Posts Tagged ‘adwords’
AdWords in tough times – Google’s tips
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Google’s own internal Optimisers have produced a helpful set of tactics to help people get the best results from AdWords in this difficult economic climate. In these conditions it’s important that you really make sure your campaigns are profitable and you will probably have to work that little bit harder to persuade people to buy your product or service.
Here are Google’s 6 Tactics for Tough Times with my interpretation/comments:
1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings
Price is more important than ever. Make sure your proposition and Ad copy focus on low prices and value for money. That is what people are looking for, now more than ever before.2. Use value-related keywords
Keywords are what people are looking for, so if people are looking for bargains then make sure your keywords reflect this. Research and test value-related keywords such as “cheap carpet”, “discount carpet”, “carpet offers”, etc.3. Ensure your Ad Groups are targeted and relevant
This is not particularly a recession tactic, it is always important but it’s perhaps even more important in difficult times because you have to have everything right. Even small mistakes might now mean the difference between profit and loss. So rather than having big vague Ad Groups that target a broad area, split them into smaller more tightly-focused ones. For example, rather than have a big Ad Group about Training Shoes, split it into smaller groups covering Running Shoes, Squash Shoes, Gym Shoes etc. so that your Ads can specifically address what people are looking for. People looking for running shoes are more likely to click on an Ad about running shoes than they are on one about trainers in general.4. Don’t waste money on irrelevant clicks.
Use negative keywords to filter out people who are looking for something different but which uses the same words. For example if you’re selling Butter you don’t want people who are looking for Peanut Butter clicking on your Ad (and believe me they will!) so add Peanut Butter and Peanut as negative keywords.5. Make it easy for people to buy
Make sure the destination URL takes them straight to the order page – don’t make them hunt for it!6. Focus your money on your high-performers
Spend your budget where it has the most effect. Always monitor the profitability of your campaigns and spend your money where it generates the most profit. Simple, but you’d be amazed how often it isn’t done!
So there is nothing earth-shatteringly new here, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend 5 minutes reviewing your AdWords activity against this list just to make sure you’re doing the best you can in this difficult climate. I pretty much guarantee that there will be something you can improve. All in all, a very helpful article from Google.
Tags: adwords, optimisation, recession
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5 Keys to success with AdWords
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
No this isn’t another how-to-setup-and-optimise-an-AdWords-campaign article, there are plenty of those already. What this article concentrates on is the non-technical aspects of AdWords that are often overlooked in all the excitement of choosing keywords and writing copy, but which are actually critical to the success of your campaigns. It doesn’t matter how good you are at setting bids and optimising your account, it will all be for nothing if you get these fundamentals wrong.
Tags: adwords, landing pages, optimisation
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Marketing in the recession – can we afford to advertise?
Monday, January 5th, 2009
Can you afford not to is more the question!
In any downturn, most people’s thoughts quite rightly turn firstly to cutting costs as a means of ensuring the security of their business. However, there is probably a limit to how far you can go with this unless you were previously wasting heaps of money on unnecessary expenditure. One of the first areas to come under scrutiny for cuts is marketing and particularly advertising. Should you continue to advertise in the current recession?
Somebody wise (I forget who) once said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half”. This uncertainty about the effectiveness of some advertising makes it a worthy candidate for consideration at least, when it comes to getting the red pen out. If it isn’t making you money then you should cut it. The trouble is how can you tell if it will make you money or just cost you money until you’ve done it? And then it’s too late…
Tags: advertising, adwords, profitability, recession
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About pay-per-click advertising – what is PPC?
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Pay-per-click advertising is a very cost-effective way to drive traffic to your website with the unique benefit of producing instant results. Unlike traditional search engine results (the so-called natural listings) which usually take months to achieve, or press adverts where you have to wait for publication, pay-per-click adverts start to work as soon as you set them up. You can be up and running and sending traffic to your website in about 15 minutes or so!
The basic principle of pay-per-click (PPC) is that you create a short advert for the product or service that you want to promote and you choose a list of keywords that you want to associate with that advert. When people go to the search engines and search for things containing your keywords, your advert is displayed alongside the search results, usually on the right hand side of the natural listings.
A key benefit of pay-per-click is that by definition your advert is hitting people at the point when they are actually looking for your product or service.
Your advert appears free of charge – you only pay when somebody clicks on it. The amount you pay depends upon several factors but is typically somewhere between 5p and 50p per click. Your advert doesn’t appear on it’s own (unless you are very lucky!) but amongst others who have also selected the same or similar keywords to trigger their adverts. The position of your advert amongst these other competing ads is determined by a number of factors, but the most prominent one is the amount you pay (or bid) each time somebody clicks on your ad. The more you pay, the higher up the list you will be. If you bid high enough you will be number one – it’s as simple as that! Usually you’re better off being in position 3 or 4 as this is usually much cheaper and therefore more profitable. The amount you have to pay is determined by how much everybody else is prepared to pay and how competitive the market is and the market finds it’s own level.
You can set a daily budget and can start and stop your adverts at will so you have total control over your expenditure. You can test different adverts and different keywords and see the results online.
To test the effectiveness of PPC advertising for your business, you could start with as little as £20. At 5p per click, that represents 400 visitors to your site – all of whom are interested in your offering. Where else can you run a campaign to bring in 400 qualified prospects for only £20? Of course that’s not really a sensible budget if you’re serious about your business but you get the point. A sensible starting point for many businesses would be a few hundred or so but your mileage may vary. We always work on establishing the profitability of any PPC click campaign first, so however much you spend it should always make you more than it costs once the initial parameters have been set.
Although the entry cost is very low and the return on investment can be huge, like everything else, in reality it takes a great deal of skill and expertise to run a successful pay-per-click campaign. This is where we come in as we can devise, setup and run the campaign for you and teach you how to do it yourself so that you can operate it yourself in future. Not only does this save you money in doing it yourself, but you will gain a huge amount of ongoing information about what your customers are looking for and what they respond to that will be of enormous value to you.
Typically we will spend half a day or so setting up your initial campaign and training you to then carry on yourself. Alternatively we can run the whole thing for you all the time as we do for several big clients. At the moment we are discounting our AdWords initial setup package to just £199 which is a great deal to get you started. Contact us or call me for a chat on (01372) 371041 and we can discuss how you can use pay-per-click advertising profitably in your business.
For more information about pay-per-click advertising and Google AdWords campaign management, please contact Tim Felmingham on 01372 371041 or contact us through this website.
Tags: advertising, adwords, pay per click, ppc
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New AdWords options for iPhone
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Google have announced a new option to show your AdWords ads on the iPhone and other mobile devices with web browsers. The landing pages can be normal web pages, you don’t have to create special mobile landing pages or mobile format ads. What’s new is that Google have created new iPhone results pages pages that are specially formatted for the iPhone and you can select in your campaign settings whether you show your ads on normal desktop and laptop PCs or on iPhones. This means you can create campaigns exclusively for iPhone users so if that’s your market, or they fit your demographic that’s got to be good news.
You may have seen ads running on the iPhone and G1 already. That’s because Google Search on these devices used to show desktop results pages modified for these phones. Recently, the Google mobile team launched formatted specifically for the iPhone. Now, advertisers will be able to display ads exclusively on these mobile devices, create campaigns for them, and get separate performance reporting. If you prefer not to show your desktop ads on these phones, you can opt out and show ads only on desktop and laptop computers.
More information from AdWords Help Center.
Tags: adwords, iphone
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Google’s new search-based Keyword Tool
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
Finding and testing new keywords is one of the most important parts of any AdWords campaign. There are a variety of tools and services (both free and paid-for) to help you in this task and Google have launched a new keyword tool which is currently in Beta testing in the UK and USA.
The difference with Google’s search-based Keyword Tool is that this one looks at your landing page and cross-references it with their vast amounts of search data to find out what keywords people are using to find your products and services. It looks at your landing page and any additional keywords that you enter and finds relevant user searches that have occurred on Google over the last year. It will then give an indication of search volume and the bid price for a top-three position.
Tags: adwords, keywords, tools
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