We’re Official: Google AdWords Certified Partner Status

Last week we checked off a big goal of ours here on the digital marketing team: become a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

Even though Casey and I have a combined 7+ years of Google AdWords management, we’ve never formalized our expertise by completing the required exams.

So, we’re proud to announce we now meet the company qualifications and Casey has his individual qualification (I’m finishing mine up this week).

Here’s a breakdown of what’s required to become a partner.

1. Manage at least $10,000 spend over a 90 day period.

2. Have a qualified individual at your company that has both:
   Passed the “fundamentals” exam & one of the “expert” exams:
   – Search Advertising (Casey passed this one)
   – Display Advertising
   – Reporting (I’m taking this one later in the week)

We’re now showing up in the partner search, and we’re planning on using the official logo they provide in our updated email signatures. How’s this look?

Updated Email Signature With Official Logo of Awesomeness

If you’re interested in help with your own AdWords account, just give us a shout. We’re happy to apply our knowledge to your specific situation.

Our Approach to Paid Search

While anyone can study hard, hustle up enough clients to meet the minimum spend, and take the exams, we like to think there are a few little things that set us apart and continue to show the value of AdWords and our time to our clients.

1. Understanding AdWords is just a piece (tactic) that fits within an overall marketing strategy. And that fits within the overall business strategy. If you don’t have a solid brand, product or service, and strategic plan you’re wasting money.

2. You have a solid tracking and reporting structure in place. Before we spend a minute on Adwords, we’re looking to see what the goal of your business is and the role your website plays in the sales process. Then we configure our goal tracking and ensure every keyword visit and penny spent can be attributed back to those goals.
   
   Examples
   
   Linking AdWords to Goal Tracking in Google Analytics 

   
   Dashboard We Provide All Of Our AdWords Clients
   

3. Organization, organization, organization. We’re going to dive into this topic more in later posts, but for now it will suffice to say we’re big believers a consistent approach to brainstorming and really thinking through a super-organized account structure.That leads to clickthrough rates like these:

   
   Rockstar Clickthrough Rates