Look - AdWords is not going to work for everyone.  I’m not going to recommend you come on a course if……

1. You’re in a competitive market.
2. You don’t have the time to manage it.
3. You aren’t willing to also work on your website.

Why?

1 – You’re in a competitive market.

If you’re in a competitive market – it’s going to be tough.  Your competitors use agencies – and good ones at that.  I can’t teach you in 1 day what my competitors have learned in several years.  They will have optimised their websites, their conversions and they are making a profit already.  They will have spent time and money getting to where they are – and lots of it.

2 – You don’t have the time to manage it.

AdWords takes time, and dedication.  And Google changes its interface, and the goalposts.  A lot.  If you don’t have the time to dedicate it – don’t bother.  Use a management company instead.

3 – You aren’t willing to also work on your website.

On the basic AdWords course, we look at landing pages, and conversion points.  We look at your competitor’s landing pages and conversion points too and find where you fall down and where they excel.  Be prepared to walk away with a list of action points, and expect to have to pay money to fix them.

Still interested? I run AdWords courses monthly or on a private basis.

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If your budget is limited – consider running a test campaign in Google AdWords.

I suggest starting off with just a few of your high margin products if your website is an ecommerce site  – otherwise if your website is selling services, select just a couple of these to advertise.

The next step is to focus carefully within AdWords on these products.  For example, let’s take a look at our wonderful client Nubie who sell Brio Sing Prams.  Create an Ad Group called Brio Sing, and carefully add just a couple of relevant keywords to the group as below:

• brio sing prams
• [brio sing prams]
• “brio sing prams”
• brio sing travel systems
• [brio sing travel systems]
• “brio sing travel systems”

It’s important to add in the three different match types as denoted above with the square brackets, speech marks, and just the plain keyword. The reasons behind this belong in another post – but just ensure you add the same keyword with the 3 different ways to AdWords.

Try adding in a few of these products to start with, before gradually expanding, carefully adding in new products and checking how well they perform.

Before you go live with the campaign, make sure you have conversion tracking set up.  More on this in this post.  This way you will be able to prove that the sales came from AdWords, as well be able to see which keywords resulted in the actual conversions.

Good luck!  Let us know how you get on.

If you are only able to afford between £50 and £300 per month on Google AdWords, I advise people attend an AdWords course rather than try to find an AdWords Management company.  This is because fees for good AdWords management companies are likely to exceed your budget, which won’t be delivering you particularly good value for money.

If you attend a course – you won’t waste your money on common mistakes (I see them nearly EVERY time!) and it will ensure you don’t give your monthly budget to Google with no return for your business!  You are also far more likely to dedicate more of your own time to it than a management company would if you are a low budget business.

Ideally – aim to make AdWords self funding as soon as possible.  This means you get it making money for you, then at this stage you may wish to consider handing control over to a Management company to free you to spend time on other critical business areas…..

I’m often asked if it is possible to bid on competitor names or trademarks.

It certainly is possible (here in the UK).  I run many AdWords campaigns for clients where their cheapest conversions come from those who were actually seeking a competitor.

However, do be aware that they will soon recognise the tactic and start doing it back to you.    This will very quickly mean you need to start running your own brand name campaign to prevent your competitor stealing your traffic.

Having said that, when you create your ad copy you are not permitted to use trademarked terms such as the word IPhone, Sony or anything where the trademark owner has asked Google to prevent people using their brand in advert copy.

I am also often asked if it is actually ethical to bid on a competitor’s brand.  Only you can make this decision.  In addition – watch out for potential problems with bidding on competitor brand terms, which can arise due to the fact you are likely to receive a low quality score from Google due to irrelevancy.  A way around this is to consider placing their brand terms in your advert somewhere (unless of course it’s trademarked in which case you won’t be able to).

If you are priced more competitively than your competitor, you should be able to acquire cheaper conversions by bidding on their names, so consider testing this theory out today.

You MUST be bidding on your brand name in AdWords.  Have you checked recently if your competitors are bidding on your name, your brand name, or any of your branded products?  Go and search Google now to see what you discover. 

Even if you are ONLY running brand name campaigns in AdWords and nothing else, this is absolutely essential.

If you are not running brand name campaigns, your competitors can easily poach your traffic.  What do you mean, you’re already organically number 1 in Google anyway?  The top 3 sponsored links often appear above those top organic links.  And what’s worse, did you know that in my own surveys, I’ve discovered 75% of people think those top 3 sponsored links are actually organic links?  This means they WILL click your competitor’s ads if they appear above you.  They will then purchase from them instead, and you’ve lost a sale.

So – do yourself a favour and set up a brand name campaign in AdWords today.

When carrying out a search, a potential visitor (let’s call them a Searcher) may use a variety of keywords that indicate how far along the buying process they have moved.

Here’s an example:

• Digital Camera – Unlikely to buy at this stage as the Searcher is still undecided about the exact make of camera
• Nikon Digital Camera – Searcher has now decided upon the brand of camera.  Still undecided about the model
• Nikon 6MP Digital Camera – Seacher has now decided on the brand and 1 key feature of the camera.  May be willing to buy at this stage.
• Nikon D40 camera – Searcher has now decided on brand and model and is now actively comparing prices.  Now is a good time to advertise prices in your ads.
• Buy Nikon D40 Camera – Searcher is definitely seeking to buy and is seeking the lowest price.  Definitely place prices in your ads.

So when advertising on Google, you face a choice.  The higher up the list your keywords appear in the Searcher’s thought process, the less likely they are to convert if they land upon your site.  HOWEVER, if you only advertise on the latter keywords, your ads will have less visibility in their eyes, as they have been exposed to it once only or twice.  Therefore you need to test what will happen if you advertise at all these stages, or just one or two of the later stages.

What keywords do your buyers use?  Map out their thought processes and plan your keyword tests today!

If you’re running an AdWords campaign, you MUST be tracking conversions.  And that doesn’t mean you only need to pay attention to this if you sell products online.  Here are some ideas of web actions you could and SHOULD be tracking:

• Newsletter signups
• Contact form submissions
• Quotation requests
• “Ask a question” form submissions
• And of course, sales!

If you track these conversions in AdWords, you will be able to see specifically which keywords resulted in a conversion for the above.  This then allows you to focus your spending on these keywords and their Ad Groups.

But how do I add a conversion I hear you cry?

Go to :  Opportunities - Conversions (bottom left hand corner) – New Conversion

Give your action a sensible name such as “Lead” and set the Tracking Purpose to match.  In this case set it to Lead.

Now choose Save and Continue.

None of the options on the next page normally need to be changed except it your website is secure (https), in which case you need to set it to Page Security level – Https in the top box.

Choose Save and get Code.

This HTML code needs to be inserted on the page people see when they have completed the action, normally a thank you page.  Don’t have one?  Ask your web designer to create one.

Now over to you – what new actions should you create and track so you’re tracking the effectiveness of YOUR AdWords campaign?

Having recently posted on my Facebook fan page that the Return On Investment to aim for with web marketing is 5 times your marketing spend, I received requests to explain further how this might be achieved.  So I’ve written a quick guide to point you in the right direction:

• Invest in your website design.  Don’t expect an AdWords campaign to deliver ROI unless you have a professionally designed website.   There is no excuse for a poorly designed website – I had my AdWords training website www.HelpWithPPC.com designed for just £170 by an excellent company I sourced via www.freelancer.com
• Create landing pages for each product or service you are trying to sell via AdWords.  These pages should be highly focused on just one product or service.  Ideally ensure the vistor’s questions are answered, and make sure you include full contact details including an online form to collect visitor details and allow them to ask you to call
• Ask for a second opinion on your website, and all of your landing pages.  What questions would visitors have?  Do they know where to go next?  Do visitors know what how to make a purchase or leave their details?  The worst website owners are those who have designed the website themselves – ideally you should be asking for a third opinion too!
• Track your online form submissions via AdWords as a conversion and also Google Analytics as a goal
• Set your AdWords campaign up carefully with one ad group per service.  Make sure your keywords appear in the advert heading and ideally elsewhere within the advert as well.  Use some broad match keywords to start with.  Make sure you send the visitor to the correct page on your website, NOT the homepage!
• Check quality scores for your keywords after a short while – how are they performing?  Good quality scores can hugely decrease Costs Per Click
• Track visitors via Google Analytics and possibly other tracking packages such as Get Clicky, which allows you to watch visitors in real time on your website
• Monitor conversions carefully.  Identify new keywords by checking which keywords resulted in conversions.  Increase spending on these keywords if appropriate
• Keep an eye on Cost Per Conversion – work out your profit levels.  Are you making 5 x your marketing spend in new turnover?  If not, continue to work on getting your conversion costs down
• Still struggling?  Try using the Google website optimiser to split test your landing pages.  Test different marketing messages to see if Cost Per Conversion improves
• ROI still too low?  Work on increasing customer value to make more from each customer.  Consider using email marketing to newly acquired customers to increase lifetime customer value.  Or use cross-sell and up-sell existing customers to new products and services, especially where the customer acquisition cost is high.   I have have worked with clients in the flower market who sell 1 bouquet of flowers for £30, the cost to acquire that customer can be as high as £12.  This means they MUST focus on increasing the lifetime value of that customer by using email marketing.
• Bear in mind that for some markets, just one lead per week might deliver ROI.  For example, working with a solicitor where a new client is worth £4000 – if 1 in 4 leads results in a new client, each lead is technically worth £1000.  This means a monthly spend of £4000/5 = £800 will deliver ROI even if just delivering 1 lead per week.

Questions?  Do ask!

When training others in the art of setting up their AdWords campaigns, I have noticed that many will have made identical mistakes.  How many of these errors can be found in YOUR Google AdWords campaigns?

1.    Using just one advert to match to lots of unrelated keywords
Here’s an example advert that is suffering from this mistake:

Virtual Office
temporary staffing, virtual office
registered office, mail forwarding
www.freelanceofficestaff.co.uk

In this example, the advertiser is attempting to use one advert to advertise many of their products and services (temporary staffing, virtual offices, registered offices and mail forwarding).  To overcome this mistake, set up multiple ad groups, one for each product or service.  Here is a correct advert:

Temporary Staffing
Need Temporary Staff Quickly?
Call Today For A Fast Response!
www.FreelanceOfficeStaff.co.uk

2.    Sending people to the homepage of the website
A common mistake is to send all visitors direct to the homepage of your website.  You have just a few seconds to get and keep someone’s attention on the web!  Don’t risk them leaving immediately as they cannot find what they are looking for – send them directly to the page about that particular product or service.

In some cases, this may mean adding in new landing pages for each service, rather than having one page about all your products and services together.

3.    Incorrect capitalisation
Capitalise the first letter of each word in your advert (see the example in point 4 below) – this works by making your advert stand out more and increases the likelihood it will get clicked. In turn this will bring your costs down as it affects a vital factor called Quality Score.

4.    Using your company name as the heading for the adverts
This mistake is often replicated by many web marketing agencies as well as individual advertisers.  Here’s an example:

Bristol Party Hire
Bouncy Castles in Bristol
Great Prices From £45
www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk

Your advert is NOT about you – it’s about closely matching what the potential visitor is searching for.  So don’t be vain!

The advert heading should match the keywords the visitor has used as closely as possible e.g.

Bristol Bouncy Castles
Bouncy Castles in Bristol
Great Prices From £45
www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk

5.    Not tracking your results
Make sure you track the results from your AdWords campaigns so you can test which keywords work best to generate leads or sales.  You can do this by using Google’s conversion tracking (which can be found in the Opportunities tab).  Conversions are exceedingly simple to set up.  So set up conversion tracking today!

6.    Leaving the content network on
The content network is a large number of unrelated websites, all running advertising on their website.  Visitors to their websites have the opportunity to click on your ad, costing you money.  Turn the content network off to avoid these unnecessary clicks.

I am NOT saying the content network is always bad – in fact I have clients who make a lot of sales via the content network.  However it needs very careful monitoring!

7.    Leaving ads running 24 hours per day
For many products and services, it makes sense to only run adverts at certain times of day.  For example, Business to Business advertisers will benefit from running adverts only during work hours, and pause the adverts outside of these hours as well as weekends.

8.    Not using negative keywords
Negative keywords will prevent irrelevant searches.  For example, you will probably want to cut out people that are seeking “free” things.  So ideally build a large negative keyword list to save yourself money.

9.    Failing to use broad, phrase and exact match keywords
These are the three different keyword types which all need to be included in your ad groups to cut down on costs.  So make sure you include them all. On some occasions, you may wish to add in only exact match keywords to prevent Google matching you against obscure queries.  More on these match types another time!

10.    Underutilising the display URL
The display URL can be manipulated to increase Click Through Rate.  For example if advertising bouncy castles – instead of www.bristolpartyhire.co.uk use www.BristolPartyHire.co.uk/BouncyCastles.  Another example is with a subdomain such as AdWordsTrainer.ClaireJarrett.com