Pay per click advertising – running campaigns that work
So in my last two posts I explained what Google AdWords could do for your business, and then some tips on how to set up your campaign. Now we look at some slightly more advanced methods to improve your campaigns as they progress, and get a better understanding of how AdWords actually works and how it decides which ads get seen in the best positions.
Most new AdWords users think “ …but I only pay anything if my ad gets clicked, so it doesn’t really matter if my ads aren’t that great”. True, but Google only makes money when your ad gets clicked, so if it isn’t a good relevant one that gets a lot of clicks, Google won’t like it and it won’t show up in good positions very often, if at all.
How Google’s bidding system works
Let’s say your ad has appeared 1,000 times (known as ‘impressions’) and you have received 10 clicks. That gives you a clickthrough rate (or ‘CTR’) of 1%. Now let’s say you’ve bid a maximum of £2.00 per click. This means for every 100 times your ad appears, you’ll get one click, earning Google £2.00. So, Google will earn an average of 2p each time your ad appears.
And let’s suppose your a competitor has a clickthrough rate of 3% on his ads, but he’s only willing to pay 75p per click. For every 100 times his ads show, it will get 3 clicks, earning Google £2.25, so on average Google earns 2.25p every time your competitor’s ad shows (compared to your 2p). So, despite his lower bid price, Google will favour his ad over yours, and he’ll pay less than you for a better placed ad.
That’s why you need to write really relevant ads that get a high clickthrough rate. There are other factors that Google considers, but this is just a beginner’s guide, so let’s not get too complicated right now. Even with these few basics though, you now already know a lot more than most.
So how do you write ads that get a lot of clicks in Google?
If you’ve followed my earlier posts, by now you should have very specific ads for each keyword in your list, instead of one generic one. Some other quick tips to make your ads even better are:
- Include ‘negative’ keywords – these will stop your ads showing if certain words are keyed in. For example if you’re a hypnotherapist you’d want to exclude people who want to train as a hypnotherapist so you could use ‘course’, ‘train’ and ‘qualification’ as negative keywords. ‘Free’ is pretty well always a great negative keyword in any market.
- Use keywords in the ad – the ad will draw people’s attention to it if they see the keywords they have used actually appear in the ad – especially in the headline.
- Include benefits, not features – say what benefit your product or service delivers to customers, not just what it is. For example, if you’re a garage offering a pick-up service, stress the convenience of it in your ads.
- Use highly relevant landing pages – link your ads to pages that are highly relevant to your ads, as Google will also assess the relevance of the pages that your ads lead to (known as landing pages). If a lot of people click your ads, but leave your site quickly to see the results again, Google will know and it will count against you.
- Split test ads – if you’re not sure what words your customers respond to – do some tests. Google lets you write multiple versions of your ad and split test them to see which gets the most clicks. Test regularly to see what your customers like.
So you should now be able to dabble in AdWords yourself, if you’ve read all 3 of my posts. As your campaigns grow in size and you want better results, or even if you want to free up more of your time to do other things, talk to me about outosurcing your AdWords management.