simulation ads.
I was about half-way through the second campaign when I got the message from Google. My account was going to be suspended unless I provided them some documentation about myself. Google assured me that this move was to prevent fraudulent businesses from operating on the Google network.
They requested two sets of documentation. The first was the registration of my sole proprietorship, which had fronted maybe 30 of my business units since 1996. The registration document got purged with one of my periodic cleanings of my file cabinet. I could get it from the provincial registry, but there would be some hassle and fees.
The second set is a photocopy of my driver’s license. With this one document, there is more than enough information to build a credible case of identity theft around my name: It has my real birthday — and my driver’s license number. Google may have great security protocols to prevent hackers, but there is still a slight chance. And there are always rogue employees.
Google Ads Review
When I start something, I like to finish it. I really wanted to go through my third phase of Google Ads marketing. But the risk of giving Google my driver’s license to allow me to continue with a campaign that was likely to fail did not make sense.
And I had it in my mind that this would be my last Google Ad campaign if my pandemic simulation did not find commercial success.
This decision came partially from a long list of failures. But I also did some quick research about Google Ads as a marketing tool. It seems most Google campaigns fail — sort of like being a blogger on the internet: the success rate is low, very low.
In general, internet advertising does not work for most of us.
Yes, Mr. Trump won the 2016 election based on his brilliant Facebook campaign. But he had $85,000,000 to hire ad people who could design ads to mess with the minds of the soft Democrat supporters and get those eyeballs on those ads. I believe at least 500,000 soft Democratic supporters did not vote in 2016 because of these ads — and that tipped the scale. That’s BIG MONEY working for you! At about $170 per dissuaded voter.
In theory, internet advertising should have been a tool for my small business units where small players could market competitively with the big players. I never begrudged the costs of getting visitors to my website. This marketing was much cheaper than print advertising or attending conferences. My ideas cannot be marketed profitably using traditional marketing ways. In essence, Google Ads changed my business matrix. I would not have put up so many inventions in all these years without Google Ads suggesting that it could deliver for me.
But legitimate visitors seem not to be the case. In other words, the promises of internet advertising leveling the playing field for small businesses is overrated.
What was I really creating?
We could argue that I create products that the world does not want. So no great marketing plan or budget was ever going to work. Here is a summary of my main inventions:
1. In my business English program, I ask English learners to conduct simple business calculations or exchange business data while practicing their business English conversation.
2. In my pandemic simulation, I ask citizens to put themselves in developing public policy that will be life-and-death decisions.
3. In my alternative democracy, I ask citizens to develop their own democracy, based on more kindness and wisdom.
It seems we do not want to do these things.
Or maybe Google Ads is not capable of finding my potential customers?
Maybe these people are already thinking too much to notice Google ads?
Maybe my potential customers are just not on websites with a lot of advertising?
What do you think?
Maybe it’s a good thing Google asked me for my driver’s license. Maybe it’s time to stop throwing good money at good ideas.
Addendum
If just 1% of my Google ad clickers had taken my ideas to a serious investigation, I would be in a much better financial position today.
But the nature of internet advertising is that almost all clicks are frivolous. Like 99.9999%. I would need a big marketing budget to go through 99.9999% to find that 0.0001%. This business matrix is not profitable.
Because of my frustration, I promised myself not to click on any internet advertising unless I had an interest in the ad. I did not want to incur an expense on another business, from which I was unlikely to buy.
So, in the 18 years I was with Google Ads, I think it’s safe to say that I clicked on less than 100 Google Ads. While I always did a little investigation on all my Google clicks, I never purchased anything from these Google ads.
Maybe my response, as a consumer, to Google Ads is saying something about the nature of internet advertising.
Published on Medium 2023
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