We actively use AdWords for marketing of our software products. AdWords is not “setup and forget” tool. To improve and maintain its effectiveness I permanently track our campaigns and test different approaches, ad variations, targeting settings, bids and so on.
Also, I’m hunting for new and fresh ideas how to make the AdWords’ performance even better. Today, I’m happy to share an excellent article: 31 Killer Writing AdWords Ads Tips.
The article isn’t really new and fresh. It was published in October 2007. Nevertheless, I’m sure it’s actual and extremely useful for everyone who deals with AdWords. Check it out!
This post is a short list of basic rules for those who has recently signed up for Google AdWords account and doesn’t want to waste much money for learning curve.
Please consider the advice below with “for the first time” remark.
Focus on high quality traffic first
- Turn off Content Network advertising
- Allow only English language in targeting settings.
- Allow only USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and other “potentially profitable” countries (Nothing personal, just cold statistics).
Differentiate your ads
- Divide your keywords into several campaigns and groups by some syntax or semantic attributes. This will allow to create more focused ads for each group.
- In each group create two different ads with equal rotation probability.
- Constantly monitor those pairs of ads and replace the “weakest” one (with low CTR and conversion) with a new ad. I.e. test and look for the most effective ads for each group.
- Test various modifications of ad elements: URL, punctuation, caps, word order, etc. E.g: www.ProductName.com or www.productname.com or productname.com or ProductName.com; website or Web Site or web-site; and so on.
- Include search keywords in the text of your ads. Google will make them bold in search results and therefore your ad will be more visible among your competitors.
Improve your campaigns
- Try to increase bids for a couple of the most “profitable” phrases to improve their positions. But be careful and constantly monitor the effectiveness of this approach.
- Analyze your web logs, look for irrelevant queries and add them to the negative word list not to display your ads for them. Here is another good idea how to build negative word list
Start little and look what happens. Once you feel that you have full control and understanding of how Google AdWords works then you may turn on other countries, languages, campaigns, and ads.
Google AdWords is not a rocket science but it requires your attention and constant control to get maximum ROI out of your budget when you’re getting started.
Andrew Brice on JOS forum shared an idea on how to get your negative keywords set up correctly in AdWords to maximise your campaign’s ROI. Along with common practice of server log analysis he suggested to search for all your key AdWords terms at http://search.live.com. The ‘Related searches’ will show the phrases irrelevant to your product. You must add these as negative keywords at the campaign level in AdWords.
For example searching for “table plan” (Andy’s niche) brings up irrelevant (for Andy) searches of “Poker Table Plans”, “Picnic Table Plans” etc. So he can just add “Poker” and “Picnic” as negative keywords.
I’d like to share a similar approach. I use Google toolbar suggestions to find the negative keywords. For instance, if I type “help file” in the Google toolbar search box it brings a list of suggestions. Among the suggestions there is “help file extension” term. So “extension” is a candidate for the negative list.
Then, if I type a letter after the “help file”, e.g. “help file c”, the toolbar brings me “help file converter”. “Converter” also goes to the negative list: Dr.Explain does not convert, it creates help files. So, playing with letters after your search term in Google toolbar will help you significantly expand your negative word list and make your AdWords campaign more targeted.
