Complete Guide to
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Complete Guide to Google AdWords Google AdWords is straightforward, true. That said, it’s not easy by any means. This post is a walkthrough guide to getting new customers and converting those clicks to sales. This could be a lot of fun, but only if you promise to be patient. The best part about Google AdWords is that it’s based on intent and performance. How, you ask? When users get to Google, they are already on a lookout for a specific detail. This clearly means they have intent. They are trying to signal you their intent by trying to type out keywords around your services. And unlike other paid marketing models, you only pay for results. You can choose to pay for eyeballs, if that’s your game, and pay accordingly. Or you can go with the regular pay per click option and if there is no click, lead or sale, it simply means that you’re not going to have to pay. Before we head any further, I’d ask you to take some time and think upon the following points: Is AdWords the right choice? Let’s be honest, if you’re thinking Google AdWords is the ultimate advertising platform guaranteed to get you results, you’re simply mistaken. Mentioned ahead are some of the common instances where AdWords ceases to function properly. - When marketing an unknown product (told you it works on intent) - Specifically for B2B markets, when advertising to a compact niche (discussed in detail below) - When the industry you’re advertising in is too competitive (it turns out to be less cost-effective) www.brandsmartini.com Page 2
Your advertising goals Different businesses have different goals, and therefore they need different strategies and different budgets. Never plan a campaign without a set of predefined goals. An unplanned, hurriedly set-up campaign would simply cause you to lose both your money and interest in AdWords. Trust me, it happens more than you think. Perhaps a look at your website could do you a lot good A well-managed AdWords account is one thing; a website complementing your set goals and in sync with your ad campaign is another. Ensure that there exist a value proposition and a clearly highlighted call to action button on your website, both of which coerce the visitor to take the desired action. Lacking these would definitely not let you touch your business goals, rendering your AdWords campaign unprofitable. How true are you to your words? Google Paid Marketing requires commitment. Period. Given that it’s a fairly quick medium that lets you begin immediately with little investment; advertisers often deem it dysfunctional after a week of use claiming how it sucks up resources without delivering appreciable results. This brings us to this conclusion; be whatever your budget may, be patient. Use it for at least a period of 2-3 months before arriving at conclusions. Another important thing to consider here is that you do not have to have a large budget. Set up a fixed budget that; even as little as $25 a day is enough to get you started. I’ve seen people investing too much, too fast on AdWords, ending up with a bitter mood and fewer bucks in their pocket. If all of us are on the same page, I’d like to continue further.
Let’s Now Create an AdWords Account In order to delve in further, you need to setup an AdWords account. Here’s how you do it. https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6366720?visit_id=1-636337235661787870-27482 25471&hl=en&rd=1 www.brandsmartini.com Page 3
Once you’ve setup your account, you’d be getting a number of emails from Google suggesting you to take its help. Now, that’s a trap you mustn’t fall into. Why can’t we trust Google here? Simply because your foremost objective is to spend as little as possible and make the best out of whatever you’re investing, whereas Google wants you to spend as much as possible and maximize its profit. You’ve been warned advertiser! You can do much better than that, given that you continue reading this guide, all by yourself and minimize waste spending.
Keywords Research A successful advertising campaign entirely depends on carefully chosen keywords. Not getting it right implies a failed campaign.
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So how do we establish a keyword list? We begin with our own website. It’s the best place to start with the process. Browse through your website and devise a list of words closely related to your core services and ideologies. The next step would be to dig in deeper and bring about a set of keywords from your sub-categories and secondary pages, if you have them. Once through the step, use Google’s Keyword Tool to get a stock of related keywords that best describe your business ideology and services. This is important because people are not always aware of the exact terms and often end up using related terms and sometimes, even distant phrases while looking up your services and products. Sorting out the keywords The initial broad list isn’t what we’re entirely going to use. Throwing in all the distantly related keywords is a fairly common mistake novices commit. While it’s okay to believe that more keywords would grab you more visitors, there are certain drawbacks involved. Cost: Considering you’re a first timer with a limited budget (remember I told you to begin small); the higher the number of keywords, the higher would be the cost involved. The trick is to slowly expand as you grow. Quality score: It is a metric by Google that determines how valuable your offer is to someone’s search query. It’s important, and difficult to understand for advertisers new to Google’s paid advertising platform. Just keep in mind that higher your quality score, the less you’ll have to pay for your keywords. Explaining it would be a bit nerdy, but I’m anyway going to do it for those of you who haven’t abandoned this post yet. Each and every keyword in your arsenal will receive a quality score of its own. The first factor which Google looks for is relevancy.
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Suppose a searcher searches for ‘running shoes’, which phrase according to you would be more relevant; ‘running shoes in Chicago’ or ‘shoes and sandals in Chicago’? Yes, both the phrases are related but I’m sure you can figure out which one fits better. The second factor is the click-through rate. Each of the ads on Google gets impressions and clicks (well, it is supposed to, if you’re doing it fine). The click-through rate is the calculation of clicks form views. The higher the click-through rate, the better is your keyword relevancy. What Google does is that it scrutinizes your older click-through rate, predict how your future phrases would function, and decide how well your ads match searchers’ queries. Keyword Match Types: Nope, we aren’t done with keywords yet. For almost every keyword around, there’s a match type. And that must be chosen wisely. Primarily, there are three match types: - Broad match - Phrase match - Exact match Broad Match: It’s the widest spell you can cast and it ends up attracting the maximum number of audience. In this case, your ad appears whenever a search query contains any of the word mentioned in your keyword arsenal, in any particular order, and their synonyms as well. Phrase Match: Your ad appears whenever a search query arises with a phrase matching your chosen keyword phrase. Exact Match: This is a pretty restrictive match type and lets the ad appear only when there’s an exact match between your chosen keyword and the search query. Choosing the match type depends on your budget and your reach. Since you’re just actualizing your AdWords journey, a wise choice would be to begin with exact and phrase match types. It would allow you more control and flexibility over where and when your ads appear. This also gives you a chance to reduce your spending on non-performing keywords. The balance is critical because you are not paying for your keywords; you’re simply paying for its search terms, i.e. the words and phrases being used by people, the response of which is your displayed ad. www.brandsmartini.com Page 6
There’s an option that would let you look for all the search terms you’re paying for; under the ‘Keywords Tab’ look for ‘Search Terms Report’.
A thing that might surprise you there is the presence of unnecessary, irrelevant terms. This is where a lot of money gets wasted. Of course, you can exclude them. All you need to do is to mark them as negative keywords. With negative keywords, you are simply telling Google not to display your ad in response to those particular keywords, ever again. So far, so good?
Let’s now focus on the account structure As with every other thing, sorting out eases up the process and make it manageable. The same goes for your AdWords account. For your better understanding, an ad campaign houses everything else that will be mentioned below, i.e. ad groups and keywords and ads. Beneath each campaign can be numerous ad groups and even more of keywords and ads. www.brandsmartini.com Page 7
Number of campaigns required: Depending on your business needs, you could require a single or multiple campaigns. For the following reasons, you would have to make peace with several campaigns: - More than one product type - Targeted Location - Different budgets - Network (search network/display network) You should definitely begin with a single campaign for the time being. And as you get better, you’d be comfortable handling multiple campaigns. Number of ad groups: Within a single campaign, you need to have at least one ad group, which we know is an assortment of keywords and ads. As an accepted rule, there should be a minimum of 3 ad groups in a single campaign. There are, however, a few different ways to structure your AdWords account and there’s perhaps no perfect setup that guarantees instant success. I feel the memory of match types is still fresh in your mind, right? That is exactly the first way to setup your account. All you’d be doing is to create 3 campaigns for each of the match types. This kind of setup lets you know what’s working and you can subsequently adjust your budget based on results and continue running the most effective campaign. Alternatively, you can choose to set up campaigns based on your services or products. This would be fairly easy to organize and lets you devote your time and money on the desired campaigns. There’s however little to no feedback as to which keywords are working and which are not. So, you’d have a difficult time identifying individual performance.
Creating the campaign Now that we’ve taken care of almost everything, we’re ready for our very first campaign. Head straight Google AdWords and click on ‘Create your first campaign’. Once done with the campaign name, you’d be asked for the following types: www.brandsmartini.com Page 8
- Search Network Only - Display Network Only - Search and Display Networks
Generally, PPC or paid advertising refers to Search Network. Everything discussed above falls under Search Network. It’s important for you to understand that both the networks operate quite differently. All the text-based results appearing on Google Search indicate Search Network. Display network, contrastingly, is a network of millions of website where your ads can be displayed, letting you reach 90% of the internet visitors. For your better understanding, there would be no further mention of Display Network in this post. The next step is about targeting the physical location of your target customers. Self-explanatory, right? Ah, this is particularly important for local businesses targeting a specific audience concentrated in a location.
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We are now at the most significant of all fields, bidding and setting up the budget. It’s going to determine how much you’d be spending on your advertising campaigns. While bidding, feel free to ignore Google’s recommendation; you can alter everything later. Bidding: Google roughly gives you two options; either go about it manually, or let it remain how AdWords wants it. Manual bidding gives you more control over how your budget would be spent. Advance bidding, on the other hand, is an advanced strategy, considerably reducing the time taken to setup and manage campaigns. The value will fluctuate on its own depending on various factors. However, there’s no cap on the maximum limit and that is an important thing to consider. It can eat up a lot off your daily budget. Budget: Whatever you’re willing to spend on a daily basis is your advertising budget. Do you remember I told you not to abandon AdWords until you’ve used it for at least 3 months?
So decide on your budget accordingly. The only thing that’s missing now is the ad itself. Yes, we’re that close to our first running ad.
Writing the Ad So, any tips on devising a compelling ad? Of course, mate. It takes a couple of things to come up with the perfect ad. Know your selling proposition: This explains why a prospective customer would choose to invest in your service rather than your competitors’. It needs to be crisp and present somewhere in the ad itself. That’s the edge you’ll need to cut above the rest. Spend your time thinking how you could differentiate yourself from your competitors. There must be something you can bring to your customers that others simply cannot. Call-to-Action: Including a call-to-action button is immensely important. It clearly tells the customers what they need to do next, once they have entered your site. Do otherwise and your click through rate will deteriorate beyond repair. www.brandsmartini.com Page 10
Google’s ad policies: Your advertisement needs to meet Google’s ad requirements, else it will be disapproved. I’m sure you wouldn’t fancy that. Keep a check on Google’s general advertising policies. Keywords: Yes, we don’t forget to include the keywords. We’ve previously talked about keywords in details. Keep in mind that ads with keywords accommodated in their headings tend to perform better and receive more clicks than those which don’t. Google makes it a point to highlight the keyword matching the search query and this makes the ad all the more noticeable. Here’s what a typical ad includes: - Headline: Choose a catchy headline that doesn’t rely on keywords and is intriguing enough - Display URL: Eliminate the ‘http://’ and conclude with the core keyword - Ad Copy: With just 2 lines at your disposal, devise a crisp text that gets the message across. - Call-to-Action: What’s more to be said?
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Once this is sorted, save your progress and continue. Now is the time to fix the errors you might have committed setting up the advertising campaign.
Setting up Conversion Tracking If it cannot be tracked, it won’t serve the purpose. Therefore, it is pivotal that you have access to proper metrics to manage your AdWords account. You have to track every single one of them just so you know which campaign, ad group or keyword is working best for you and which is not. How to setup tracking code? You need to put a small code on page users reach. Once they’ve purchased from you, Google AdWords will get to know that there was a purchase whenever a user reaches the page after clicking on the ad.
Go to ‘Tools’; then follow to ‘Conversions’. Hit on the ‘+Conversion’ and then choose ‘Website’.
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Fill in the basic info, save and continue. You, now, have reached the page with the code. All that’s left to do is to paste the code to the HTML code of your Thank You page, the page people land to once through the purchase. That’s all for the code.
Google’s conversion tracking provides important information as to purchases, enquiry submits, etc. The tool let’s you: - Know your Cost-per-Conversion - Total number of transactions - Conversion rate, i.e. the percentage of people making transacting against mere visitors
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Well, you have now completely setup your first AdWords campaign! Results will be swarming in once the ad gets approved. Of course, it’s a reason to toast, but your job is still not done. You simply cannot set and forget an AdWords campaign. You need to carefully monitor it, particularly so when you’re starting out. The aim should be to check the campaign’s health from time to time. A strict eye would let you know what’s not working and let you fix it at once. This lets you minimize the waste spend. This guide aims to provide the best practices for Google AdWords. We have, however, skipped the advanced features for the sake of beginners’ convenience. If everything seems too much an effort to you, you could perhaps consider hiring a Google
advertising agency the exploit the platform to the hilt.
That’s all folks! I would love to have your feedback on this guide. Questions and suggestions are welcome.
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