Internet Marketing Blog
Is AdWords For You?
I have written several posts explaining how to set up pay per click advertising with Google Adwords. What I haven’t addressed is how to decided whether PPC advertising is right for you and your business. On the surface, it seems to be a great way to get a presence on page one of the search results, and therefore get your name out there, and it is. That’s not where it ends, however, so you should ask yourself a few questions before you get started on this path.
1. Can you afford it? If done correctly, PPC advertising more than pays for itself, but not overnight. From beginning research to results, it typically takes three months. Can you afford to spend some money as you figure out what keywords and ads are working? Can you afford an expensive mistake? Mistakes happen sometimes. Finally, can you afford enough of a monthly spending budget to make it worth it once you do have it up and running?
2. Are you willing to put forth the effort? If you do PPC advertising for a living, setting up a new client takes a great deal of time. If you don’t do it for a living, it takes longer, because you have to learn as you go. If you are considering setting up Google Adwords on your own, plan a great deal of time to learn everything you can about it. You don’t need someone like me or a company like Internet Marketing Group, if you have the time and patience (and money) to learn. There are a lot of people who have lost a lot of money and blame it on AdWords, I submit that they just needed to learn more before they started.
3. Do you have the other elements in place? You can have a textbook-perfect campaign, but if you are sending people to a bad site, you will waste money. If you were hosting an open house or a grand opening in your store, you wouldn’t have customers come in and see clutter everywhere or see you in your bathrobe. You wouldn’t hide items that you hope they will buy and you also wouldn’t make those items look unattractive. You’d make sure everything was perfect before you drew people into your establishment. It is the same with your website design. Before you pay to draw people in, make sure your site is neat, easy to navigate, and your customer service is in place. Remember, you have mere seconds to get people to decide to stay on your site, if they don’t like what they see, you’ve just paid for them to peek in and leave.
These are just a few questions, you should ask. One tip I would offer … there are plenty of companies like ours that will give you a free analysis. They will look at what you have and tell you what you need. Take advantage of this. In just hearing what the companies have to say about your site and your needs, you will learn a lot. Remember, as professional internet marketers, we see things from purely that perspective, and you want to get that perspective before you invest your resources.
Mary Jo
Internet Marketing Blog
600 Boyson Road, Suite 200
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
Other topics of interest:
Cedar Rapids Website Design
Search Engine Optimization Iowa
February 2, 2009
Don’t Forget the Keyword Tool
Once you have your campaigns up and running and you are more in the evaluate and tweak phase of things it’s easy to forget about some of the tools that Google AdWords provides. They keyword tool is invaluable.
If you didn’t use it when you selected your keywords initially, just know that it’s there for next time. You can plug in your keyword and this tool will give you variations that probably hadn’t occurred to you. The Use synonyms box is checked by default, so the words offered are usually pretty numerous and varied.
Once you are set up and you are making adjustments, you will want to go back and use this tool. If you have words that aren’t performing well, you could get other suggestions. Conversely, if you have words that are doing great, you will want to see if you can improve on your success.
Another great use for this tool is catching negative keywords. Negative words are words that you specifically do not want triggering your ad to appear. So if you are sell cowboy hats and you run “cowboy hats” through the keyword tool, you’d see that one negative keyword would be “dallas.”
In case this is all new to you, you’ll find the keyword tool by going in to your individual adgroups and selecting the keywords tab. Once there, you’ll find the button just above where your keywords are listed. When you’ve gotten in, you simply type in your word or phrase (not too long) and hit Get Keyword Ideas. When your list appears you’ll have an option to add any of the words. As you do this, the list of your chosen words will appear on the right. When you are done, click Save to adgroup.
Don’t forget about this valuable tool. Even if you have had your campaigns running successfully for a while, there is always room for improvement.
Mary Jo
Internet Marketing Blog
600 Boyson Road, Suite 200
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
Other topics of interest:
Cedar Rapids Website Design
Search Engine Optimization Iowa
January 26, 2009
Position Preference
As time passes and you get more and more familiar with your campaigns, you start to get a feel for what’s working and what isn’t. One of the things you might pick up on is that your ads seem to do better when they are at certain positions. By positions, I mean where they land on the page when they’re shown. It may seem like you get the best conversion rate when your ads show in the number three position, so you’ll keeping tweaking your bids to aim for that number three spot.
This is a good approach, but Google AdWords also allows you to set a Position Preference for your ads. What this means is that you can go in a edit your settings so that Google will always try to place your ad at the number three position. It’s not guaranteed to always happen and they won’t bid higher than your max CPC, but they will adjust your bid up or down to try and hit the position you choose as often as possible.
There is no overall perfect position. We have clients that seem to do better in the 1-2 position and we have clients that hit better in the 4-5 position. As with everything pay per click, trust the actual data over what you think the data should indicate.
Setting your position preference is not difficult. First you’ll need to go into your campaign settings and enable position preference. You’ll find the check box about halfway down the page in the Networks and bidding section. Once that is done and you’ve saved the changes, you can go into your individual adgroups and set the your position preference for each keyword. Simply, select your adgroup and navigate to the keyword summary page. Select any or all the keywords and click on Edit Keyword Settings and you’ll see a pull-down menu under the Position Preference column. You can choose a range or an exact position (by entering the same number twice).
You’ll notice a little arrow pointing down next to the top one. If you make changes to the first one and then click on that arrow, it will implement your changes all the way down. The search bid column has the same feature.
As always, monitor your changes to see if they are bringing the desired results. Unless you see something drastic, it’s usually a good idea to give at least seven days so that you can get enough data to decide if you are going in the right direction.
Mary Jo
Internet Marketing Blog
600 Boyson Road, Suite 200
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
Other topics of interest:
Cedar Rapids Website Design
Search Engine Optimization Iowa
January 20, 2009
Ad Scheduling
There are several ways that you can control your costs as you manage your pay per click advertising. We have touched on adjusting bids and using phrase and exact matching options to help you spend no more than necessary to draw clicks that convert. Another effective means of control is ad scheduling, which allows you set the hours when you want your ads to show. In many cases, clicks that occur in the middle of the night, are probably not serious shoppers, so maybe you want to pause ads from 12:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. You can even adjust your bids at certain times. During times that you believe are more likely to receive serious traffic, you can set your bids higher. Likewise, you can drop them during other times, say perhaps on the weekends.
The process is fairly simple, and like everything else in Google AdWords, I recommend just jumping in and experimenting to see what works. You begin by selecting the campaign you want to adjust on your Campaign Summary Page. Go up and find edit settings. On the next page, a little over half way down find where it says Turn on ad scheduling and you’ll be taken to a screen that has the days of the week and each one has a a sort of a number line next to it divided into 24 hours. If you’ve never scheduled your ads, then all of the blocks will be green. You can choose to edit each day individually, or you can bulk edit all days, weekdays, or weekends. You select your times from the pull-down menu. One important step that I always seem to forget is to click Add underneath where I edit, if you just click save at the bottom, it will not save your changes.
If you are interested in adjusting your bids, click on switch to advanced mode, and you’ll be allowed to adjust your bids during certain times. For example, you can choose to run your ads at 75% of your default bid from 5:00-8:00 a.m. and from 8:00-11:00 p.m., and run them at 100% the rest of the day. Or if there is a time that seems to be particularly hot for your product, you may run at 125% for a few hours. You can go as low at 10% or as high at 1000% of the default bid. Just as with editing the times, when you select edit the pull-menu will appear and allow you to make the changes.
When you are completely done, save your changes and you’ll be taken back to the Edit Settings Page and it will indicate what percentage of the week you are running your ads. Back on your Campaign Summary page, you’ll see a little clock by the campaign you just scheduled, which is just there to identify that the particular campaign has ad scheduling turned on.
Remember, when you are experimenting, allow a little time to get enough data to make wise adjustments … one day is not enough. However, you do want to watch things everyday in case your experiment explodes.;-)
Mary Jo
Internet Marketing Blog
600 Boyson Road, Suite 200
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
Other topics of interest:
Cedar Rapids Website Design
Search Engine Optimization Iowa
January 11, 2009
The Importance of Your Landing Page
The landing page is the page that your potential customers land on when they click your ad, so you want to make sure that this page matches the text in your ad. It is almost never a good idea to send people to your home page, because what they are most likely looking for is probably a few click deeper.
Think about how you surf? If you are looking for something, how far are you willing to dig into a site without just going on to the next one? What if a page takes a long time to load? That’s right, you move on. This is why you need to make sure that your very relevant landing page loads quickly. You don’t want to pay for people to click, and have them move on without even seeing your product/service.
Go back to how you surf. Do you like to scroll through a ton of text? If you do, you are not the norm. The average user will skim any text to see if it’s what they are looking for. Keep it brief and simple and make the key points standout. Also, if you are advertising a specific product, make sure the image is right where it can be seen right away, otherwise you will probably pay for a wasted click.
Asking people to register before giving them the information they seek is also a huge no-no. Personally, I have never registered for anything unless I was convinced there was purpose to it. You have to give a little to get a little. Remember, there is plenty of competition willing to share the information that you are holding hostage for a registration.
If you can keep in mind that you only have a few seconds to get a customer to decide to give your site a chance. Again, take some time and pay attention to how you search. Also, ask people who are not affiliated with your site to evaluate your landing pages. Sometimes we are too close to our own site to see obvious flaws. Finally, consider having an Internet marketing company take a look. A good marketing firm will give you a few free suggestions without demanding you sign a contract or agree to do business.
In short, your landing page is supremely important. Making is good is usually fairly simple. Take the time and effort.
Mary Jo
Internet Marketing Blog
600 Boyson Road, Suite 200
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
Other topics of interest:
Cedar Rapids Website Design
Search Engine Optimization Iowa
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