How To: AdWords Without Breaking the Bank
When setting up an ad campaign, the best things you can do are: stay up to date on best practices, do frequent research, and stay organized. The following information should be in the back of your mind before you start setting up a campaign. Like most things in life, results don’t just happen by chance. It takes planning and hard work to achieve results. So, if you are willing to get your hands dirty, these tools will help you setup a campaign that works for your business.
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Install Tracking
If you don’t have tracking installed, you’re missing out on data that will help you refine your campaign, and assess how you’re doing. Make sure you have tracking installed on your site for your Analytics and AdWords account. This tracking information will help you identify your audience, make note of which pages are the most popular on your site, see how long a user stays on each page, and identify if there is a particular page that users are leaving.
Research Keywords & Determine Your Budget
This is the process of identifying relevant terms for your product, service, and industry. It is a huge part of marketing, because identifying strong, relevant keywords and strengthening these keywords is one of the ways you’re going to drive users to your site, (this is important for both organic and paid SEO). If you can get into the habit of researching keywords regularly, you will really be helping yourself out. Also, take time to identify which keywords you can specify as negative keywords. This way you can prevent your ads from showing to users that aren’t really looking for what you are promoting.
Available Keyword Research Tools
AdWords Keyword Planner (Free)
Google Trends (Free)
Bing Keyword Planner (Free)
Raven Tools (Paid)
There are some keywords out there that might be hard to compete with — especially if you’re a start up! This is why doing your research is a key part of setting up your campaign. Calculate your daily budget by taking your monthly budget, and dividing it by 30.4. For example, if your monthly budget is $500, you would take 500 and divide it by 30.4, giving you about $16.45 for your daily budget. If you see that some of the keywords you were hoping to use are too expensive, you’ll want to change your SEO game plan accordingly, or re-assess your budget for the month.
Structure your Campaign Carefully
We’ve talked about the importance of organizing information, and how you structure your campaign is a good example of this. You’ll want to structure keywords within your ad groups so they are grouped into related ad groups. Think about what makes you different from your competitors, and include this in your ads.
Creating your Ads
An ad is comprised of the components listed below. It’s important you focus on each part of the ad, in order to ensure you are optimizing it as much as possible for your campaign.
Headline: Utilize the headline to get an emotional response from your audience. Think about what headline would stand out to you, or if you’re stuck, see what your competitors are doing and decide how you’re different.
Description: Gives an overview of the product or service you are promoting and should include a call-to-action. The key thing here is making sure that your description is relevant to the content on you landing page, as well as the keywords you are using, and the display URL.
Display URL: The URL that is shown to users within your ad. Try to include one of your keywords within the URL in a way that makes sense and doesn’t seem forced. Again, making sure everything in your ad is relevant.
Landing Page: Where a user will go after they have clicked your ad. An easy-to-navigate, eye-catching landing page is crucial to the success of your ad campaign. Make sure the ad is linking to a page that makes sense, and that the page is laid out in a way that will encourage a conversion.
Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions can help increase click-through rates on ads, and there are several extensions available. Choose the extension that is most in-line with your online goals.
Sitelink Extension – Link to specific products or service pages
Review Extension – Show reviews from past clients or customers
Click-to-Call phone numbers – Great for mobile users, as it makes contacting your company quick and easy
Location Extension – Gives the user an idea of where you’re located
Callout Extensions – Allows you to add more text to your ad and include a call-to-action
Turn on Ad Scheduling
If you’re seeing users are visiting your site, or clicking your ads on certain days or times of the week, make a note of this, and consider running your ads then. Also, if your business is open during certain hours of the day, and you have the click-to-call extension enabled, for example, set these ads to only run when you are open.
Location Targeting
Consider the countries, cities, or neighborhoods that can purchase your product (if you have an online store), or the locations that will be a good fit for your services. Location targeting allows you to focus your ads on the customers that are in a particular location, or set of locations.
Keep these tools on how to AdWords and you’ll be on your way to having a successful campaign without breaking the bank!
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