The Secret to Effective Google AdWord Campaigns
Google AdWords is one of several online marketing opportunities that allow you to post ads on websites that are interested in generating revenue through their content. You pay per click by the user ads that are viewed but not clicked are not deducted from your budget. Although there are several options besides Google, (AdBrite is one of these) none are as successful as Google at getting you return.
There are two main types of Google Adword campaigns (though there are many variations like images, Flash, video and even radio ads, we’ll stick to the basics here.)
Keyword Campaigns
These are geared to show up on a website based on the specific keywords associated with them.
Typically, an advertiser select a set of keywords related to the product or service they wish to advertise. The ads are then displayed based on those keywords. An Example of this would be the ads that show up on the right of a Google Search. These ads can show up in other search engine results as well, or websites that use the Google engine to do their searches.
Contextual Campaigns
These ads are targeted to the content of a website that is part of the Google content network. Google searches sites that are interested in hosting ads and matches your keywords and other campaign data with that of the websites and uses their extensive search and linguistic processing technology to ensure that your content ads show up matched with relevant content.
As an advertiser you can select channels and even target particular websites that host content you are interested in being connected with.
How to choose between keyword and contextual ads
Actually it’s a good idea to run both, but here’s a rough example. A keyword campaign is very closely targeted and will likely get less overall clicks than a context based ad. Context based ads may get a lot of views, but fewer clicks.
What does it cost?
You can create an AdWords campaign for any budget, but there are some tricks to making your AdWords campaign successful.
Once you set up a campaign you can use Google’s excellent keyword tools to hone in on keywords that fit your needs and to see what Google recommends the minimum bids be on these keywords. Set your daily budget at your minimum rate at first, then see how it ranks among other sites. Set your Maximum CPC as high as you are comfortable with and then see how often you actually hit that cost. If you’re hitting it often, it may be time to take a second look at your campaign.
This is really where the art of a skilled AdWords professional comes into play. The constant tweaking and adjustment of a campaign is what will really wring as much value as possible out of it. If you just create an ad by guesswork and then let it run for a while you may or may not get results, but you aren’t very likely to get the best results possible.
Position is everything
If your ad shows up 25th in the list of ads it’s probably not going to get much notice. Your ad gets positioned based on two things: The rate you’ve set as your maximum bid (cost per click) and the relevance of the content on your site to the keywords and the content on the target site. The trick is to position yourself in the top 3-4. You don’t have to be in the top 10.
What this means for you is; key words will get you less exposure, but a higher click-through rate, but a context ad will get your brand out in the web-verse a lot more, with fewer, but possible more valuable clicks.
so if you’re building your brand and want to get your name out there a lot associated with content that matters to you, choose contextual ads. If what you want is clicks and you don’t care about branding as much, go for keywords.
Working with your content and SEO "Experts"
It’s important to make sure that the content you’re sending ads to relates directly to the ad. This may take some tweaking to get the most value from the ads, and you may want to create customized “landing pages” so you can track effectiveness of the campaign and closely target the ad to the content.
this can take a little time but the rewards will be obvious.
Warning: Be very careful how you create these landing pages. There are a lot of people who will tell you to build hundreds of ‘doorway’ pages or “shadow domains” to send traffic to that will focus the traffic and lead them into your website. Ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies will not recommend this method. The same goes for ‘Free for All’ links farms or mass submission engines.
How do you gauge success?
Adwords dashboard allows you to quickly view the statistics related to your ads. It is very helpful to install Google Analytics and turn on their tracking features to see the difference in your traffic. If you have old traffic reports use them to see the difference in your traffic with and without the adwords campaign.
If your landing pages are sales related, you should be able to easily see if your ads are being successful or not based on their conversion rate. If what you are looking for is a traffic increase, keep careful record of your traffic before, during and after a campaign, and consider creating A and B ads to see which perform most effectively.
AdWords management
The most important part of an ad campaign is careful monitoring of the results and constant “tweaking” of the content on your site, the text of your ads, and the channels you market to. This takes daily attention. You’ll need to analyze your placement among other ads, the “bounce rate” of visits, and the change in the Average time on the site. You’ll also need to carefully monitor the budgeted allocation and distribute that as necessary to get the most value from your campaign.
We recommend creating multiple ads and comparing the results over time to find the best fit for your ads and get the best results.
Want to learn more?
Call 415.990.3991 or email us and let’s talk about specific ways that Google AdWords can improve your site traffic and conversions. We can help you create a new campaign, work with your site to get the most out of a campaign or fine tune an existing site to optimize return.