Maximize Your Return on Investment with Google AdWords
Most businesses want a cost-effective way to bring in more
customers. The challenge is to find prospects who are thinking
about your products at the exact time that you reach them.
With the advent of Google AdWords, it is now possible to
target prospects at the very moment they are thinking about
buying your products or services. If someone does a Google
search on digital cameras, they only see ads for digital
cameras. If someone does a search on organically grown coffee
beans, they only see ads for organically grown coffee. Google
AdWords enables you to implement precisely targeted advertising.
Read on to learn how to maximize your success with Google
AdWords. With proper preparation and execution, starting
Google AdWords can be like planting a money tree that will
provide your business with a steady stream of revenue.
What is Google AdWords?
Open up a Web browser and go to the Google website. Type
in the search term coffee and click search. Essentially,
two types of search results come up: on the left and below
are the organic search results that nobody has sponsored.
On the right side of your browser window and sometimes above
the organic results are the Sponsored Links. The Sponsored
Links are paid advertisements. Sponsored links are always
identified as such by the heading Sponsored Links.
As participants in this automated auction, each of these
advertisers is bidding for the keyword coffee. They only
pay if someone is interested enough to click on the advertisement;
if nobody clicks on the ad, the cost is zero. The higher
the advertiser bids on a keyword, the higher in the rankings
the ad appears and the more likely web searchers will see
it. Ranking means visibility, though you do not have to be
at the top of the rankings or bid the highest amount for
prospects to see your ad and click on it. Your goal is to
get the lowest Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and the highest quality
clicks (sales and leads) for your budget.
Find your Niche
Sometimes with popular keywords (e.g., coffee) there are
many companies competing. On the other hand, popular keywords
get millions of searches so there might be enough clicks
to go around. The only way to find out if a particular keyword
will work for you is to try it. The problem is that many
other advertisers are bidding for the popular keywords so
your CPC is likely to be high. You are more likely to get
a low CPC with more obscure, highly targeted keywords. It
will take some thought to come up with the right keywords.
Our coffee roaster would probably want to try the keyword
coffee, and watch it like a hawk as it could result in many
low quality clicks (not many conversions to leads or sales).
If a keyword does not produce high quality clicks after a
reasonable trial period (a couple weeks), then remove it;
it may even be obvious sooner that a particular keyword is
costing money but not producing results.
Perhaps our coffee roaster sells shade-grown coffee that
protects Central American songbird habitat. While far less
people are searching for shade grown coffee than just coffee,
it is likely to yield a lower CPC and higher quality clicks.
Do some brainstorming and write down an initial list of
keywords that matches your market niche. This process of
finding targeted keywords will be a useful exercise to help
you focus your campaigns and maximize your return on investment.
Getting Started
The first thing you need to get started with AdWords is
a goal. Is your goal to make direct sales via e-commerce
on your website? Is your goal to capture sales leads that
you can follow-up with and make the sale? Alternatively,
is your goal a combination of both of these outcomes? Once
you have determined a goal you need a website that helps
you achieve that goal.
Your website should be eye-catching and well organized,
and include landing pages for your products or services.
To see some examples of landing pages, do a search for your
services, and look at what other companies in your market
are doing. The landing page can be your main website if your
website tightly focuses on one product or service you are
advertising (e.g., this permission-based email marketing
website). Otherwise, the landing page should be a page within
your larger website that focuses on the specific product
or service you are advertising (e.g., this page for web hosting).
If you are selling directly from your website, your site
should include a secure e-commerce system. Any good, technically
competent web design firm can set this up for you.
If you want sales leads, then your site should include a
call to action to persuade people to request more information.
The way they submit a lead is to click on a link to a lead
capture form. You need a form that at a minimum sends you—or
the appropriate sales staff—an email but ideally should
also create a lead for you in a Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) system such as SalesForce or SugarCRM.
Whether you are selling directly from your website or capturing
leads, your website should always have obvious ways to contact
you using whatever method the prospect feels most comfortable
using: a contact form, email, or telephone. Some company
websites make it hard to figure out how to contact them for
more information.
It is important to have a number of people – both
inside and outside of your company – test your website
for usability and ease of use. Prospects should never have
to wonder how to buy from you or how to contact you to ask
a question about your products or services.
Sign-up for Google AdWords
Once you have a goal, website, and landing page, you are
ready to sign up for Google AdWords. Learn by doing. It is
easier to write the advertisement and select keywords using
the tools that Google provides during the sign up process.
In addition, some Web hosting providers have collaborated
with Google, and can offer you a free AdWords coupon to get
you started.
If you plan to spend at least $30/day on AdWords, Google
offers a JumpStart program to help you get started using
AdWords. Google JumpStart specialists will help you create
a campaign. The cost of the program is $299 but Google will
apply that as a credit toward the cost of your initial clicks.
Not having used JumpStart myself, I cannot vouch for its
quality though Google generally offers high quality services.
Campaigns and Ad Groups
The Campaign level is where you set your daily budget, language
targeting, location targeting, ad distribution preferences,
and the start and end dates for your campaigns (if applicable).
The Ad Group level is where enter your keywords and the
advertisements themselves. Each Ad Group has one or more
ads. Write at least two ads for each ad group so you can
try different approaches and compare the results.
In my experience, it has been beneficial to create multiple
campaigns so I can experiment with different parameters and
compare the results. Campaigns that work well I keep; campaigns
that do not work well, I delete.
Targeting
Choose the language you want to target, and then the countries
or territories. This requires some thought. Can you offer
your product or service globally, in just the United States,
or in just your city or region? You can target your campaign
to the world or to specific countries, regions, states, or
cities.
For even more precise targeting, you can even target your
campaign to a certain number of miles from your business
or even an area bounded by coordinates.
Write your Advertisements
You have just a 25-character title get their attention,
and a 70-character ad to get people interested enough to
want to click on your ad. It is not a lot of text so make
it pithy.
Write the Headline, the text of the ad, and enter the Display
Link (always link to main page of your website), and then
enter the Destination URL (your landing page). The Destination
URL might be your main page or a page within your main website
dedicated just to selling the product at hand. Below are
a couple of fictional ad examples. I do not work in the coffee
industry but I do enjoy a good cup of coffee.
Headline: Shade Grown Coffee Beans Description line 1:
Shade grown coffee. Tastes Description line 2: better & saves
valuable rainforest.
Display URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com
Destination URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com?&utm_id=coff1
Another example:
Headline: Shade Grown Coffee Beans Description line 1:
Coffee that tastes better and Description line 2: protects
valuable rainforest.
Display URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com/
Destination URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com?&utm_id=coff2
Conversion Tracking
To track the conversion rate of your campaigns – i.e.,
how many sales or leads you get for your investment – requires
a little preparation. You will need to have your webmaster
embed snippets of code to the appropriate pages on your website.
Google Analytics
In the fictional advertisement examples I gave, you may
have noticed the codes in the destination URL’s: “coff1” and “coff2”.
These are tracking codes that facilitate the tracking of
a wealth of information by Google Analytics.
Google Analytics, which Google integrated with AdWords,
is a very powerful service for tracking the success of both
your organic and paid search results for your website. It
will help you better understand your website visitors experience
in detail. In addition, you can learn what keywords bring
in the best prospects, and which of your campaigns are delivering
the best return on investment. You can use Google Analytics
to track marketing campaigns other than AdWords as well.
Google Analytics is too big a topic to cover much here but
I will devote a future article entirely to this powerful
marketing tracking service.
Choose Your Keywords
As I mentioned earlier, it is important to pick good keywords.
Initially, choose both general keywords and narrowly targeted
keywords, and carefully evaluate the results. Keep keywords
that are getting you results, and remove keywords that are
not working for you. You will probably need to run your campaigns
for a while before you will have enough information to determine
which keywords are succeeding for you.
In the keyword space provided in the setup process, list
the keywords or keyword phrases you would like to use. Because
people tend to type fast when they search the web, be sure
to include common mis-spellings of your keywords. Here are
some example keywords that our fictional coffee roaster might
use:
coffee
coffe
shade grown coffee
shade grown coffe
shade grown
shade coffee
coffee shade grown
shade grown coffee migratory birds
benefits of shade grown coffee
gourmet coffee
gourmet coffee beans
gourmet coffees
coffee beans
gourmet coffee beans
organic coffee
organic coffee beans
certified organic coffee
coffee beans organic
mail order organic coffee
bulk coffee
To get more keywords enter a keyword into the Keyword Tool
Box and click on Get More Keywords. This will generate additional
keywords, some of which will be relevant to you and some
of which will not be relevant. Keep the relevant keywords
and toss the rest.
Now, you have a good starting list. Later, you will want
to add new keywords, and remove non-performing keywords.
A good keyword is one that yields you conversions into customers
or good leads.
Google Search versus Google Content Network
Google AdWords can place your add in essentially two places:
Google search and the content network. Google search are
results from searches that prospective customers do directly
using www.google.com. The content network consists of Google
partner sites and sites that run advertisements through Google’s
AdSense program.
In my experience, Google search has yielded much more quality
clicks than the content network. The content network is worth
trying but I recommend putting it into a separate campaign
so you can measure its results against your Google search
campaign.
The content network is opt-out, and is not possible to opt-out
during the setup process. However, to opt-out of the content
network for a specific campaign, you can go back to campaign
settings and uncheck the checkbox for content network.
Then setup a separate campaign where you focus on the content
network and opt-out of the search network. Compare the results
between the two campaigns. It is possible that you will find
Google search is more productive than the content network
but, of course, your results may be different from mine.
If you want to keep it simple until you are more comfortable
with AdWords, I recommend starting with just the search network.
Then come back in a few weeks and setup a separate campaign
to try the content network, and compare the results to what
you are getting with the search network.
Your Daily Budget
Your daily budget for your campaign is the ceiling on your
daily spending. You can set this number at whatever you want.
It is a good idea to start out with a relatively low daily
budget while you refine your AdWords effectiveness. As your
ad campaigns succeed and bring you more business, you will
likely want to increase your budget.
Start with a daily budget of about $10 to $15 per day and
gradually increase that amount as you fine-tune your approach.
Your Bid
In addition to your daily budget, you will need to set a
maximum bid that you are willing to pay as a Cost Per Click
(CPC). This require some trial and error to get right. Being
the highest bidder is not really what that you want. Instead,
you want to get the most quality clicks you can for your
budget. If you bid too high, your CPC will be too high and
will eat up your budget too fast; if you bid to low you will
not get enough clicks and hence enough sales.
You might try starting with a bid of $2.50, and see what
happens for a day or two. Then gradually raise or lower the
bid, depending on results. If clicks consume your daily budget
in a couple of hours, then lower your bid. If the advertisements
are not getting many clicks, then raise your bid. Continue
this process until you find the optimal bid.
Leads and Sales
What if visitors are clicking on your ad but are not buying
or contacting you? That likely means your ad is working but
your website or landing page is not persuading prospective
customers to take the next step. It can also mean that your
product or service needs some work to become more competitive.
Compare what you are offering to your competitors.
The simplest things can make a dramatic difference. When
your landing page is not getting you conversions, change
one thing and see what happens over the next day or two.
That way, you can determine which changes work. Do not be
afraid to try possible solutions, knowing that some changes
will fail and some will work well.
Recently, one of our landing pages was not getting enough
conversions so I made some minor changes to the wording on
the page and conversions started going up the next day. On
another page, we replaced our very simple order form with
a much more elaborate version. Our sales for that service
immediately plummeted. We simply changed the order form back
to the simpler version and sales picked up again immediately.
Harvesting From the Money Tree
The Google AdWords money tree is now planted, optimized,
and working to bring you leads and sales. What do you do
now? Harvest it, of course, by solid follow-through and providing
the best possible service for your clients.
Go back from time to time, and take a look at your results.
Make adjustments to your budget and bids as needed. Write
another advertisement that takes a slightly different tact.
Remove an ad that is not producing high quality clicks for
you. Make some improvements to your website to see if you
can increase your conversion rate.
Practice Kaizen – a Japanese word for continuous,
incremental improvement. Even if your Google AdWords money
tree is providing good yields, there are always ways to improve
its performance.
So pour yourself a cup of good coffee, and get started using
Google AdWords today!
Neil Anuskiewicz is the Marketing Manager for
EZ
Publishing. The firm specializes in helping businesses
harness the power of the Internet for marketing and to automate
business processes. In addition to custom web applications,
EZ Publishing offers web hosting,
web
design, and permission-based
email
marketing. Please email questions or comments to Neil at
articles@ezpublishing.com.
