- Impact
- 1
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.
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 explains how
to do this in their online AdWords documentation.
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!
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.
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 explains how
to do this in their online AdWords documentation.
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!
