Alfred Rush

When Alfred Rush opened the carefully wrapped birthday present, he was delighted.

But little did he know that, just a few hours later, that very same present would seal his fate and condemn him to death.

It was April 1912 and young Albert was on his way from England to America to join his elder brother who had moved there a few years earlier.

He was being chaperoned on this trans-Atlantic journey by the Goldsmith family from Rochester. And it was they who had presented him with this seemingly harmless birthday gift.....

....a pair of long trousers.

Why trousers?

Well, it was because Alfred wasn't celebrating just any old birthday. He was turning 16.

And becoming 16 meant he was now old enough to put aside the shorts of his youth and wear the long trousers of an adult.

Alfred was now a man, not a boy.

And so it was with great pride that Alfred donned his new trousers, unaware of the terrible consequences this simple action would soon have.

For, as you may have guessed by now, this being 1912, Alfred wasn't travelling to America by plane.

He was making the crossing by sea.....

....on RMS Titanic.

A few hours later, Titanic struck the infamous iceberg and began to sink.

The cry went out for people to get into the lifeboats......

...women and children first!

But there were nowhere near enough lifeboats, and certainly not enough to ensure that all the men would get a seat.

If Titanic had hit the iceberg just a few hours earlier, Alfred would no doubt have escaped.

But his newly acquired trousers marked him out as a man and so there was no place in the lifeboats for him.

He died not long after, drowned in the icy waters of the Atlantic in the early hours of 15 April 1912.

Alfred's story is one of the many individual tales that often get lost in the bigger picture of the whole Titanic disaster.

Now I understand this is not a happy story, and it pains me to retell it in this email, even though it happened more than 100 years ago.

But, nevertheless, it's a powerful story and one that I think should be more widely told....

.... especially to anyone who's running (or thinking of running) their own Google Ads campaign.

Why?

Because if Alfred's story teaches us anything it's that something which looks harmless can often turn out to be very damaging.

And there's no better example of this than the seemingly helpful suggestions that appear on screen when you're setting up a Google Ads campaign.

I've lost count of the number of times I've looked at someone's Google Ads campaign and seen how they've ended up wasting hundreds of pounds simply because they accepted one of these suggestions.

Similarly, I've seen poorly performing campaigns completely turned around and made profitable just by unticking one of the default options on the settings page.

This applies whether you're a coach using Google Ads to find new clients, a consultant trying to generate leads, or a course creator looking to fill your next cohort. The default settings in Google Ads are designed to maximise Google's revenue, not your results.

So if you're running or considering Google Ads for your solo business, remember Alfred Rush. Just because something looks like a helpful suggestion doesn't mean it's in your best interest.

It’s therefore really important that you stop and question every recommendation Google makes. And if you’re not sure what a particular setting actually does, make sure to look it up before you blindly accept whatever the default option is.

Have you ever had a "harmless" Google Ads setting cause problems in your marketing? I'd love to hear about it – just hit reply and let me know.

Bye for now,
David.

PS - did you know that the Titanic was equipped with some very advanced safety features for its time, including watertight compartments and electronic door systems? And yet it still succumbed to disaster.

This underscores the fact that no matter how prepared we think we are, life can always surprise us with the unexpected.

So don't leave the success of your Google Ads campaign to chance. Question every default setting, test different approaches, and never assume that what works for one business will work for yours.