In business, it’s easy to have the attitude “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it“. This is far from the truth when it comes to managing your Paid Search account within Adwords.
Don't Let This Happen To You !
Whichever level of management you’re at, whether the Managing Director or the Marketing Executive, the accountability for your Adwords campaign lands at somebody’s feet. If that’s you, then follow these top tips to maximise the effectiveness of your Google Adwords account.
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Know your Adwords Interface
The next time you log in take a look at the Professional Qualifications page whereby you can register to take the Google Professional Individual Qualification. More importantly, Google offer a Learning Centre providing test lessons built around a variety of Adwords topics. This resource will give you an overview of the depth of customisation available for your Adwords Campaigns. It’ll also provide you with a snapshot of your own current understanding of Google Adwords… you may be surprised just how much Adwords has evolved since you first set up your account!
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Drill Down To The Individual Keywords
It’s all well and good seeing pleasing conversions and controlled ad spend when viewing your top line figures. There are, however, massive opportunities available to you when optimising individual keywords. Google have recently launched (Aug 2009) Bid Simulator within their latest interface which allows you to view the potential impact on clicks & impressions if you raise or lower you bid on individual keywords or phrases. This is the perfect tool for any business managing their adwords manually without assistance from a bid management tool.
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Keep Your Campaigns Tidy!
Just the same as making sure your office desk is in order, make sure you maintain necessary levels of categorisation for your ad groups and keywords. Running an optimised campaign with your keywords neatly categorised either through Call to Action terms such as “Buy Widgets” and all variants, “Cheap Widgets…” etc not only assists maintaining a high Quality Score it also helps you understand which phrases represent the best value for your business
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Customise Your Placements
With Adwords you can choose the specific sites where you wish your ads to be shown within Google’s Content Network. Rather than relying on simple Automated Ad Placements, delve in to see if WidgetForums.com are running Adsense to give you a great opportunity to hit your target market!
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Sync With Analytics
Taking advantage of Google’s Free Analytics package not only gives you a greater understanding of your site traffic levels, it lets you delve in to see the specific success/failure of each of your ad campaigns, groups and individual keywords. Certain groups may be triggering great levels of leads rather than purchases or vice versa, does this effect your willingness to spend more or less on those particular keywords? Analytics opens up a tremendous amount of information at your fingertips for deciding upon the necessary bids throughout your campaigns.
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Conversion Tracking Is a Must!
Without any form of conversion tracking for your site, whether for leads, registrations or purchases, you’re potentially flying blind and focusing all of your efforts on the wrong areas. Conversion tracking is easy to integrate, if you’re not sure how to, find somebody who can.
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Don’t Be Afraid To Tinker!
Your ads stand inbetween your website and a potential customer. Be smart and run a variety of ads to see which ones convert and which ones obtain the higher CTR. This will lead to the overall success of your ad campaign(s). Once you have data from 200+ click thrus revisit your ads and pause those that simply aren’t raising your customers interest. Yes, you’re not paying anything due to the fact nobody clicks, but the knock on effect is a lowering of your Ad Group Quality Score as well as missing out on potential customers who aren’t seeing the ads that really do work.
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Segment Your Market
Don’t just focus on those that are looking to buy. Evoke interest by running specific campaigns for specific offers your business is running. This can be a great way to shift excess stock for retailers. You’ll see greater Click Thru Rates on those ads that aren’t necessarily focused on the mainstream, but on the niche.
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Look For Trends
Use Google’s Reporting mechanism to look at daily, weekly and monthly trend patterns for your particular ads. Are you seeing certain ads are performing well during the day, but poorly at night? If this is the case weight those ads using Google’s Ad Scheduling (found in Ad Campaign Settings). You may find people have a different mentality to their shopping whether it’s from the office desk at lunchtime, or surfing the net in the evenings. Run the Hourly Reports and see what information you can extract!
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Make Good Use of Adwords’ Offerings
Following the latest launch of the Adwords interface there’s now even more assistance available to allow you to optimise your ads. Run ‘Campaign Optimiser’ to see if Google have found any empty holes in your account where you could capitalise on with additional keywords. Don’t forget, it’s in Google’s best interest to make sure your account is optimised and you’re spending more. A happy Adwords customer is a happy Google Inc.!
I hope those 10 quick tips will help you to get a better understanding of just how much information there is available to you in order to run an optimised Adwords Account. Unfortunately, it does take time out of your day ( a considerable amount if you’re running complex optimised ads ) which is why Adwords Specialists, such as myself, exist.
If you require any further assistance or advice, just pop through your question using the “Contact Me” above and I’ll see how I can assist you
