Is Adwords Really Worth it? Yes… But Why?

Whenever we want to search for a product, a service or anything else, nowadays you’re most likely to use Google.

That is where Google AdWords comes in. AdWords is the paid-for element of Google’s search results which helps a customer find a product, and retailers and service providers to effectively market and sell.

There are a number of reasons why a business can benefit from AdWords, and get the most out of its budget as long as you pay attention to details and do your research.

Key Facts About Google AdWords

  • 40.000 searches per second
  • 3.5 billion searches per day
  • 1.2 trillion searcher per year

1. Reach Your Customer Searching for Your Product or Service

Everything begins here:

No matter the size of your business, you want to be on the first page of Google.

Google homepage

When a customer notices your business as and when they are searching for information concerning your products, services, location or deals; this translates to very profitable intent marketing (marketing focused on persons intent to find your products).

Whether you are a small or large company, with Google AdWords you can compete on a level playing field, with experienced PPC management able to get your message seen by those searching for your product or service.

2. Reach Your Local Customer

This is done through location targeting options.

Whether you’re a local business, a regional company, or even an e-commerce website, you can use geo-targeting to get seen by your customer without wasting money on those who aren’t in your specific location.

Geo-Targeting in Google Adwords

AdWords lets you target or exclude countries, areas within a country, and radius targeting easily – so that ads can be seen within a certain distance from your business.

This is especially useful for retailers of larger products or those wishing to attracts visitors and users to a specific location.

Geo-targeting increases your ROI and lowers costs by allowing you to target users more precisely.

Additionally you can target specific income earners through geo-based demographics, based on income levels, and depending on the goods being sold e.g. luxury or exclusive goods.

3. Lets your Searchers Find Your Location

When one uses Google Business together with AdWords a map of your shop can be seen together with your ad, making it easier for customers to find you.

4. Show Your Contact Information

What Ad extensions do is that they let a business supplement its Google AdWords with phone numbers, site landing page links, addresses, app downloads, reviews, previous page visits, to mention just a few.

Ad extentions

They appear in blue just below your ad description.

By doing this, it is easier for a prospective customer to connect with you.

It should be noted that although extensions don’t cost extra to be included in your ad, you have to pay the same for a click on them as for your headline.

If for example, someone clicks on your phone number to contact you directly from your ad extension, you’ll be charged for this paid conversion – which Google can track.

5. Target Highly Specific Searches

If you use optimised, highly-targeted keywords for your ad groups, you’ll reach many more consumers, and at the same time Google will rank your ad better.

Target keywords that you would search for to find your product or service, putting yourself in the place of your customer and keep in mind that these words can be changed any time you wish.

6. Follow Your Customer with Re-targeting

What is re-targeting?  Re-targeting allows companies to display ads or product page to users who have visited our website, long after you left the site.                                                                 .

When a customer visits your website, a ‘cookie’ is placed on their machine from code that is placed on the back-end of your site. When the prospective customer leaves your site, your ads can be targeted to trail them on Google search or the Google Display Networks.

Retargeting in Paid Search
https://retargeter.com/what-is-retargeting-and-how-does-it-work

Let’s say you have a shop with computer products, and someone who is searching for a laptop clicks on your ad and visits your landing page for computers.

Their browser picks up your Google AdWords cookie and even after they leave, to do more shopping around, whatever site they visit which has to do with this search, including YouTube, your ad is there for them to see.

Just the fact that they continually see your brand name or label means extra sales and brand awareness, with no additional cost (unless they click)

7. Reach Your Mobile Customer Wherever They Are

Google AdWords offers you a variety of mobile optimisation options which allows you to target both text ads and image ads, making it easier for customers to find you.

For example a customer may be looking for a place to get some coffee in your area and be near your coffee shop, right outside your door, if your mobile optimised ad shows up first, you’ve got new customer.

Take note that in your campaign Settings, Devices should be on the default of “All”. This way all types of devices are targeted.

8. Choose, and Optimise, Where your Advert is seen

Google has an incredible amount of ad partners.

You might have read a blog, or ads specific to your marketing niche. Most likely that blog is part of the Google Display network and serving ads using Google Adsense platform.

Being part of the Google Display network is positive, because it will be easier for you to advertise on popular with your customers niche sites – You can also follow your results and even exclude sites that aren’t doing as well as you’d like.

One suggestion when starting out on Google AdWords, is to use the Search and Display option, since it gives you a wider reach.

The more you get used to how Google AdWords works, the more you’ll narrow an ad campaign to the Display Network only. This will result in improved ads as you go.

9. Deliver Measured Results

Google AdWords gives you a huge amount of personalised options to track and asses all of your work in one dashboard.

For example, you can place and track your own goals for:

  • Return on investment (ROI)
  • Traffic to your website
  • Brand-awareness
  • Sales and conversions

The results of each of your Google AdWord campaigns can also be measured within your ad groups. Metrics allow you to review which keywords are performing the best, the ads that get the best click-through-rate, what time of the day your ads are best performing etc.

You can also connect to Google Analytics so as to be informed about pages your ad traffic is visiting, within your site.

10.  Control Your Budget

Small businesses are usually more familiar with offline advertising methods, where you pay a specific fee for each ad you run. That equates to  a certain amount of ads to a certain amount of money.

The difference with Google AdWords is that you can set and change your budget for each ad you run.

Budgeting and Ad Spend

If an ad is doing well you can increase your ad spend. If it’s under-performing, you can decrease ad spend or pause it.

11. Run Numerous Campaigns for Your Marketing Needs

What is great about Google Ads is that you can run just as many ad campaigns as for your marketing goals.

campaign-structure

If for example, you have an event planning business that markets services for – Wedding planning, Fundraisers, or Corporate events – You could set up one marketing campaign for each of your targeted services, and then set up a variety of ad groups for each campaign, that can be targeted with various but specific keywords.

E.g. -“Wedding Planning” campaign, targets three groups: Wedding dresses, Wedding invitations and Honeymoon destinations. Don’t forget to add related keywords for each group.

Two ads can be prepared for each ad group so that you can A/B test to detect which ad runs best.

12. Continuously Improve Your Results

Compared to offline advertising, it’s very easy to monitor your real ROI on Google AdWords, and simple to adjust your ad copy to get better results and increased profits.

In conjunction with the above mentioned reasons there are also certain strategies that will help you get your money’s worth from Google AdWords.

Talk To Us

Whilst Google AdWords PPC management requires a hands-on approach, the best approach is to talk to the experts.

Advice tailored to your website, and your resources is crucial to achieving the best possible ROI from Google AdWords.

Get in touch with us today for a FREE, no-obligation PPC Audit.

CRO and PPC – The Perfect Companions in 2020

As a business advertising online, the greatest measure of the success of your Google AdWords campaign is not simply the number of people who will see and click on your pay-per-click (PPC) ads, but the number of people who will actually convert.

Your conversions may be in the form of online bookings, calls, emails; whatever is important to you.

For this to happen, you must have a combination of both compelling text on your PPC ad creative, combined with a welcoming landing page and clear calls-to-action (CTA).

In this article, we discuss what it takes to improve the conversion rate of your PPC advertising.

We will tackle some hints and techniques for developing highly effective PPC ads, and how to improve conversion rates once users reach your site.

You’ll see why pay-per-click advertising and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) really are the perfect companions!

Conversion Rate Optimisation

What is CRO?

Conversion rate optimisation is the process of optimising your sponsored search ads, landing pages, and overall website design to improve your conversion rate.

This means that you are aiming to entice the highest possible percentage of visitors on your site, to complete your desired action.

CRO
Conversion rate optimisation process

If your landing page appeals to your target audience, who are enticed by your ad creative, the higher the conversion rate is likely to be.

Don’t be fooled, improving conversion rates requires time, resources, and testing.

However, if you can spare some time to work to improve your site, there are a few key tasks to focus on…

Create User-Friendly Landing Pages

Your page has a purpose. Define what that is.

There are a lot of factors that come to mind when we talk about landing pages which appeal to visitors and to search engines.

The first and the most important of which is content.

The content of your landing page must meet your audience’s expectations, which have been set from the creative used in your PPC ads.

If you’ve promised an offer, show them the offer.

If you’ve mentioned a particular service, ensure that their landing page is related to the specific service.

For starters, here are some things that your page must have:

  • Compelling headline
  • Clear and concise content
  • Eye-catching call-to-action

When writing landing page content, explain in detail with as many specifics as possible. You need to leave your reader with as few queries as possible, enabling them to make a quick purchasing decision (or sign-up, or request brochure etc).

It’s a fine line, but try not to overwhelm.

CRO

You must ensure that your landing page does not sound as if you are selling too hard either. This does not mean giving little information; but ensure content used is what your user needs to read.

This might require some practice but it’s an invaluable skill to learn.

You want to give users enough information to make an informed and (importantly) quick decision about whether what you offer is right for them.

Usability

Your page needs to be clean and simple, with a clear CTA.

Usability is another crucial aspect of the landing page. The easier you can make your page to use, the more likely that you will generate higher engagement with visitors.

There will be people who, even though they really like what you offer, will not respond to your call-to-action simply because they cannot find the registration form or understand the layout of your site.

These people get bored and leave.

Don’t make them think. Make it clear and simple.

Look at this example of a well-optimised layout with a clear call-to-action. The site is designed to generate leads, and that’s exactly what it focusses on doing, well above the fold.

Clear call-to-action
Clear call-to-action

Your call-to-action is the most important part of your page and should be allowed sufficient exposure to the reader to ensure that it is not missed.

You need to ensure that the content leads onto an action. Make the next step obvious.

Make your landing page visually pleasing. Avoid too much clutter, and use clear space to define sections.

‘Don’t make me think’ by Steve Krug is a great book to read on improving the user-experience through simplifying your site.

Finally, ensure your site works well on mobile devices!

This is ever more important for both for users and search engines to ensure your key message is clear across all possible platforms.

A/B Testing

Use data to inform your decisions

An important step in effectively optimising for conversions is to work out what delivers the best results.

The most effective way to do this is to serve two versions of the same page independently to users hitting your landing page; performing a split test with the results.

This will allow you to see which performs better in terms of key site metrics:

  • Time on site
  • Bounce rate
  • Conversion rate
AB Testing
AB Testing

A/B testing allows you to tweak the best performing creative and provides a tool to reduce your cost-per-conversion considerably.

This form of testing should be an ongoing journey.

Keyword Targeting

Use keywords that are most appropriate for your product or service

Much like how you use keywords in your PPC ads, your landing page must also have those same keywords to reinforce that the user has reached a related destination.

Google also uses this information to determine your quality score.

This allows for, not just more traffic, but better quality web traffic which is engaged with the product or service on offer.

Use research tools such as Google Keyword Planner to identify appropriate keywords and ensure that variances are used within your landing pages where applicable.

PPC Adverts

With almost 2/3 of all clicks now going to sponsored results, it’s never been more important to get your message right.

Here are a few simple tips that can help you to create compelling PPC ads.

Related Keywords

With such a limited amount of characters used in PPC ads, it is important to include the more relevant keywords in the advert creative. This helps to improve both click-through and conversion rates.

It ensures that once a user lands on your website they already have a clear idea of what your business offers; therefore it’s important to ensure that you have landing pages setup for the most appropriate keywords.

Keywords should be grouped into SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups) to allow you to manage your landing pages, ads and bid-levels easily.

Be Clear & Concise

In a World of high information consumption, it is important to be clear when writing. Not everyone will have the time to decipher your message if you put too much clutter in the text.

Users look for quick content which engages and inspires.

Make sure you follow best practices:

Ad Creative Best Practices
Ad Creative Best Practices

And look to achieve the most you can with every word.

This may be explained best in the words of William Strunk in the book Elements of Style:

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tells.”

This is never more important than the limited space available in PPC advertising.

Be Consistent

Being consistent in writing a PPC advert allows you to test and optimise to focus on the best-performing creative.

Effective account management involves using data to inform decisions regarding effective messaging.

Once a format is seen to perform, it is important to convert this

Conclusion

Advertising online is difficult, especially with so many businesses competing in a crowded marketplace offering the same kind of products or service.

To stand out you need to combine effective messaging with well-ordered and concise landing pages, which are setup to convert.

If you can master conversion-rate-optimisation, combined with compelling adcopy, then you give your business a great chance to stand out!

Talk To Us

Whilst Google AdWords PPC management requires a hands-on approach, the best approach is to talk to the experts.

Advice tailored to your website, and your resources is crucial to achieving the best possible ROI from Google AdWords.

Get in touch with us today for a FREE, no-obligation PPC Audit.

Hiring a PPC Agency or Freelancer in 2020-21

Should I hire a PPC Agency or Freelancer to manage my Google AdWords account in 2020-21?

There’s a lot more to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising with Google AdWords than simply creating some text ads and leaving them to run.

Choosing the correct person (or company) to represent your business, product or service is one of the most important marketing decisions you will make.

Paid search often represents the largest proportion of your marketing budget and therefore its success (or otherwise) can have a major influence on the bottom-line performance of your business.

You’re placing your brand’s reputation in their hands, so it’s important to find an agency with a solid understanding of your business niche, as well as the technical aspects of managing paid search campaigns.

What is Google AdWords?

So let’s start with the basics. As a quick refresher, Google AdWords is Google’s advertising service.

You pay only when people click on your ads, more commonly known as pay-per-click.

Assuming you’ve decided to utilise Google AdWords (great decision), now you need to ask yourself whether you can effectively manage the account.

Can I manage AdWords myself?

There’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to ongoing optimisation of AdWords accounts.

It requires a daily analysis (depending on the size of the account and the number of keywords) as well as a lot of testing to identify best performing keywords, ad creative (AdCopy) and landing pages.

If you’re small there’s a lot to be said for managing the account yourself.

  1. You can use all of the money you have available in the platform – No-one else is taking a piece of the pie
  2. You learn what your customers are looking for – This feeds nicely into a cohesive marketing strategy across all marketing channels
  3. You learn the basics of how to set up and manage a PPC campaign – This provides a useful understanding for when your business grows and you need to interview and manage external resources (i.e. freelancers or agencies).

The larger your business is the less likely there’s an option for you to manage the account yourself anyway; although that depends upon your internal resources.

Realistically if you’re a busy person, managing medium or large-sized PPC accounts isn’t practical.

If you have some additional internal resources it’s possible to learn, but you will need some form of external help to keep you on the right path.

So, assuming you know what AdWords is, but you aren’t a specialist, it’s likely that at some point you’re going to need the help of a PPC agency or freelancer to make the most of your campaign.

Now you have to decide: are you going to hire a freelancer or a PPC agency?

In this section we’ll look at the pros and cons of working with a freelancer or a digital agency, to help you identify what’s right for your business.

 

 

Freelancer Pros

Specialized Skills

Freelancers are generally very skilled in a wide array of marketing disciplines.

They tend to have experience in dealing with a variety of issues encountered when completing a job. This allows you to save time in both the planning and implementation of your campaigns.

Rather than having to deal with a team and often more than one Account Manager (depending upon the size of your business), you’ll be dealing with one person, saving you lots of time on emails, Skype calls and face-to-face meetings.

Lower Costs

The key advantage of using a freelancer over an agency is the cost saving.

Freelancers can work on much tighter budgets than agencies due to far lower fixed costs, including working from home in many instances.

With freelancers, you are paying the person who is working on your account and you can often negotiate the rate you pay for their service.

A freelancer will aim to do a great job for a reasonable amount of money. This will in-turn lead onto other work through referrals from happy clients.

Flexibility

Freelancers are more than likely on call when you need them.

They are generally very flexible with their schedules, especially if all they do are freelance jobs. This means that you speak directly to the person managing your account as and when you need to.

Also once the job is done, you can stop working with freelancers.

Often the commitment you make is only for the duration of the project, as opposed to being tied into a long-term contract.

Freelancer Cons

Less Control

Because freelancers tend to have a more specialised skill set, they tend to take your particular instructions and then add their own ideas in completing the tasks.

They will get the job done as best they can, but you need to ensure that your instructions and brand guidelines are adhered to.

You need effective control management whether working with a freelancer or an agency.

No Assurance

Because you generally have little control over the freelancer, and they do not come with the security of a business infrastructure to support, there is the possibility that they may be hard to reach or the support no longer available.

You may be left with partly completed work, and limited (or zero) support during holiday periods.

If you pay upfront before work commences, there is the possibility of losing the money, so be clear regarding the payment structure from the outset. Spread payments through the life-cycle of the work.

Deal with one person

This is a pro but also a con. If you fall out with your freelancer, there is no escalation process to raise and resolve issues.

If they change career or drop you as a client, you need to go through the onboarding process again with another freelancer (or agency).

Confidentiality

As your Google AdWords account contains sensitive data, you need to be sure that the freelancer you chose does not share any information about your company with your rivals.

This is especially important if the freelancer is working for more than one client within a competitive niche.

Ensuring that a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is signed before work commences is the best course of action to mitigate this risk.

 

 

Agency Pros

Personnel

Hiring an advertising agency to manage your Google Adwords advertising campaign gives you enough manpower to effectively manage even large-scale accounts, year-round.

This provides more than just one pair of eyes looking through your campaign, offering more chance that errors are identified and increasing the amount of manpower available to deliver improvements.

Agencies have the advantage of a team which allows a greater possibility of fresh and innovative ideas to be generated. A team dynamic allows greater sharing of success between accounts, providing advantages to all clients.

Tools

Advertising agencies normally have access to a wide range of PPC tools which are used to optimise your campaign.

Bid management software provides automation across large-scale accounts, optimising your bid levels even when all team members are asleep.

Continuity and accountability

Your support is provided by a team rather than one individual. This ensures that your instructions are shared, and reducing the effect of team changes.

The company as a whole is responsible for the performance of your account and their staff, reducing the chance of a bad experience.

A bad review or referral can be very damaging for any brand and any respectable business will strive to ensure you remain satisfied.

Agency Cons

Higher Costs

Agencies employ large internal teams, from finance to marketing, account managers to directors. As such, the rates you pay need to cover far more than the time spent managing your account.

The cost of hiring an agency to manage your campaign incorporates fixed costs of employee benefits, pensions, holidays, office rent and much more.

In addition, there is often more than one person with responsibility for your Google Adwords campaign, hence they have to charge more for their service.

Quality Assurance

Not all account managers are created equal.

As employees move on and teams change, there are no guarantees that their replacements will be of equal quality.

Best case, there is a strong training process in place to bring them up-to-speed quickly, however this is not often discussed at the inception of your contract.

There needs to be monitored from your side to ensure that your account remains well-managed, irrespective of changes to the team.

You need to be pro-active so their team know they need to work hard to keep you satisfied.

Location

The best agencies are unlikely to be based near you. As such you need to be prepared to travel for initial meetings.

That said, holding meetings today is a lot easier, especially with Skype and other video-conferencing tools available online.

Questions to Ask a PPC Agency or Freelancer

Are you Google AdWords certified?

Google accreditation ensures that individuals working on your account are qualified and knowledgeable enough to do the job.

Accreditation isn’t an essential, although it does provide peace-of-mind.

Do you have proof of your success?

Successful, experienced agencies will be able to talk you through examples of work they’ve carried out on current and previous campaigns, and provide case studies.

What is the team structure?

Who will be managing my account?

Will I have a dedicated Account Manager?

Will my account manager be the person making changes to your account?

Are you able to meet with your account manager before the inception of the contract?

Do you have experience of working in my industry?

Have they worked with other clients in your industry?

How will this benefit the management of your account?

Are they working with any of your competitors presently?

What results do you expect to deliver?

Understand why you should be investing this money?

Ask what they plan to do. Query their thoughts on your likely return-on-investment.

Show them you are interested in the process as well as the results.

and some others…

101 questions via stickoutsocial
101 questions via stickoutsocial

Conclusion

Before deciding whether to choose either a freelancer or a PPC agency, it is best to identify your end goals and objectives.

A good agency or freelancer will demonstrate a clear understanding of your objectives and advise you whether they are achievable within your budget.

You have to consider the financial aspect of hiring and continuing your project.

Essentially a well-managed search campaign should save you more money than it costs, however, your budget will go a long way to identifying the most suitable path for your business.

In the end, it is only you who can decide who is the best hire for your PPC advertising campaign.

Ask for audits, meet with agencies and freelancers and decide who is best for your business. Go with your gut.

But remember it’s not something to leave to an agency fully. Share your ideas for messages which resonate with your audience.

Share any stats you have for high-performing products, as well as the target demographic. Give your freelancer as much help as you can.

Trust their experience and their ability to deliver. But be involved in the process.

You need to learn and understand PPC to be an effective judge of performance.

Why Choose Apollo?

Apollo Digital are a small, friendly and dedicated team of search marketing specialists helping ambitious travel and adventure businesses to generate more bookings.

Because we’re a small team, we offer the expertise of freelancers in that all of our team have experience with managing successful online marketing campaigns.

We’ve worked with and for some of the biggest brands in travel and always look for the maximum return-on-investment. We know what works!

We offer great rates but more importantly a service that delivers results.

If you’d like a free, no-obligation audit of your Google AdWords account, get in touch with us today.

We look forward to seeing what we can do for your business.

Talk To Us

Whilst Google AdWords PPC management requires a hands-on approach, the best approach is to talk to the experts.

Advice tailored to your website, and your resources is crucial to achieving the best possible ROI from Google AdWords.

Get in touch with us today for a FREE, no-obligation PPC Audit.

12 Deadly Google AdWords Mistakes for Small Businesses

Why Isn’t Google AdWords Working Your Small Businesses?

The truth out there is that things aren’t what they used to be for small businesses.

Every pound counts as external costs rise, and a poorly managed Google AdWords campaign can cost much more than it brings in.

It all comes down to how much you know about AdWords and what you can do to improve your understanding of how it works and how to generate the highest return from the platform.

The problem isn’t with AdWords itself, but how you manage your campaigns.

Smart search marketeers avoid common mistakes such as:

Mistake 1:

Few Logins

Since PPC can be difficult to handle for a small business, all that is needed is to some extra time to manage a paid search campaign.

Just one percent (1%) of small business advertisers make changes every week and more than half of AdWords users only optimise their campaign once per quarter.

Practices like these don’t deliver the desired results.

Improvements in paid search come from continued optimisation and testing, processes which allow you to identify keywords which generate conversions and bookings.

Mistake 2:

Insufficient Activity

Adding a small number of keywords to a campaign in a period of around ninety days without any new campaigns, ad groups, or ads won’t bring the desired results.

A lack of account activity within a PPC campaign can affect a wide range of features and result in your adverts not being displayed for relevant keywords.

Bad keyword targeting and adverts of low quality can result in low click-through rates, which will have a negative effect on a client’s quality score and impression share (the number of times your advert appears to a Google user).

Mistake 3:

Not Putting Keywords in Correct Groups

AdWords lets you create campaign ad groups to manage various kinds of campaigns.

One of the worst mistakes people make is not using SKAGs (single-keyword ad groups).

What is a SKAG?

Instead of dividing ads into groups built around similar types of keywords, the keywords are put into one ad group that shows everyone the same ad.

SKAGs AdGroups Structure
http://rocketshipagency.com/ebay/

The closer the ad copy matches the keyword, the more likely it will be that people to click on the advertisement.

Let’s say that a company sell laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets. If they don’t put their products into different groups, they miss the opportunity to show product-specific ads based upon the specific keyword that the user is searching for.

This results in the use of more generic adverts being served such as ‘Buy High Tech Products’ instead of an ad that matches specific searches, such as ‘eight core smartphones or 8 inch tablets’.

Breaking up your ads and keywords into themes will make it easier for your campaigns to be to observed and upgraded.  Use SKAGs for optimum results!

Mistake 4:

No Negative Keywords

Failure to add any negative keywords to your AdWords account- which is as a way to exclude keywords that are not a good match for your product – can result in considerable waste in PPC spend.

The more negative AdWords you add, the more you save.

As an example, if you own an e-commerce website which sells men’s shoes but not athletic shoes, obviously you won’t want your ads to appear when ‘men’s running shoes’ is searched for, but you do want them to appear on searches for ‘men’s shoes’.

When you add ‘running’ as a negative keyword, your ads won’t be shown for searches that include the word ‘running’.

Negative Keywords

By clicking ‘negative keywords’ underneath the list of keywords for your campaign or ad group, negative keywords are added, and it should be noted that they can be added at both the campaign and the ad-group level.

To find words that should not be included, you can check the ‘search terms’ tab for more detailed information about particular keyword searches that triggered your ad to show.

You can also use Google Analytics. When you are in Analytics, click on ‘Acquisition’ then ‘AdWords’ and then ‘Matched Search Queries’.

After that, click on ‘Query Match Type’ and choose either ‘broad match’ or ‘phrase match’. The exact keyword phrases and ones which aren’t converting well will be found there. Phrases that aren’t changing, can found and negative keywords can be added to remove particular keywords from your campaign without excluding terms that are doing well.

One recommendation is to add negative keywords every day – depending on search volume and ad spend.  See this comprehensive guide.

Mistake 5:

Not Using the Correct Keyword Matches

Another big mistake people make is not using the proper broad match, phrase match, or exact match keywords.

AdWords lets users add keywords to a campaign in one of the three ways above mentioned ways.

This image may help to explain the match types a little more…

Match Types

If ‘Reebok running shoes’ is added as an exact or phrase match keyword, the ad will appear when someone types specifically ‘Reebok running shoes.

With a phrase match keyword, the keyword phrase has to appear in the search as a complete phrase in the order it was entered. For a keyword to be entered as a phrase match in AdWords, quotation marks must be entered around the term when it is added as a keyword.

An exact match keyword is exactly as it sounds. The searched-for term needs to exactly match the keyword that is entered.

A broad match keyword means is that ads will show regardless of the keyword’s order, so long as the search keywords are used in the search query.

An ad will appear in a search, as long as the keywords entered show up in the search in one form or another. The term can be entered without any kind of punctuation before or after it.

As a result our product would also appear if the user searched for ‘Reebok free running shoes’ and ‘where to buy Reebok shoes for running’.

To begin with you can start with exact matches and then move to phrase and broad according to your needs.

If one isn’t getting impressions and conversions with exact matches, the terms can be added as a phrase match and finally a broad match.

Mistake 6:

When you Trust your Numbers More than Your Creativity

Unless the numbers tell you something different you shouldn’t fall in love with your ad.

Don’t stop testing your copy.

You should try two or more different headline variants to help you to understand what works best. Choose the ad that’s getting the highest click-through rate, the highest conversion rate, or the lowest cost per acquisition (CPA).

Always test and change the ad copy whenever necessary. This type of testing can lead to doubling your conversion rates and halving your cost per acquisition.

Mistake 7:

Not Bidding on Your Own Brand

The mistake many people make is not to bid on their own brand assuming that they don’t need to advertise for it because they already rank for their own brand.

Bid for your own brand

What you must consider though is that if you don’t advertise your brand, other companies will.

Your brand name will be used for an ad group and your visitors will be targeted. It’s logical to bid the highest for your own brand because people searching for your company are the most likely to convert.

In addition, a branded advert increases the overall click-through-rate of your campaign; which also has a positive affect on the overall quality score of your campaign. This will likely reduce the cost-per-click you pay for click on higher competition keywords.

Being at the top for your own brand name has many benefits for the health of your campaign.

Mistake 8:

When someone doesn’t know the Lifetime Value (LTV) of Customers

If you haven’t yet calculated the LTV for your customer, there’s no way you can know how much to spend on AdWords per-acquisition.

This is how it works:

  • If your LTV is £10 it means that you’ll be earning £10 on average over the lifetime of doing business with each customer.
  • If you’re paying £6 per-acquisition, you’re OK since you’re making more than you’re spending, per-customer.
  • On the other hand, if your LTV is £4 and you’re spending £6 per-acquisition, you’ll be out of business before you know it.

If it is difficult for you to calculate your business’ LTV, begin with the How to Calculate Lifetime Value infographic from Kissmetrics.

Once you calculate the LTV for your business, you will be better-placed to effectively manage and optimise your campaigns.

Mistake 9:

Not Testing the Best Ad Position

Take note: The best performing ad position is not always 1st!

If you want to improve, one of the top four ad positions is good, but for the most cost-effective results, it’s usually better to be in 2nd-4th position.

It’s possible that a lower position can be better because people tend to click on a search whether they’re seriously interested or not.  If your ad is in position 2-4 it’s not the first thing someone sees.

Someone who is looking for a better result will click on your ad. If you want to know which ad position is the best, test by raising or lowering your cost-per-click bid, and tracking the results.

Mistake 10:

Not Knowing Your Competition

It is important for you to know which ads your competitors are using, their keywords and what their landing pages look like.

Place yourself in your customer’s shoes, what ad would you click?  Which one appeals to you the most, and which one would you choose if you were the customer?

See what you can improve on your landing pages, the design, or a cleaner look and feel? See what you can learn and try to improve your pages. Create new landing pages and test them continually, until you improve your conversion rates.

Mistake 11:

Too Many Expectations from AdWords

If your budget isn’t large enough, you won’t be able to test your ads until they’re doing well. It takes time and money to run and optimise your campaign to get the best return.

A good thing to do is to start with a large enough budget that will allow you to tweak and optimise your campaigns as long as you stick with your campaigns and give them time for you to figure out how AdWords works and how you can get the best return.

Mistake 12:

Not Directing your Visitors to the Ideal Product or Category Page (Specifically for E-commerce)

To generate conversions and bookings, it is always best for someone to go directly to a landing page or a product or category page.

This allows the user to see a direct match to the ad that was searched for, as opposed to having to click around to find the relevant product (after landing on a more generic page).

Following these recommendations will help you effectively optimise your campaigns with Google AdWords.

Talk To Us

Whilst Google AdWords PPC management requires a hands-on approach, the best approach is to talk to the experts.

Advice tailored to your website, and your resources is crucial to achieving the best possible ROI from Google AdWords.

Get in touch with us today for a FREE, no-obligation PPC Audit.

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