Winning Results With Google AdWords
By Andrew Goodman
Pay per Click Marketing is an essential pillar of a solid search marketing strategy, and a very effective way to get any message out to a targeted audience. While easy to do, it is also easy to do poorly, or to do very effectively when done correctly.
If you want to get through the basics of AdWords and become an advanced user, Goodman’s book is an excellent place to start. The first couple of chapters go through the history of PPC marketing and Google, something more fully covered in John Battelle’s “The Search”. The third chapter will be a little basic for anyone even somewhat experienced in search marketing.
Goodman then gets into the meat of setting up an operating effective AdWords accounts. The last chapters give good overviews on the essentials of web strategy, analytics, copywriting, and landing pages.
- Once you set up your campaigns, they are yours to keep forever. You do not need to pay an agency to run them. The feedback and data is yours, as part of the advertising cost.
- To be most effective, AdWords should be as granular as possible. Break your Adgroups down to groups that are as narrow and focused as possible.
- Campaign organization is key, both for effectiveness, tracking data, and for ability to improve the campaign as time goes on.
- Sometimes, the broader words are cheaper, and the more targeted “buy” words are more expensive.
- It is important to know the keyword match types, and how effective they are for you.
- Use Negative keywords. Incorporate ‘timely’ data to your ads
- Ready, Fire, Aim works better than Ready Aim, Fire. Fine Tune your campaign with real data.
- Bring the searcher to a web page that will fulfill their needs.
- Use your customer’s keywords, not “insider’ keywords.
- Often, the best ROI can be obtained targeting narrow, less competitive keywords.
- Try variety in your ads to track your best message, or your best return. Try directness over cleverness. Include a call to action.
- Think of ways in which Adwords can be used for lead generation.
- The Content Network is a completely different beast from the search network.
- Track your prospects with Analytics after they click, and add tracking code to your add URLs
Fact of Interest: A recent Study of “business decision makers” showed that most spend more than two hours a day online (excluding email) and that a significant reduction in television watching was the main price paid.
