I recently decided I’m not above bribing my clients.

A bribe is a kind of guarantee. And, like bribes, guarantees often introduce an element of distrust:

“If you don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back.”

It’s not terribly confidence-inspiring. Most consultants don’t have the luxury of offering money-back guarantees, anyway. So, they feel stymied by things like value-based pricing. How can you demonstrate value while inspiring clients to follow through on their end without a guarantee? Doesn’t the lack of a guarantee render the term “value” arbitrary and meaningless?

How do you reduce perceived risk while also protecting yourself?

Guarantees don’t have to require giving someone their money back.

They don’t even need to be guarantees at all, as long as they establish trust and reduce the client’s perceived risk—without putting you at too much risk.

Here’s one idea. What if we made guarantees positive, prize-winning events instead?

Instead of accepting total responsibility for your client’s business, why not give them a reason to take ownership and to follow through on their commitments—by giving them a nice bonus?

You do your work, client follows through on their end of the plan, and if they demonstrate consistent follow-through, they receive a fat cash prize.

It inspires them to believe in themselves. It makes you look good because you now have a success story. It makes giving them money a delight.

And it motivates them to really, really want to follow through. Yes, because they love their business and the people they serve and they truly want to make a contribution. But also for the cold, hard cash.

Now that’s a bribe I can believe in. You?

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This is the story of how my pro bono client and the star of my Awkward-Free Testimonials video series became an AdWords thousandaire in less than a week—practically by accident.

Since starting his AdWords campaign two and a half months ago, Alan, an independent artist and scientist with no previous clients, generated $4,350 in private welding class services from this ad alone.

Most new businesses take months to get off the ground. You could say AdWords provided the rocket fuel to a much faster launch.

Although the AdWords tactic was intentional, neither of us were experts. I was a total beginner, and so was he. Everything I knew about AdWords I learned from this free report.

After we both read the report, we got to work. We already had a sales page, which I’d helped him write. So, this post focuses on the AdWords campaign.

Short story: Wild success. He generated a 1,450% return on investment!

For the longer, behind-the-scenes story, read this interview.

This is relevant for you if you are:

• An artist
• A teacher or a coach
• Anyone offering a specific service, particularly in person, who needs clients now, and doesn’t want to wait for the whole trust-building, online-expert effect to kick in

This may not be relevant for you if you have an unusual service no one seems to know they need until they get to know you. However, you might be able to make AdWords work for you by focusing on a specific problem you solve.

INTERVIEW WITH AN ACCIDENTAL ADWORDS THOUSANDAIRE

Me: Why did you decide to do this AdWords campaign? I know you’ve always been allergic to capital-M Marketing.

Alan: I decided to do an AdWords campaign because I really needed to connect with people outside of my network.

Email lists, Facebook, and Twitter can get you far, but at a certain point, a lot of those people are too close to you for your service to be useful to them.

I was selling metal fabrication lessons, and a lot of the people in my networks have those skills already, or could acquire them easily. My natural network is not my client network. And even their extended network wasn’t my network.

Having friends send out emails and direct their friends to my sales page didn’t really work for me, either. I knew I wanted to take out an ad, and I had heard of some other friends who were doing different things who had success with AdWords, so I decided to give it a shot.

Me: How did you get started?

Alan: AdWords searches the entire Google content spectrum—everything from your web search to history to your email for keywords. And then it picks ads that are associated with those keywords. So what I did first was to pick the keywords. I started off with the keywords that I would use to find my service; and then I added keywords to people that I thought would be interested.

Me: For example?

Alan: For example, I’m teaching metal fabrication classes, welding classes. So the first keywords I used were private welding classes in San Francisco.

My ad says:

Private Welding Classes
You’ll master the basics and more
Perfect for Makers, Artists and DIY
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA

Me: But you teach in Oakland. Isn’t that misleading?

Alan: I do teach in Oakland, but when you create your ad, you can specify who sees it. You can target a geographic area really specifically, so my ad is only seen by people in the San Francisco Bay Area who are over 18.

That way I don’t have to deal with some 13-year-old who wants to take a class. I don’t want to deal with minors.

Me: How has your success with AdWords affected your attitude towards AdWords ads, which you yourself never click on? I know you used to say that if you didn’t click on it, no one else would, either.

Alan: I think it’s probably made me a little more likely to click on ads, but again, only under really specific circumstances. I don’t think I’m my target audience, to be honest. I basically taught myself how to weld. I’m still very dubious of marketing and advertising, even though I have to do it myself.

However, I’m definitely more comfortable doing it now than I was before. I see its value, and I see how it can be done honestly and with integrity and style. But I don’t think a lot of people do any of that. I think a lot of marketing and advertising is still pretty sleazy and aggressive and untrustworthy.

Me: How has using AdWords affected the quality of the people you’re getting? I know your first two clients came by way of referral, so what’s been the difference between them and subsequent AdWords clients?

Alan: So far, the people who get to the point that they’re taking the class have been absolutely the right people. It’s not just about the ad. I talk with them afterwards, and not everyone who clicks on my ad is clearly the best client. For example, a lot of people click through but don’t follow the call to action. And a lot of people who follow the call to action and fill out the form will not actually become clients. But the people who do end up being my clients are great. They’re interested in learning and they’re a lot of fun.

Me: So let’s talk numbers. How many people have responded to the call to action, how many became clients? What’s your ROI here?

Alan: So far, I’ve spent $300 for two-and-a-half months, so $124 a month on average. And I’ve gotten $4,350 in business.

Me: Wow. That’s 14.5 times what was spent, or $1,450% ROI.

Alan: How did you do that?

Me: Calculator.

Alan: I also got two referrals. Those weren’t included in the numbers above.

Me: What advice would you give to someone who was thinking of doing this themselves?

Alan: No matter how you have your sales page set up, it’s difficult to tell who is actually going to end up being a good client. Sometimes someone fills out the call to action questionnaire, and you think they’re a hot prospect. You’re sure they’re going to follow through. But a lot of times they don’t pan out. So you never really know. So my advice would be to treat each stage of contact with everyone with the same amount of enthusiasm and skepticism. Also, my sales page was tight, and targeted a very specific type of person. That really helped.

Me: You’re reading Howie Jacobson’s Google AdWords for Dummies right now, right? I can’t wait to see how that changes your results.

Alan: Me, too.

This concludes my Interview with an Accidental AdWords Thousandaire. We’ll report back as soon as anything else exciting happens.