Google Adwords is one of the best advertising tool available online where it offers unlimited advantages like:
* Easier to set up
* Reach out real-time customers worldwide or in your local area. It also gives you an option to reach your audience via search, display, app and through videos
* Flexibility on what budget to spend, when to spend and how to spend
* Measurable – AdWords come up with various features and tools that enable you to track ROI, results, reach engagement, performance and much more. On the whole, it’s an advertising tool that gives you control no other platform can do.
On the other hand, it is very easy for the above advantages to convert into disadvantages if you don’t have the right understanding about how they work.
Most small businesses believe they don’t need experts to set up and run AdWords campaigns because the tool is straightforward and easy to use.
No doubt it is easy to set up an account but setting up a campaign requires true expertise, otherwise, you will end up not using the right campaign-building features and it will ultimately damage the results and your budget.
We find that lots of local businesses don’t have any understanding about geo-targeting and they end up reaching out to audiences out of their targeted regions. This is one of the black holes where lots of small businesses waste most of their budget.
Businesses can also overlook many options that AdWords offers, e.g. different keyword types, time targeting, geo-targeting, bidding options and many more.
Same applies to track; lots of businesses only look at the click matrices without paying attention to what is actually happening on sites when people click on adverts. What is working and what is not. So businesses spend money without a clear understanding of how effective their campaign really is.
Here are our expert tips that we believe can help you improve the performance of your campaigns and get better results.
1.) Have a clear goal in mind
Clarity on campaigns goals will help you to come up with the right call to action for your campaigns. So make sure you know exactly what action you are trying to get your audience to perform e.g.
* Capturing form leads
* Making calls
* Booking a demo
* Purchasing online
* Etc.
It is critical for the success of your campaigns that you have clarity on your goals
2. Have clarity on your targeted audience
Just like your goals, it is also important to know who your audience are, their age, geography etc. Also, what issues, needs and wants this audience has. Having clarity with your audience should enable you to come up with engaging ad copies and target the right geographical areas.
3. Use quality landing pages
Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, required actions and audience’s needs, this should all be reflected on the landing page of your campaign. Make sure that you consider:
* Relevance – Landing pages include all the messaging/relevant content that your AdWords campaigns are promoting. It needs to touch on your audience’s needs, geography and any required call to actions that are aligned with your goals.
* Engagement – The idea of an AdWords campaign is not just to bring lots of traffic to the landing pages but to convert that traffic into customers.
* Keyword mentions – make sure your targeted keywords and USPs are mentioned on your landing pages.
4. Keyword targeting
Selecting the right keywords is the most important part of your AdWords campaign, yet it is the part that most businesses rush and make mistakes. We suggest:
* Test different keyword match types. however, we recommend you avoid broad matches if you have a small budget. You should test other types and come up with your own conclusion about what works best for your business out of the following options:
o Broad match
o Phrase match
o Exact match
o Broad match modifier
5. Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are words or phrases that enable you to instruct Google not to show your ad when people search for these terms. Here are some tips that we recommend to help you deal with them:
* Apply negative keywords to:
o Account level – Here use the complete ‘NO NO’ words that you are clear on. For example, if you are not offering anything for free, make sure you use the word FREE
as a negative word at account level. Apply the same rule for all account level negative keywords
o Campaign level – Make sure your campaigns don’t conflict with each other. Make sure the phrases relevant to one campaign are used as negative keywords for the other. For example, if you are a dentist with multi campaigns for orthodontics, teeth whitening, root canal etc., make sure that orthodontics adverts show up only under keywords related to orthodontics and not root canal.
o Ad Group level – Same practice as campaign level also applies to Ad groups level negative keywords.
* It is an on-going activity – make sure you keep an eye on the performance of your keywords in AdWords and Google Analytics to check if your ad is showing up under irrelevant phrases and then add these phrases as a negative.
To be continued…
