4 things you must do to create an effective AdWords Campaign
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is fast becoming one of the most popular means on online marketing. Google’s pay-per-click platform offers a great vehicle for getting your name out there - and the best part is that you can do with any size of budget.
To get the most out of pay per click advertising, it’s important to ensure that the right people are clicking on your Google AdWords campaigns at the right time.
Here are our top tips for getting the basics right:
1. Be focused, have a clear goal.
Like any project we do, we start at the end. What is the end goal? What does a successful project look like? How do we get there?
The same goes for Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Most AdWords campaigns are designed to ultimately increase sales or leads. So make sure you’re super clear on what the user has to do in order to become a lead or a sale. This will help inform your advert copy and call to action.
Having a clear goal also means everyone in the project understands what is being measured. So before you publish your Ad live, make sure you know how to measure the results.
2.Be Smart, target your ads.
Keeping your campaign well organised and targetted means you can focus on attracting the highest potential leads. There are three types of keyword targetting: Broad Match, Phrase Match and Exact Match. You want to be bidding highest for Exact Matches - this way you’re focusing the bulk of your budget on the highest potential leads.
Google’s incredible wealth of user data also means you should be using Google’s targeting criteria to focus on certain demographics. You can target based on location, interests, wealth, gender. There’s no point in aiming your ad at the wrong people, so Google makes it easier to focus on your ideal customer.
3. Be honest, write for your customer.
We all think we know exactly what our customer wants, but how many of us have actually asked them? Keep this in mind when writing copy for your ad. The first thing you need to do is capture the audience’s attention - this could be through emphasising your USP or highlighting a major benefit to your product.
Remember that the goal at this stage isn’t to sell your product, it’s to get a click. Don’t try convey your entire story, just give enough to arouse curiosity.
One more thing on your copy - be honest. Make sure that whatever page your ad leads to, it is relevant to what the visitor just clicked on. Your landing page has to be completely relevant to what your ad promoted.
4. Be successful, test and measure.
You don’t have to run with one single ad. When was the last time any of us got something completely right the first time?
Run tests. If two people on your team have different opinions of which keywords to focus on, run ads for each and measure them, just make sure that both ads are relevant to the landing page. For each test ad you run, measure the highest click through rate, the best cost per click, the highest conversion rate. By doing so you can continuously refine your ads into something super effective. And you’ll no doubt learn something new about your customer in the process.
