Follow Us on TwitterDisappointed with Your Google AdWords Campaigns?
Almost anyone can get an AdWords campaign up and running. However, creating and managing a complex and highly effective campaign is another story.
Google AdWords has a lot of advanced functionality that can give you an advantage over your competitors. This is what we specialise in – it’s our bread and butter, we do nothing else (well, we eat and sleep a bit).
Measuring online conversion is pretty standard practice (you should have conversion tracking turned on), but measuring the offline conversion in the form of a telephone enquiry is a lot less common. Mainly because it’s tedious work. So we developed some call-tracking technology to remove the hassle and measure this missing piece. Only when you measure can you improve!
Setting up a high performance Google AdWords campaign requires some important steps:
1. Competitor Research
Search Engine Marketing (or Pay Per Click Advertising) is first and foremost about advertising. And advertising means you absolutely must stick out from the crowd, otherwise you’re boring and unnoticeable.
Any quality campaign should start off by understanding what your competitors are doing. What keywords do they appear to be using? What match types? What types of ads? What benefit statements in the ad copy? What is their unique offering? Small or large budget?
2. Profitability Expectations
Before we get too far setting up the campaign we need to understand the numbers. We consider things like AdWords budget, likely cost per click (CPC) prices, website conversion rates, sales enquiry conversion rates, net worth per customer, repeat-buyer probability, other advertising customer acquisition costs, etc.
Measurability really is the holy grail of online marketing. Our in-depth regular reporting and comprehensive analysis will prove that Google is the best thing since sliced bread. Once you know (for example) that you’re returning $5 for every $1 spent… well… it’s an awesome place to be.
3. Keyword Research
Your list of keywords (which may run into the thousands) becomes very important intellectual property for your organisation. There are many keyword tools out there, including Google’s own excellent keyword tool.
Whichever one you use, getting the balance between high-converting, high-search frequency and low cost per click is tricky and requires expertise. There is nowhere to hide if you get it wrong and we’ve seen many campaigns pay the price for inexperience.
4. Campaign & AdGroup Structure
Tightly focused ad groups are critical. If you had unlimited time, you could have one keyword per ad group, each with its own unique and relevant ad. Of course, this isn’t usually feasible, but there are ways of getting close.
Match types, quality scores, negative keywords, geo-targetting, and clever keyword research are all critical in setting up a smart campaign. Like building a house, if your foundations are unstable, you’re always going to be struggling.
5. Ad copy writing
Ad copy writing is a very different skill to other areas of search engine marketing. That’s why we use the specialist skills of professional copywriters. You may have experienced the uncomfortable restriction of the limited space Google allows, and communicating your uniqueness, benefit offering AND high keyword/ad copy/landing page relevancy in 95 characters (less than Twitter) requires serious skill.
6. Daily Management
If we had a beer for every time we’ve seen a campaign that’s been operating as “set and forget”, we’d be more than tipsy. Quality campaigns require constant attention. The competitive landscape changes, bid prices need to be managed, ad copy requires split testing, landing pages need to be tweaked, and returns need to be measured.
Oh, and don’t forget further keyword research, campaign and ad-group structural changes, constantly adding more negative keywords and financial reporting. If Google’s tools aren’t second nature, you could be wasting valuable time.
We specialise in turning around underperforming AdWords campaigns.
Call us at 1300 859 700 or make an online enquiry. We would love to hear from you.