Making Google Adwords Work for the Small Business

I have started a Google Adwords campaign for GirlMogul…again. I was spectacularly unlucky with my previous campaign where I spent a lot of money on a management company and received 4 sales. Yes, 4… So now I am trying it again, but on my own, with a little coaching from a mentor (paid). So here’s what I am learning (GOOGLE ADWORDS SECRETS REVEALED)… not really.

This time I am using Adwords to build my email list, so I am sending people who click on my ad directly to a page where the only thing they can do is sign up for a free report and my newsletter. There is no sales or product attached to this. So far it’s working better – people seem more inclined to give an email in exchange for a report than they were to click on my ad, go to my page and by a product. If they didn’t buy the product I had paid for the click and lost them forever. Here at least, I have an opportunity to develop a relationship with them and sell them slowly on the benefits of doing business with me.

Here are 5 tips to remember:
1. Start small. Pick just a few keywords to start with – if you’re selling baby blankets, pick just a few words that relate to baby blankets (like baby blanket, babies blanket, infant blanket) and start that as a campaign and ad group.
2. Write two ads to go against this group. Use the key words in the headline and the body. Make sure the ads have only one difference between. For instance, two different headlines, same body or same headline, different body texts. Capitalize the first letter of the words in your headline, ad body and url
3. Make sure the url links to to a specific landing page for that product, not just your home page. If people are interested in the product, get them there as quickly as possible
4. Set a small budget of 5-10 dollars a day to start. Turn off the content network and focus on the Search portion
5. Watch for 50 clicks. You want to get at least 50 clicks so you can evaluate your ads keywords. Here’s what you’re looking for:
What’s your overall clickthrough rate? 1%, 5% or 22%? Is one keyword pulling you down or lifting you up?
-Is one ad consistently pulling in all the clicks over the other? Then that might be your winner.

Now what do you do about it? Is one ad working better with one or two keywords (this can be tracked better through Google Analytics reporting. If you don’t have it, get it) But you can also look at your keywords and your ads. Are there really two distinct set of keywords – baby blanket vs. Infant blankets? You might want to take those keywords out, write another set of two ads and test that, using Infant throughout the ad
Also, if one ad is the clear winner, then pause the loser, and try another ad variation (again with only one thing different) until another winner emerges – You want to always up your click through rate
Do you have low performing keywords – see if you need to write a more targeted ad or up your budget (make sure you can afford) to see if you can get these keywords working for you. If not, you may want to remove it.

Once you have a healthy click through rate (I am still trying to find what the experts say that is) with your small set of keywords then you can add more keywords and try more ad variations. Just remember always test your ad variations (have at least two running) so you’re always showing the best one – and looking for improvement. I would recommend adding keywords slowly and grouping them – don’t mix up baby and infant for example.

Don’t fret – this could take a while a week or two of testing, to get the number of clicks and to fine tune, but far better to do it this way and set the stage for success then waste a bunch of money up front.

After your click thru rates have reached an acceptable number you’ll want to look at your conversion rates – the number of clickers who take an action (Buy, sign up for a newsletter) etc. That’s when you’ll need to think through your landing page copy.

Good luck.