Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a great way for small businesses to start generating leads instantly. One of the major players in PPC advertising is Google AdWords. For most businesses, Google AdWords is a great method of generating new leads, but if you’re not careful, it can become a money pit with low ROI. Google AdWords, like all PPC advertising, is not a “install and go” type of program. It requires weekly testing, monitoring, and general ongoing maintenance to be successful. Here are some of the best practices for creating a successful Google AdWords campaign.
Organization is key. Bundling all of your keywords, ads, and landing pages into a single ad group will ensure an underperforming campaign. Think of your campaigns and ad groups as buckets of “like-minded” information. You want to keep similar keywords alongside ads that contain the same keywords. That way, when people search for your keywords, they’ll see ads specific to their search term. Take the time to set up an organized structure for your account. Not only will you see better results, but you’ll also find it easier to track your results.
Find the right keywords. Try Google’s free keyword tool when building your keyword lists. This easy-to-use tool is perfect for researching new phrases, measuring competition, and determining keyword traffic. Try to find keyword phrases that have high traffic and low competition to avoid a high-priced bidding war with your competitors. Instead, maximize your budget by searching for less competitive phrases.
Don’t be afraid to branch out. If you already rank high in SEO for a keyword phrase on your website, don’t spend money on PPC for the same phrase. People searching for that phrase will most likely click on your organic listing instead of your paid listing anyway. Instead, try some new niche phrases to target. A niche phrase is a more specific keyword with fewer overall searches but so specific that only your ideal customer will search for it. PPC advertising can be a great way to test new keyword phrases and see if you are attracting the right customer. Another way to use Google AdWords is to get traffic for keywords that currently have a low organic ranking. For example, your business appears on page 10 when people search for “dog training,” but with AdWords you can target this phrase and bid to get it placed on page 1. SEO is time consuming, but PPC gives you a way effective way to gain exposure for keywords that can take years to rank organically.
Clear your way to success. Don’t be afraid to remove an ad group, keyword, or ad that isn’t working. It is very difficult to successfully monitor results if you have hundreds of keywords that are paused or not performing. Before doing a bulk clean, we recommend making a copy of your account. That way, you have your historical information and can quickly redeploy old campaigns if needed. Download the free AdWords Editor to help you copy your account, make bulk changes, and more.
Change things. PPC advertising is a fluid system where competition, traffic, and searches change daily. To be successful, you must be receptive and willing to change. There are indicators on your account to help you decide what you need to change. For example, if you’re getting high traffic but low click-through rates, you may need better content in your ads to drive more clicks. A couple of ways to improve clicks is to add specific keywords to your ad text, offer a new incentive, or change the wording. Another area to consider is a scenario where you get a lot of impressions but few clicks. You may have keywords that are too broad and appear in unrelated searches. Try adding more negative keywords to personalize your search results, or refine your keywords to be phrase only or exact match. To see what people showing your ads are searching for, click the “Keywords” tab in your account and choose “See all” under “View search terms.” This will open a list of keywords that people entered to find your ad. Add unrelated search keywords to your negative keyword list so you don’t appear in these search results again. Monitoring keyword performance is the hardest part of being successful. These are just a few tips, but if you need help, please contact Bop Design for further assistance.
Close the deal. Don’t waste your money and time searching for the perfect keywords and ad copy just to point a user to your home page. You paid good money for that track. Now you need to give them a call to action or incentive to “close the deal” and entice them to send you their information. You can do this by offering a white paper, demo, recorded webinar, etc. To further optimize your landing page, we recommend including keywords from your campaign, including your ad copy, and including testimonials to prove you’re trustworthy.
