Top 5 AdWords Tips

Google has been brilliant at building an effective advertising platform that can take money from any business. Unlike “traditional” media, the barriers to entry are much lower – no need to design an ad, no huge ad spend needed.

With 30 minutes to spare and a debit card to hand, you can be advertising your business today.

Unfortunately we often meet with businesses who have done it this way – and have been getting poor return on the money they’ve invested.  So here are our top 5 tips for businesses using AdWords, that can improve your AdWords return on investment today:

1. Identify the action you want the user to take, and measure it

Whether it’s buying online, filling in a form or clicking on an “call us” link on a mobile, you need to know what you want the website visitor to do. Use Google Analytics to track that action (set it up as a Goal) and you’re in a position to optimise towards getting it to happen more often, for less spend on clicks.

2. Find the niche

It’s easy to think of a generic search term that relates to your business – but it’ll be competitive (= expensive) and less likely to convert to your desired action. Instead, concentrate on the product or service your business is really good at – better than the competition – and target the language your customers use in relation to it.

If you’re a gym – don’t think “gym”, think “early morning exercise classes”

If you’re a garage – don’t think “servicing”, think “Audi servicing with free loan car”

If you’re a restaurant – don’t think “lunch restaurant” think “gluten-free menu restaurant”

3. Organise your campaigns

Don’t put everything into one big AdWord campaign. Arrange different products or services into different campaigns, and within each one put different variations of the product or search into different Ad Groups. You’ll be able to:

• control spend by product
• match your advert and website page to the searchers’ language
• increase the likelihood of conversion

4. Don’t use “broad match” search matching

Google gives you different ways of controlling the keywords you choose, and what searches trigger your ads to be shown (they call them Match Types). We recommend you DO use:

• modified queries (the one where you have a + in front of the keyword)
• phrase match (where you ave quote marks around the search)

These options mean your keeping Google on a tighter rein and not letting them spread your ads too widely (and less relevantly). If you don’t have +, ” ” or [ ] around your keywords – you’re using Broad Match, and it’s not a good idea. Google will allow your ad to appear on searches that aren’t that close to your keyword, and frustratingly people will still click on your ads and waste your money, even though you clearly aren’t selling what they searched for.

5. Use negative keywords

Most businesses who run their own AdWords don’t even know about this feature – not only can you define what keywords you want to target, you can also define what keywords you DON’T want to trigger your ads. We have a long list of words that are commercially irrelevant, that we make sure we use from the outset of any AdWords campaign (eg “jobs”, “vacancies”), and we use Google Analytics data to regularly see what searches bring visitors to the site and add new negative keywords when we spot them.

And a bonus tip – make sure you actually look at what’s happening and use the information to improve your AdWords. Too many businesses set up AdWords and then leave it running, thinking Google will take care of it.

If you’re one of these – give us a call and we’ll be able to quickly get your AdWords in shape and improve your return on AdWords investment.