At Ascendancy we’re hugely proud of our Google Partner status – but what does it mean, and why should you work with a Google Partner to run your Google AdWords campaign?
Google Partners replaced the previous ‘Google Advertising Professional’ scheme in November last year and only around 30% of those who had been a certified professional have transferred over to the new scheme, because of the stricter requirements it entails. There are somewhere around 5,000 Google partners in the world currently.
Meeting standards
To become a Google Partner, an agency needs to fulfil the following criteria:
- One or more members of staff need to have passed the Google AdWords exams, which need to be retaken on a regular basis
- The agency needs to be running accounts which spend a minimum of 10k USD or equivalent over a rolling 90 day period
- Meet certain best practice and customer service standards – Google check to see that all our active accounts are meeting certain quality criteria, and that we are intervening in accounts on a regular basis. I’m pleased to say that we massively exceed the required minimum here, and are miles ahead of the average Google Partner (though we now want to score 100%!):
As a Google Partner, we get access to the latest best practice information from Google – and get invited to events such as the one Helen blogged about last year. And they send us the odd present, such as a pair of headphones! What we don’t get is any commission from Google – this would be a conflict of interest, as our job is to get the best return on investment for clients, not necessarily to make Google more money.
To find a Google Partner, you can search the directory here by location and by budget: http://www.google.co.uk/partners If you search for Shropshire, you’ll find we are currently one of only two county based agencies to be listed on the directory.
So why don’t more agencies become Google Partners?
Good question! A quick search of Google reveals at least around a dozen agencies in Shropshire who offer a Google AdWords management service yet don’t appear to have joined Google Partners. Considering that it costs nothing to join, a couple of hours per year to take the exams, and that if you’re running a good number of AdWords accounts and running them well, it shouldn’t be hard to meet the minimum spend and quality criteria, we believe that for most agencies, they just don’t take AdWords management that seriously.
It’s a bolt-on service rather than at the core of their business. This doesn’t just apply in Shropshire but across the country, where most agencies offering AdWords management aren’t actually qualified. If you’d like us to take a look at your AdWords account and let you know what Ascendancy could to to help you improve the return on investment of your AdWords account, give us a shout on 01952 462845 or drop us an email.
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