Crush Your Adwords Competitors With This...

Howdy,


Here's some advice I have for anyone looking to improve their Adwords campaigns.



Firstly, you should always set up three campaigns in AdWords for each of the following accounts (and maybe more in the future).

1.Campaign C: this is for ads showing on the content network (these are not triggered by searches, but rather are placed conceptually on a webpage. For example, Google looks at our ad group for seminar marketing, and will place that ad on websites about seminars, marketing, etc.)

2.Campaign G: this is for ads that appear on Google.com only, and are based on keywords. So if someone types in "seminar marketing" it will show on Google.

3.Campaign S: this is for ads that appear on the Google Search Network (such as Ask.com Myspace.com, etc.), and are based on keywords. For example, if someone goes to Myspace.com and searches for "seminar marketing" our ad will show on their results page.



Why do this? Many people create only one campaign, which is flawed. Under one campaign, Google mixes all the data together, so you can't tell at a glance if you're doing better on the Search Network or the Content Network. This way we know on the very first page how much we are spending on each source, and how well they are converting. Much cleaner.
AdWords Points

Hear some additional pointers that will help you get your AdWords campaigns running smoothly:

·Run for the border: If you're attempting to advertise in a highly competitive market, don't advertise in the United States at first. Other English-speaking countries such as England, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand are often less competitive; this allows you a smaller arena in which to sharpen your skills. Additionally, it will lower your overall ad spend. How? Google factors in your account performance history when determining your bid price; if you achieve a high click through rate in other countries, your bid price will be lower when you do decide to advertise in the US.

·Bid high at first: For that reason listed above, it's important to have a strong performance history. Therefore, you should plan to bid higher on your keywords initially in order to appear higher in the search results ( thereby improving your click through rate and your quality score), and then lower your bids over time.

·Use robots to blocks search engines: Search engines crawl your website in order to understand its purpose. Analytics will record some of these visits, which you may misinterpret as a potential sale. For example, if you're testing a new product and you want to see how many people reach an order now page, there may have only been three humans and 10 robots did visit the page. You would mistakenly conclude there were 13 sales, when in fact there was only three. In order to prevent this create a robots.txt file. This tells the search engines not to crawl a specific page, and helps keep your data consistent.

·Use AdWords Editor: Once you're on the road, you'll find Internet access to be costly and/or difficult. With the Editor, you can make changes to your account offline, then upload the changes when you have access. In addition, AdWords Editor allows you to copy changes made in one campaign and paste them into another; this alone saves hours of work!

·Bid on common misspellings: These terms tend to be much cheaper to bid on, and the competition is greatly reduced.

·Learn From Your Competitors Mistakes: You can score a lot of great information from your AdWords competition before moving online. Using Keyword Spy's Time Machine, you can see ads your competitors have used in the past (obviously, the ones they don't use anymore didn't work for them, and probably won't work for you). Their current winners can point you in the right direction for your new campaign. Are they asking a question in their headline? Do they include the keyword in the ad text? Do they highlight a pain point? Offer a solution? Learn from their mistakes (i.e. identify why certain angles don't work) and get your campaign off to a flying start.

·Use the Ad Preview Tool: If you want to preview your AdWords but don't want to accrue impressions, use Google's AdWords Preview Tool. It also allows you to search by country, region and language. Want to see what your ads look like in Thailand? Now you can.

In order to run a profitable AdWords campaign, the key is relevance. We want someone who types in "Learn Spanish" to click on our ad which says "Learn Spanish Now!" and is directed to a landing page that promotes Spanish classes ONLY.

Think of your sales process like a hallway. You want your prospects to open a door (click your ad) walk down the hall (learn about the course) and walk out the door at the end of the hall (pay for a course). Anything that does not explicitly aid in this process (Italian classes, links to other sites, directory links, etc.) are like adding more doors to the hallway. This gives your prospect a chance to head in a direction away from a sale.

If there is one thing I cannot stress enough, it's this: profit follows relevance.

Best of luck,
Coz