Taking the Plunge into Google AdWords

 

If you’re looking for a quick way to jumpstart your visibility online, you may want to think about starting a Google AdWords campaign. Google AdWords can be an effective way to augment your other marketing tactics. It’s also a great way to give specific products or services an extra boost.

What is AdWords?

AdWords is an automated auction. Within your campaign, you identify keywords that trigger your ads within the search results. This type of campaign is called a Search campaign. Paid ads are found under the heading “Ads related to your keyword” and to the right side of the search results, and sometimes at the bottom of the page. Keep in mind that Google likes to vary the way that ads are shown. If a person finds your ad compelling, they may choose to click on your ad and be directed to your website or landing page. With this type of campaign, you pay every time a person clicks on your ad.

Display campaigns work a little differently. These types of campaigns run your ads on websites that are part of the Google Content Network. It’s important to break up your campaigns between Display and Search when you’re first creating your campaign. They require unique approaches and will yield very different results. For example, display ads running on the content network will typically have lower click-thru rates (CTR) and conversion rates than search.

Since setting up search and display campaigns varies so greatly, we will focus on Search exclusively for now.

Once you decide to give AdWords a try, one of the first things you’ll need to figure out is your budget. Follow the tips below to help.

Tips for Determining Your Budget and Bids

Determine your business goal.
What do you want to accomplish with your AdWords campaign? Keep in mind that you may have several business goals. Try to narrow it down to one or two and be specific as possible.

Example: Sell 300 Dark Chocolate Bars in January via paid search campaign.

Why this is important:
If you haven’t identified your business goals, it’s impossible to measure success (not to mention ROI). It’ll also make refining your campaign more difficult.

Identify initial keywords.
Once you’ve determined your business goals, it’s time to think about keywords. Keywords are the words people use to find your ads in the search results. Review your website for keyword ideas. It’s important to use keywords that are relevant to your website.

Example: If you sell fair trade milk chocolate & dark chocolate bars on your website, some of your keywords might include milk chocolate bars, dark chocolate bars, fair trade chocolates, etc.

Why is this important:
Choosing relevant keywords that closely mirror your website is very important for a couple of reasons. One of Google’s missions is to deliver relevant results to users. If your keywords match the content on your website and also appear in your ads, Google will give you a higher “Quality Score.” Higher Quality Scores tend to pay less for top positions than campaigns running keywords with lower quality scores.

Relevant keywords, ads and landing pages usually see better conversion rates, too. For example, let’s pretend that a person searches using the keyword phrase “Chocolate Toffee Bar” and they see your ad and click on it. Once they get to your landing page, they only see fair trade dark chocolate displayed. They will most likely bounce away from your site when they don’t see any chocolate toffee bars, and Google will probably make you pay more for that search term too because of a low quality score.

Set your budget.
AdWords lets you create a daily budget. A daily budget allows you to closely manage how you’re using your marketing budget. To set your budget, determine your monthly marketing budget for AdWords and divide by 30 days. Keep in mind that you can use ad scheduling to pause your campaign anytime or increase your budget for great visibility during peak days or hours.

If you have no idea what to set as your budget, use the AdWords Traffic Estimator Tool to find an appropriate bid for your keywords. Remember, you can enter the maximum CPC that you’re willing to pay for a keyword. This puts a cap on what you’ll pay.

Why this is important:
Understanding and setting your daily budget allows you to maximize your money to get the best return on investment.

Determine your bidding strategy.
When you’re setting up your campaign, one of the first things you’ll need to do is set a budget. Within the Settings tab, you’ll see budget and a couple of different bidding options - "Manual" or "AdWords will set my bids to help maximize clicks within my target budget." If you’re new to AdWords, I’d recommend letting AdWords set your bids for you. Use your business goals to determine your maximum CPC.

Example: If you don’t want to pay more than $2 per conversion, set your maximum CPC at $2.00.

Why is this important:
Identifying your bidding strategy and maximum CPC will help you stay within your budget and meet your business objectives.

As you see, there’s a lot to consider when you’re setting up an AdWords campaign. Stay tuned for more in our Google AdWords series. If you’d like help kicking off or managing your campaign, please contact us at info@arcstone.com.