Advertising is very important for every business to increase its sales. But the question is how to get the maximum benefit out of such advertisements at the lowest possible cost.

What is Google Adwords

Google Adwords is owned and operated by Google as an online advertising platform. It is the most popular and widely used online advertising network in the world. Large number of business people use Google Adwords to reach large number of customers and to expand their business.

Through Adwords business people can focus on main two types of networks – Search network and Display network.

Search network includes PPC advertising where the business people or advertisers bid for particular Keywords which are relevant to their business or product or service. When a user enters that particular keyword in the search query box of the search engines then the advertiser will have a chance to display their PPC advertisement to the users. This is also known as paid search.

Display network is where the advertisers can place banners on websites which provides information about their business or product. Display network has a wide reach to the users when compared with search network.

Getting started with Google Adwords

Before starting with advertising you first need to set up a Google Adwords account. Opening an account in Google Adwords is easy and simple.

You can open an Adwords account either using the existing Google account or signing up for a new Google account. After creating the account you can provide some basic information like your location and time zone. You can also provide the billing details finally.

Adwords Account Structure

After creating the account the next step is to structure your account. You can structure your account based on the business needs and goals. A properly structured Adwords account will bring more relevant traffic and clicks to your site. It will bring higher quality scores and makes it easy for you to maintain the account. Below here is an example of the best structure of Adwords account which can give you maximum performance

How much to spend on Google Adwords

Beating Adwords or placing your Ads in the right position at the lowest possible cost needs few strategies to be followed.

First Understand what the Google Adwords can do for you. When you start using Adwords you can see the Google decides what type of Ads are displayed and where they are displayed in the page.

You need to spend money to make money. Of course Adwords is going to cost you something. The amount of money you are willing to invest in your Adwords is the important factor in deciding what you will get back. With small budgets you can’t go very far and you can see your ROI decrease very soon.

Building a Google Adwords campaign

Each campaign in Adwords should have its own budget. The key factor for creating campaigns is by location. This will help to have a difference in your Adwords campaign between your branches. You need to have separate campaigns for Search network and Display network. It is important to have separate type of campaigns because each type of marketing will have different behaviour and will yield different result.

Building an Adwords Adgroup

Google and other search engines always look for relevant content. So create Adgroups with tightly themed subjects which is related to your product or service. For example, if you are creating a campaign for Dresses, then you can create Adgroups like Men’s dresses, Women Dresses, Children Dresses and others. Under each Adgroup have minimum 3 Ads.

Strategies to run Effective Google Adwords Campaign

Here is a list Adwords Optimization technique that will help you to increase your long term results from Campaigns.

1. Quality Score

Quality score is based on factors which Google considers for determining where the advertisement should be placed on the site. The factors include

• Relevance of Ad copy
• Relevance of Ad to landing pages
• CTR
• Account Performance History and others

To get high quality scores you need to have a strong organization. High quality score will help you to get the most out of Adwords and maximize your profit.

2. Keyword Research

Keywords are the terms or phrases entered by the browsers in the search query box. Choosing keywords is an important factor in any online marketing process. You must be very smart in choosing the keywords. In Adwords advertisers bid on keywords instead of buying them. Adwords is similar to auction and only the advertisers with large investment can succeed in PPC.

Adwords Keyword tool will provide you with right keywords. When you enter a word or term and select a category, Adwords will provide you with a big list of all relevant keywords along with their traffic. Before you start bidding on a keyword you should know whether the keyword is worth your bidding. There are factors to decide this

• Select a keyword which matches closely with the content of the landing pages
• Also select negative keywords which will help to streamline your ad
• Don’t select keywords which rank too high as it will have a heavy competition
• Selecting the top keyword will also be too expensive

There are a lot of Keyword tool to help you to select the right keywords. Wordstream is one such keyword tool. This tool integrates with Adwords with ease and can give you large number of keywords which are highly relevant to the content. This tool will let you know the search volume of each keyword and its competition. This tool performs the following tasks

• Frequent keyword research
• Allows PPC management to be simple and effective
• Keyword grouping and organization
• Monitors your SEO campaign’s progress
• Avoids negative keywords
• Helps you to do careful bidding
• Helps you to write attractive contents for your advertisement

Wordstream also helps in doing the following functions

• PPC Keyword research – Wordstream has a custom built Query stream tool which gathers right data and lets you to find out new keywords which has more potential to drive more traffic to your site.

• Keyword grouping – Wordstream lets you to group the keywords with ease. It offers best suggestions considering elements like search volume and relevance.

• PPC Ad groups – Wordstream will help to turn your keyword groups into Adwords groups

3. Write Compelling Ads

Ads should have very attractive words which should make the viewers click on the advertisement. There are a lot of formats available in Google Adwords. But text ads form the most popular type of ad.

Writing text for ad is a very challenging job. There are a lot of restrictions like ad space and limited number of words. There are a lot of things to be taken into account while writing a text ad. They are as follows

• Selection of language – Concentrate more on the tone of your advertisement
• Concentrate on keywords that is relevant and have direct connection with the audience
• Have an option called Call to actions in your text advertisement
• Include the solutions as keywords in the headlines that the visitors wants to know
• Use countdown timers within your text ads
• Update your ads to the current events
• Get super specific and include numbers which are more attractive to the visitors
• Focus more on the customer’s needs and make things personal
• Think local – Limit your ads to your local area first. Make the users feel that you are very near to help them. Proximity will increase your conversion rate.

There are four important elements of text advertising

Headline – Need to be very attractive and include your keyword in your headline

Description Line 1 and Line 2 – Describe about your product or service and what are the advantages of it

Display URL – Don’t copy paste your domain name in the ad. Instead include a keyword or USP or anything that will attract your customers to the URL

4. Competitor Intelligence

Try to reduce your risk by knowing the competitor’s strategy. From your  competitor research you can know some of the keywords which rank high and keywords which do not rank best in your market.

There is also a competitive intelligence tool for letting you look into your competitor’s Adwords account to know the information. Example of one such tool is KeywordSpy. This tool lets you to have easy entry to your competitor’s advertising information.

You can simply enter your competitor’s domain name and click search button. Then click on the PPC keywords to know your competitor’s focussed keywords. Then you can select the keywords you want to use and add it to your keyword list.

Now you can click on the Ads tab to see a copy of your competitor’s ads. You can view all the details of the Ads like when was it published and what is the reaction of the ad.

5. Unique Selling Proposition

USP makes your ad stand ahead of all your competitor’s advertisements. There are three major reasons to create a USP

• It will drive more traffic to your site
• Reduces the unwanted clicks
• It will increase your sales conversion rate
• Price becomes a secondary factor for the visitors when there is a powerful USP. You can also increase the prices without having to bother about your competitor’s product pricing.

So you want to know how to create such USP ? Here are few tips provided

• Concentrate on your strengths
• Get feedback from your customers. Ask them why they do business with you
• Do a research about your competitor’s strategy
• Find out for a gap between your competitor’s ads and say something unique and attractive to the customers

6. Irresistible Offer

What can be so attractive in your Adwords Campaign ? How can you stand apart from all your competitors ? The answer for your question is irresistible offer. This consists of four main elements

• Valuable – Your product should be more valuable than its price. Define the value of your product to your customer.
• Believable – Give an offer to your customer with a valid reason. For example if you are offering a discount on your product then tell your customers why you are offering the discount like clearance sale or yearend sale.
• Reverse Risk – Give hope and trust to your customers about your product. Provide them a money back guarantee and some kind of guarantee to your customers.
• Call to Action – Make it easy for your customers to call you. Use a strong call to action. Keep it simple and stupid.

7. Conversion Tracking

You need to track your keywords and ads to know how effectively it is working and to boost up your sales. Conversion tracking helps you to know the amount of sales made through your Adwords campaign. You can find the conversion tracking code in your Adwords account using

Tools and Analysis – Conversions

If a visitor on your site reaches the receipt page or thank you page then Adwords will automatically track your conversions.

There are three strategies to follow in conversions

• Have a conversion page in your sales process
• Have unique coupon codes so that you can identify which keyword or ad has derived the sale
• Have tracking phone numbers in your ads and landing pages

8. Adwords settings for Success

There are few important settings you need to do in Adwords to make your ads more effective. Here are the list of important settings to watch out.

• Search Vs Display

Select the search network for your particular campaign type. Select Display network for different campaigns to target each network.

• Device Bids

Always have a mobile friendly website. Until you develop a mobile friendly website please do switch off your advertisements for mobile devices. You can do that using

Settings – Devices – Mobile devices with full browsers – In the pop up select ‘Decrease by 100% option

• Keyword Match Types

It is a utter waste of time and money of you have irrelevant search terms or phrases. There are three important keyword match types

Broad – It is the default match type. It will show ads that the Google thinks is relevant to your keyword. This is not highly recommended

Phrase – This will show you ads which contains the keywords you entered in the ad. To make a keyword Phrase match simply add quotes to the keyword

Exact – This keyword match type will display ads which matches exactly with your keyword. To set Exact match include square brackets around your keywords

• Negative Keywords

Negative keywords will help you to block certain keywords from triggering your ads. In order to add negative keywords go to

Keywords Tab – Negative Keyword link – Add button

Now you can start optimizing your Adwords campaign.

Conclusion

The above mentioned tips are considered the best for getting better results from Google Adwords. All these will help you to have a high conversion rate and get more profits that before. If you follow all these steps then you will be on your way to a more profitable Google Adwords Campaign.

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