Adwords Beginner’s Guide
These days, if a consumer is looking for information they go to the Internet, not the Yellow Pages. Because of that, it’s vital that your company is visible on the search engines and readily available to their users. Adwords is Google’s paid search marketing tool and an excellent way to reach potential customers. Though it’s incredibly robust and convenient, launching a campaign within the interface can be intimidating for a new user. Additionally, not fully understanding Adwords can result in unanticipated complications that commonly lead to the ineffective spend of money. In order to successfully execute a campaign, there are many different factors to understand and take into consideration. Knowing the basics of the program allows beginners to correctly set up campaigns and help guarantee they not only reach the correct audience but also maximize their return on ad spend.
The first way to do so is to avoid spending money on clicks from audiences you don’t or cannot provide your product or service to. By default, campaigns advertise on the nation-wide level, so it’s important to geo-target as needed to spend your budget efficiently. For example, a local restaurant will only appeal to a small geographic region whereas a clothing retailer who ships product nationally will have broader consumer demand. Bottom line—don’t waste your money advertising to consumers who have no interest in or ability to reach your product or service. To learn more about geo-targeting, read Geo-targeting Strategies for Paid Search.
Another way to do this is by paying special attention to the content targeting settings within Adwords. Content targeting, which is also active by default, is used by Google to match the keywords in your adgroup(s) to thousands of publishers within the Google network, known as Adsense. Instead of relying only on relevant queries in Google to return your ad, it serves your ads on sites within the Google Adsense network that contain content it deems as relevant to your keywords. For example, if you are a national cosmetics company and have identified “spa accessories” as a keyword, your ad may appear next to articles that discuss everything from top-rated makeup essentials (very relevant) to the best national spa resorts (not relevant). As you can see, this makes it a bit more challenging to ensure you’re only receiving clicks from the most qualified audience. For this reason, it is very important you examine the costs and benefits of content targeting and determine if it is in the best interest of your campaign. If you do choose to test content targeting, it is important that you do so with caution, starting with a small budget as it is easy to quickly burn through your advertising budget in an ineffective manner.
To further target your paid search campaign, pay special attention to your keywords and match type settings in Adwords. Please see the following “tree structure” as an example to how keywords are structured within paid search campaigns.
As you can see, in the above illustration the campaigns (grey boxes) are broken up into “Dress Shoes,” “Sports Shoes” and “Casual Shoes” with the corresponding ad groups (white boxes) listed below each. Campaigns can be comprised of as little as 1 ad group or as many as 1,000. Keywords specific to each Adgroup (bulleted below each white box) are assigned accordingly. By breaking the paid search initiative into specific campaigns and ad groups such as these, you are able to precisely target your text ad messaging. The more relevant your keyword is to the term searched, the higher your quality score and placement in the engines, and therefore the more traffic your ads will likely receive. For example, writing a text ad on men’s dress shoes specifically is much more targeted than writing one text ad for an entire inventory of shoes.
Google offers 4 different keyword matching options, called match types, which instruct them on how to best match queried keywords to your text ads. Selecting the correct match type for your campaign is vital to ensuring your ads are served to the most qualified Web browsers and ensuring that your media dollars are spent effectively. To learn more about each match type and which is best suited for your needs, read Keyword Relevancy and the Broad Match Type. When using the broad match type, it’s important to note that Google may assume keywords are relevant to your ads that are in fact unrelated to your product or service. For example, Google may deem “cell phone” relevant to an office phone system provider. Although “phone” is a very relevant word to the company, “cell phone” (which generates a lot of traffic) is irrelevant to their offering and, therefore, not a term the company wants to allocate budget towards. You should list all of these keywords on your negative keyword list in Adwords to prevent Google from serving your ad when they are queried.
Once your campaign is targeted, the proper tracking in Adwords should be put in place in order to assess its performance and optimize it accordingly. The Adwords tracking pixel is placed in the HTML code of the page served immediately after a Web visitor submits a form or completes a purchase (this page is commonly referred to as the “thank you” page). When the form has been submitted, the pixel is “fired” causing the conversion to be recorded and tracked back to the keyword that the individual queried to initiate the conversion. This allows you to know which keywords are performing and which are not. Unless the sole purpose of your Web site is to drive traffic, tracking pixels are essential to analyzing and managing your campaign’s performance. To learn how to set up your tracking code, see “How do I add tracking code to my Web site” and “Where can I find my tracking code” on the Adwords help site.
Beyond set-up and tracking, Adwords beginners need to focus on ongoing management and optimization. Budgets are managed at the campaign-level in Adwords. Each campaign manager should adjust their budget and bids based on keyword performance. As we now know, setting tracking codes in Adwords allows us to determine which keywords are generating conversions. The better a keyword is performing, the more budget should be allocated to it in order to increase its positioning and (hopefully) traffic. Likewise, the keywords that are not performing should not receive as much, or any, budget. This process does involve some trial an error as you feel out the optimum bid needed for each keyword to maximize your return on ad spend. However, the resulting conversions are well worth the ongoing optimization efforts.
