Google Adwords Advertising

November 24, 2009

Getting Started With Pay Per Click Advertising

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 3:40 am

Pay per click advertising methods are becoming increasingly attractive to many companies that want to promote their business on the Internet. Instead of relying solely on traffic from organic search results, pay per click advertising platforms such as Google Adwords can help your company achieve prominent placement on the search engine.

Google adwords may seem expensive to some, however, it can get target leads into your website. Below are some guidelines for starting on Pay Per Click campaign.

Step 1: Define your ad budget. Google adwords, and other PPC programs, allow its users to set a daily or maximum ad budget. This option is great for tracking your campaigns and allows you to spend at a level you’re comfortable with. Do an initial test or survey your market first and set a low daily limit. On the contrary, you can put up several ads all at once in different markets, if you can afford it. You then retain the ones that produce results and drop the ones that do not work.

Step 2: Decide what type of risks you are willing to take. Boris Mordkovich, author of the book “Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook” points out that PPC advertising with the major search engines is a less risky endeavor than conventional marketing campaigns, but certain search engines will offer you a higher return on investment than others. The ones that do offer a higher ROI may cost you more, so you need to decide beforehand what types of risks you are willing to take.

Step 3: Choose your keywords. There are many free online tools that you can use to discover the most relevant keywords for your market. Keywords are the backbone of every pay per click campaigns. Selecting the wrong keywords can be disastrous to your campaign so you need to spend some time to make sure that you get the right keywords. Aside from keyword research, you may have to do A – B split tests to select a winning list of keywords.

Step 4: Review your campaign’s results. Most PPC platforms provide a convenient reporting tool that gives you the ability to adjust your campaign based on the data you gathered so far. Reports will usually include the number of clicks for each keyword, the time of day your ad was clicked, and the location of those who clicked your ads.

Step 5: Optimize your ads. When you have finished reviewing the reports, you can then pull the plug on low performing keywords and only run ads on keywords that brought in the most results. This list of keywords will allow you to focus more on creating and optimizing your ad copies.

It is easy to setup PPC campaigns but each campaign must be monitored and fine-tuned to bring in profits. Follow these five steps to get results out of Google adwords and other PPC advertising programs.

Marketing with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to find more sales. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the best skills to have when using Adwords – and there are several good training guides available online.

October 22, 2009

High Impact Ad Writing Tips for Your Google Adword Campaign

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , , — Adwords Marketing @ 8:48 am

Creating Google Adwords campaigns that generate results are often difficult, particularly when operating in a niche that is extremely competitive, and when utilizing keywords that are also being used by your competitors.  The difference between your copy and theirs will come down to semantics that is, unique ways you present the information and attract attention from your target audience.  You can do this by writing and testing a variety of ads, but the good news is, a lot of the work has already been done for you!The intricacies in writing effective ads that generate hundreds to thousands of clicks are already known to many affiliate marketers.

Perry Marshall, the author of The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords explains that customers and viewers of your ads will only convert into prospects or leads when they can truly resonate with the message delivered in the ad.  Using the same tone, language and conversational style as the customer can drive up your click through rate and bring hundreds, if not thousands of highly interested prospects back to your site.

Here are just five ways you can begin writing compelling ads for your Google Ad words campaign:

1. Own the unimaginable or inconceivable. People continue to be attracted to simply out-of-this-world claims; even if they don’t believe it, the idea piques their interest and they are likely to click on your ad. Evoke their curiosity by presenting out-of-this-world claims, and see how those clicks multiply!

2. Give a secret. A lot of people wanted to get updated and informed about products or services for them to come up with intelligent choices. Revealing some secrets in your ad or adding a feature story is sure to keep these people highly-interested in your ad campaign. It is essential employing this elaborate scheme when you establish a new product or service in the market.

3. Never underestimate the power of ellipses. A good way to solicit more clicks is to add three dots (also known as ellipses) at the body copy of your AdWords ad. Readers or viewers normally react to them, thinking that there are other surprising info at hand, and are inclined to checking the ad to discover more. Ellipses are useful in cases where your ad answers a question or recommends a solution to a problem since they create a certain level of curiosity from viewers, and makes their response rate higher.

4. Capitalize each of your leading words. In formulating an ad that creates strong impact to viewers, you need to capitalize your keywords, except placeholders like ‘in’, ‘the’, ‘and’. These ads are easy to read and naturally attract attention when they are sitting next to other, similar ads in your market. Using capital letters also renders professional look on your ad and elicits trust from the audience or viewer.

5. Use powerful take-action words in your headline. ‘Free’ is perhaps the most powerful word in advertising because it provides an upfront incentive for anyone who clicks on the ad. These set of words also create increased click-throughs and allows ‘hungry’ leads to almost instantly click on your ads: ‘Discover’, ‘Get’, or ‘Learn’.

October 16, 2009

How To Monitor Results With Pay Per Click

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 2:49 am

Online marketing is now essential for businesses as the internet becomes more integrated in our daily lives. Pay per click advertising is one of the most effective form of online advertising today. PPC campaigns draw traffic from search engines by displaying ads relevant to what is being searched. When clicked, these ads take visitors to a sales page or landing page.

When executed properly, PPC campaigns are an effective way to generate interest in or sell a product. PPC campaigns can be set up through Google Adwords and other advertising publishing platforms, and can be monitored and tweaked as the campaign runs for better performance. Still, one of the most important elements of PPC advertising is measuring the effectiveness of the campaign. Since all of these campaigns can be monitored for click-throughs and conversions, ad publishers can set up reports and metrics to determine exactly which types of ads are getting the most results.

Traffic metrics is the most basic way to measure the effectiveness of your ads. Monitoring your site’s traffic will not only tell you how many people have visited your site, where they are in the world, and can also sometimes reveal how they arrived at your site.

The data that directly affects your sales is your conversion rates. Simply put, your conversion rate corresponds to the number of ads that were clicked and the sales that resulted from them. Monitoring this data will reveal how much have to spend on advertising before making a sale. However, conversion rates aren’t only limited to sales of a product.

Joseph Thornton, author of the book, “The Online Advertising Playbook” explains that site registration, submitting contact information or requesting a download of a product or service are all forms of visitor interaction that could qualify as a ‘conversion’ when they are directly related to a PPC campaign.

Another effective way of evaluating your PPC campaigns is to track the conversion of your keywords. Tracking conversions down to the keyword level requires a greater effort on your part but this information will tell you exactly which keywords you need to drop and which keywords you need to optimize your site around.

Finally, determining the rankings of your advertising segment will help you determine which placement is the best for your particular niche or industry. Google Adwords rotates the ads in its sidebar column to ensure a fair advantage for all advertisers, but there are some spots that are considered ‘Featured ads’. These spots may have more value for you in a very competitive market, and can make it easier for you to decide where and how to promote your PPC campaign and achieve the best possible results.

Marketing with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to find more customers. Writing quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are many good training guides available online.

September 23, 2009

Effective Ways To Use PPC With Branding Campaigns

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 7:47 am

The many advances in the Pay per click advertising industry over the past decade made it now possible to run a PPC branding campaign. Branding campaigns are really just a long-term method for a company to influence customers and PPC now allows companies to do branding as a highly focused and quantifiable effort.

Google Adwords is just one of several PPC advertising options available on the web, and all types of businesses can design an effective branding campaign by using PPC advertising for various promotions and offers. Boris Mordkovich, author of the “Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook” offers business owners and entrepreneurs several tips for managing their branding campaign with PPC advertising.

He encourages all PPC advertisers to monitor their branding campaign regularly and tweak the strategy as they go; varying the ads only slightly can have a significant impact on results, and this is a strategy that many successful PPC and Google Adwords advertisers use regularly in order to optimize their efforts. Some of the best ways to tap into this opportunity for your branding campaign involve:

1. Set up your pay per click advertising model as a separate part of your ad campaign. While the ultimate goal involves branding and generating a direct response from customers, pay per click marketing is very different from conventional campaigns. Make sure you are separating it from other marketing initiatives so you can manage the metrics and get the most accurate information directly from statistics.

2. Place special emphasis on keywords, not on your USP. Conventional marketing dictates the use of a unique selling proposition in a marketing campaign. PPC advertising is all about the keywords and keyphrases being searched by your target market. You would not be able to target the right market if you don’t speak the language of your customers. Take the time to uncover these keywords and phrases and use them in creating your ads.

3. Switch strategies often. One of the best features of pay-per-click marketing is that you can instantly get marketing data out of your campaign. Use the data you gather to fine-tune your campaign and gain better results from your ads. Even a slight change in the wording of your ad could spell the difference between success and failure.

4. Create a relevant landing page for your ad. Customers are more than likely to stay on your web site if you immediately present them the information they came to see. Don’t just link your ads to your homepage. Look to develop a separate landing page filled with information relevant with your ad’s topic.

5. Produce innovative ad headlines and copy. You are just one of the countless businesses that are vying for the attention of your customers through PPC. Stand out from the crowd by writing exceptional ads. Think about the benefits of hiring a copywriter; you can get better results if you let a copywriter do his magic in those few lines of text.

Advertising with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to attract more sales. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the best skills to have when using Adwords – and there are several good training resources available online.

September 9, 2009

Conversion-Tracking Tips for Google Adwords

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 3:21 am

The next step after you’ve selected your keywords and written a compelling ad is to track your conversions. Any Adwords campaign would not be successful if users do not have the tools for tracking conversions.

You have the option of simply using your landing page hits and number of sales from a link to analyze your conversions. But it’s also worth looking at the tools Google provide its Adwords users for acquiring conversion data. Here are some tips and guidelines for using Google’s conversion tracking tools.

Google uses a Javascript code to gather conversion data from your links. You need to embed this code in your links. This method can also be used in most checkout processes including shopping carts.

This tool does not show the number of visitors to your site; but it tracks click-throughs on your ads that resulted in a conversion. Once you place the simple code into your website, you can then access the data in the Reports Center of Google Adwords under ‘Campaign Summary’.

The only requirements for installing conversion tracking on your website is that you are running approved Adwords ads on the site, and that the code snippet is placed only on your conversion page. If you’re missing either of these elements, you will not be able to generate accurate data about your Adwords campaign.

You can confirm that the code is working by doing a complete conversion yourself. Just remember not to click on your own ads as this is against Adword’s TOS. Once a conversion is done, you will be able to see the click-through and conversion data within twenty-four hours.

If you are using PayPal or another payment checkout system, you can still track conversions by setting up your Google Adwrods conversion tracker correctly. All you need to do in this case is set up a conversion confirmation web page within PayPal; you can then insert the Google Adwords JavaScript code directly into the web page. Whenever a customer completes the PayPal or other shopping cart process, you’ll have a record of their visit, and, most importantly, the conversion.

Authors Sarah Milstein, J.D. Biersdorfer and Mathew McDonald of the book “Google: The Missing Manual”, emphasize the importance of determining your total cost-per-conversion for every campaign at any given time.

Your total cost-per-conversion shows you how much you are spending before generating a sale. This information is vital for determining if you’re campaign is a success or not, and for optimizing your campaign. You can get this information by dividing the number of conversions in a given period with your total campaign cost for the same period.

Advertising with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to find more sales. Writing quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are several quality training guides available online.

August 25, 2009

How to Improve PPC Ad Performance

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 3:39 am

Maximizing your click through rate for Google Adwords and other PPC campaigns can take time and lots ot testing, but there are several ways to fast-track your way to better ad performance. One of the most well-known strategies for improving PPC ad campaigns is to run several variations of the ad and monitor results; changing only a few words and sentences can make a significant difference to the click-through rate, and you can then discard the low-performing ads instantly.

There are other methods you can use to improve PPC campaigns. Peter Kent, the author of ‘Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies’ names several methods for improving Quality Score on Google Adwords and fine-tuning campaigns. Here are five methods you can immediately use to improve your ad’s performance:

1. Apply negative match keywords.

Using negative match keywords on your campaign can weed out inappropriate clicks and only allow quality leads to your site. Google Adwords does this for you automatically. You just need to indicate your negative keywords and the system will do all the work for you.

2. Alter major keywords’ CPCs.

Changing CPC for a campaign can enhance the click through rates of your ads. Just go to the Campaign Management Tab in Google Adwords and click on ‘Tools’. The tools option also gives you the ability to manipulate almost all aspects of your ads in Adwords.

3. Review rejected ads and resubmit them.

Google Adwords reviews all ads and either accept them to run in their network or reject them. You can find all rejected ads under the Campaign Management section. These ads can be edited and resubmitted any time. Review your ads often and don’t hesitate to resubmit rejected ads after changing them a bit.

4. Implement ‘Dayparting’.

‘Dayparting’ is a technique wherein you define the time when your ads will run. This is mainly done to improve your click through rates since your running ads only when your target audience is at their most receptive state. For instance, you are marketing restaurant coupons, it would be better to run your ads a few hours before lunch or dinner when people are searching for a place to eat.

5. Listen to your target market.

You need to study your target market first before you hook them in with a compelling ad. Who is your target market? What are their interests and passions? Check out other ads that they are responding to and see how they are written. Listen to your target market by visiting their blogs and forums.

Fine-tuning an Adwords campaign takes time because we mostly use a trial and error approach. However, the above guidelines have already been proven to improve PPC campaigns faster. Apply them now on your campaigns and see results faster.

Marketing with a Pay Per Click Program is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to find more sales. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Pay Per Click – and there are many quality training guides available online.

August 19, 2009

Ways To Prevent Click Fraud With Google Adwords

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 11:54 am

Click fraud poses a serious threat to PPC advertisers as well as to the credibility of PPC networks. As of 2008, researchers estimate $1.6 billion were lost to click fraud. It occurs when a competitor clicks on your ads to reduce your budget or when web robots or spiders to click on ads fraudulently.

PPC networks, including Google Adwords, confirm the existence of click fraud and are working hard to solve it. All we can do as PPC advertisers is to tweak our campaigns to reduce the risk of click fraud. Here are some tips for safeguarding your campaigns:

1. Keep an eye on your click through rates. It is easy to review your click-through rates and conversions with Google. You can even print out a daily or weekly report to monitor any bizarre activity. You might also want to reconcile your click-through rates with your actual web site traffic report. Check for IP addresses and websites that access your site regularly.

2. Set-up a daily budget. Limit your advertising costs on Adwords by setting up a budget. Your budget should be at a reasonable level allowing you to maintain it for several months. If you are a target of click fraud, your losses will only be limited to your specified budget.

3. Lay down a daily click limit. Adwords managers would do well to setup a daily click limit, according to Bruce C. Brown, author of the book “The Complete Guide to Google Advertising”. This allows you to track the number of clicks on your ads. Once the click limit has been reached, your ad will disappear from the Adwords network.

4. Use the geographic location feature. Limiting your ad to specific markets is one of the best ways to ensure that you’re not making yourself vulnerable to fraudulent activities. Why waste your Adwords budget on countries that you never do business in? Do some research to find out where your best target market is, and focus on showing ads only in those countries or regions.

5. Don’t sign up with PPC programs that offer something for free. There are several PPC companies that offer free products, services of downloadable tools as an incentive for you to sign up. Be cautious about these, especially if it involves downloading something to your computer that ‘monitors’ your keyword campaign. However, getting a Google Adwords ‘credit’ when you sign up with a hosting company or domain name registrar is safe; as long as you’re working directly with Google Adwords, you don’t have to worry about fraudulent activities that would affect your budget.

Google employs its own fraud protection team to investigate click fraud cases. Report your case to Google immediately if you think you’ve fallen prey to click fraud.

Advertising with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to find more customers. Writing quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are several good training guides available online.

July 16, 2009

Launch Effective Adwords Campaigns With Keyword Tools

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 3:09 am

Google adwords is all about having the correct keywords and keyphrases your market use. There are countless keyword and keyphrases variations in any given niche and simply guessing the actual keywords relevant to your niche is a lot like high stakes gambling wherein all the odds are stacked against you. Always do your homework first to build a list of the right keywords and keyphrases using keyword tools.

Adwords experts follow a three-step method for keyword and keyphrase building. The first step is to use the most common and obvious terms and run them on a keyword tool to find out each keyword’s search volume. The second step involves finding out relevant keywords and other appropriate terms being searched by your target markets. The last step focuses on optimizing a campaign by tweaking or removing keywords for better results.

If you’re looking for ways to build an effective Adwords campaign, you’ll need to choose the right keyword tool and then follow the three-step strategy outlined above. Howie Jacobson, author of the book ‘Adwords for Dummies’ explains that the most favorable keyword tools you can use for PPC campaigns are: Google’s Keyword Selector Tool; Keyword Discovery; Word Tracker; and a basic Thesaurus.

You have free access to Google Keyword Selector Tool in your adwords account. This tool is great for searching synonyms and other relevant or appropriate keywords for your niche by entering your preliminary keywords into it. This tool can also make comparisons between keywords in terms of search volume, monthly trends, advertiser competition, and average cost per click.

Keyword Discovery is a paid service that allows you to manage several lists of keywords, compare data, and produce reports with ease. This is a more robust keyword analysis tool than the free Google Keyword Selector Tool, and is most appropriate for experienced Adwords users and SEO experts. If you’re comfortable with paying for the service, Keyword Discovery can help you create comprehensive lists of keywords to help you target very specific groups in your market.

Word Tracker is a keyword tool that has two versions: a paid service and a free tool. The paid service is obviously better than the free tool. However, the free tool provides basic search information and is quite useful for comparing search volumes for a specific keyword. Word Tracker’s data are also known to differ from Google’s Keyword Selector Tool.

Keyword tools are really effective at digging deep into a niche and getting long-tail keywords and other relevant keyterms. Keyword tools are convenient for comparing hundreds of keyword data side by side and even allow you to export all your work into an electronic spreadsheet or other soft document format to back-up and store your data locally.

Understanding what your target market is searching for will help you create compelling and high-impact Adwords ads which in turn can increase click-through rates. If you’re just starting out, take advantage of the free tools available and print out or organize the results to build your baseline keyword list.

Advertising with Google Adwords is a powerful technique that most websites can use to find more customers. Writing quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are several good training guides available online.

June 13, 2009

Write Better Ads Using Google Adwords

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 7:13 am

Google Adwords continues to be one of the most effective PPC advertising models on the web, and businesses of all sizes can get started with Adwords within a few hours. Writing effective ads is a critical element of the campaign; since you only have a 35 characters of text in each line to get the attention of your audience, the words you select and the statements you make must be very specific and structured in a way that generates clicks.

Expert adwords users follow a basic structure when composing their adwords ad. Read on if you are a new Google adwords user and use these guidelines in writing your first ad.

1. Use the keyword in the headline. Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd, authors of the book “The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords” explain that more people click on ads when the headline includes the keyword or keyphrase that they were searching on. This means it is to your advantage to include the keyword or keyphrase in that very first line; weave these words into the headline to create an attention-grabbing headline that has the potential to generate more clicks.

2. Describe your benefit in the second line. Most readers will respond to an ad that clearly lists a key benefit near the beginning. Make sure you are listing your benefit on the second line, not your offer or a feature. Think about giving them what they want’ before highlighting a feature or a special offer.

3. Use the third line for your feature or offer. When you’ve clearly stated the benefit, then it’s time to introduce your special offer or a feature that supports the benefit. Keep it short and simple, and make sure this line does not overpower the second line.

4. Include your landing page in the last line. You can link your ads into any page or URL within your website. Do not link all your ads to your homepage. You can create a specific landing page for each ad to match the page’s content with that of your ad’s. This can also be used to obtain performance data on your ads, which you will need for optimizing your campaign later.

5. Run a similar ad to improve your campaign. You can run two similar but differently worded ads to improve your campaign. We do this to know whether slight changes in words or ad structure can produce more clicks. Track which ad performs better and drop the less effective ad.

All elements needed for success in Google Adwords can be mastered with practice. Remember to track your performance always so that you can pinpoint areas for improvement. In any case, don’t delay your usage of Google adwords and follow these tips to start running ads now.

Marketing with a Pay Per Click Program is an effective technique that most online-businesses can use to find more sales. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the best skills to have when using Pay Per Click – and there are several good training guides available online.

June 5, 2009

How to Create Your Google AdWords Campaign

Filed under: Google Ads — Tags: , — Adwords Marketing @ 5:43 am

Google Adwords is still the undisputed leader in pay-per-click advertising and traffic generation systems on the Internet today. Use it well and you can get a lot of highly targeted traffic to your websites and blogs. Knowing the basic mechanics of how Google Adwords operate is not enough. You also need to know proven strategies and tactics for a successful PPC campaign such as writing compelling ad copies, developing ad groups and biding for the right keywords.

No matter what niche you’re in or what type of audience you are trying to attract, there are some specific guidelines to follow when using Google AdWords. Here are some important tips for creating a Google Adwords campaign that gets results:

1. Use Adwords Wizard to set up your account. Creating a Google Adwords account is easy with the Adwords wizard. The Adwords wizard will take you into a tour of all basic account management tools; the section wherein you setup your campaign using just a few clicks and where you can choose the regions you want your ads to run.

2. Produce effective ads. Each component of your ad must follow a particular formula for it to be effective: A keyword or keyphrase must be used in the headline. State a benefit by the second line. Mention special promotions or product features in the third line. Finally, the fourth line must contain a URL link back to your landing page or website. This proven formula is taught by best-selling adWords strategy books; such as Perry Marshall’s “The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords” and Peter Kent’s “Pay per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies”.

3. Search for the right keywords. You need to have the right keywords and/or keyphrases that will attract your market to your site. Google offers a solid keyword selector tool that will allow you to dig deep and find appropriate keywords for your niche. Utilize this tool as much as possible when creating your campaign or even before building up your website or blog.

4. Learn how to keyword match. You can use the keyword tool within the Google Adwords campaign module to conduct broad matches, phrase matches and exact matches for a given set of keywords. This allows you to broaden your scope of words for a particular campaign. You can also eliminate certain words with the negative match; this ensures that your ads will not show up on search results for users who type in that phrase. Keyword matching allows you to refine your campaign so that it is much more targeted.

5. Create a budget. One of the best feature Google Adwords offers is the ability to specify a daily budget for your campaigns. Just enter the total amount you are willing to spend daily and Google will automatically take funds from your account. Start with a low budget first to minimize risk. Get some data first at the start of your campaign. You want to know the exact cost of a lead and the actual keywords that convert to a sale. You can then optimize your campaign based on your data and at the same time set a higher budget allowance for even bigger rewards.

Advertising with Google Adwords is a powerful technique that most online-businesses can use to attract more customers. Writing quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are several quality training resources available online.

Older Posts »

Blog at WordPress.com.