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By Marcia Yudkin
Pay-per-click ads like those available through Google Adwords
can be a powerful, regular source of prospects for your
products and services. However, whenever new clients have
asked
me to look at their Google Adwords campaigns, I begin to
understand one element in Google's growth to more than a $6
billion market value.
Many entrepreneurs fail to take advantage of Google's
mechanisms for making sure that their search engine ads get
shown only to those who are logically potential buyers and
that
the ads encourage such people to click through. As a result,
they pay much more than they have to for the exposure, get
discouraged about the return on their investment and yet leave
the ads running for lack of ideas about how to improve
performance.
Don't let it happen to you! Use these tips to keep your costs
down and your rewards high.
1. Eliminate countries and languages that do not match what
you
offer. For instance, if you sell U.S. foreclosure listings,
your
ads should show only to Google users in the United States and
probably only in English. On the other hand, if you have a
translation service whose clients can live anywhere in the
world, define the countries and languages your ad gets shown
to
much more widely.
2. Activate Google's ad tracking. It costs you nothing, and
enables you to keep an eye on not only your cost per click and
click-through ratio, but also which keywords and which ads
best
lead to your desired result, whether that's a sale, an inquiry
for your services or a signup for your newsletter. That way,
you can eliminate or try to improve elements that get a lot of
clicks or cost a lot but do not get results.
3. Set up negative keywords. If your goal is selling
something,
why pay for tire kickers and freebie seekers? By defining
"free"
as a negative keyword (Google has a special button for this),
you can keep many of them from clicking on your ads.
Equally important, think through alternate and unwanted
meanings of your keywords and add negative keywords to prevent
your ads from showing to wildly inappropriate visitors. For
instance, type "cattle branding" into Google and you’ll see
ads
for business branding services. Those advertisers'
click-through
rates will improve when they add "cattle" as a negative
keyword.
4. Delete keywords and ads that are not working. Because
Google's system rewards a better click-through rate with
higher
ad placement and lower costs, you are paying Google more than
necessary when you leave poorly performing elements running.
Periodically clean out your losers.
5. Send people to a landing page that makes perfect sense.
People click on search engine ads to learn more about whatever
was featured in the ad. It seems logical that they’d look
around from your home page for whatever interested them in the
ad, but that's wrong. Searchers are impatient. So if your
search engine ad mentions a software demo, do not send them to
your company's home page. Send them to the exact page from
which they can access the demo.
When you manage your Google Adwords campaigns according to
these guidelines, you’ll be paying less to get a much more
satisfying response.
About The Author: Marcia Yudkin helps business owners and
corporate managers compellingly and tantalizingly communicate
their strengths. See a sample makeover of one ineffective
Google search engine ad into five dynamic ones at
www.yudkin.com/sample10b.htm . Sign up for her free
weekly newsletter on creative marketing at
www.yudkin.com/markmin.htm .
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