Google AdWords innovative pay per click advertising engine
is one of the best and most useful tools currently
available. Although not the only program offering this
service, it is by far the best simply because it reaches so
many people. By advertising with AdWords, you have access
to the 100 million Google users that use their search
engine. By levering Adsense as well you are getting access
to millions more targeted visitors. Another key is that
Google rewards you with more clicks for less as you write
better and more optimised ads! More on this later...
Getting Started
It costs $5 to sign up and get started with AdWords. Once
you've signed up, you need to select your keywords. This
step is very important as it will be these keywords that
will launch your ads. Select keywords that target your
product or service. Make sure you do some research before
you start entering in your keywords to ensure that people
are using these search terms to look for your product. The
more popular the keyword, the more Google charges for each
click. To help keep track of the performance of your ad
campaigns it is useful to manage the selected keywords in
multiple AdGroups and this will also help you to use ad
text specific to each keyword.
Your next step is to decide where to target your ads. You
can choose to have your ads only appearing on Google's
search page and their network of partner sites. When people
perform a search that is related to your keywords, your ad
will appear either on top or on the right hand side bar.
You can also choose to have your ads appear on Google's
Adsense network. These are web site publishers who have
allowed Google to display ads within the content of their
web sites. You must also select which geographic locations
you would like your ad to appear. If you are selling a
service that is only useful in the UK then you don't want
to be wasting money by paying for clicks from US users!
Again, it can be useful to create AdGroups or campaigns for
each individual country if you are selling world wide.
Setting and Managing Your Budget
When you first get started I would recommend starting on a
low budget by keeping your daily limits low. Doing this
will allow you to track and analyse the keywords you are
using to ensure they are cost effective without losing too
much money. Once you have a positive ROI on a keyword then
you can start to increase your ad spend. If a keyword is
performing badly, change it or get rid of it and try some
others.
Creating your Ad Text
The key to success is to make your ad stand out. Describe
what you offer and how it can benefit them. Include your
keywords in the title whenever possible. Although it
creates more work for you, try and create an ad for each
keyword your using. Another great tip is to capitalise the
first letter of every word you use, in both the title and
the text. In your text, try and use action words that tell
them what to expect when they click and what benefits are
in store for them. Your aim is to improve the overall
quality score of your ads. This score determines where you
appear in the list of ads. A high quality score and you'll
be near the top, even if you're not paying the highest CPC
rate. A low score and you'll be near the bottom where it is
hard to get clicks.
Conversion Tracking
Once your ads are up and running it is important to track
where your conversions are coming from. You can review
where sales and leads are coming from and manage the
campaigns based on these results. A cost per conversions
value will be displayed within your reports that can help
you to decide where to bid more or less and which keywords
and ads you need to optimise further. It also allows you to
compare your cost per conversion rate with other
non-AdWords campaigns you may be running.
I hope this gives you a little bit of an idea about how to
get started using Google AdWords. It is a very powerful
tool that can really explode your sales. It is however,
hard to master and I advise you to continually test, tweak
and improve.
