Category Archives: Adwords

Adwords: Building an Attractive Ad

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Are your ads as attractive to your prospective customers as they could be?

Your customers choose to go to your website over your competitors’ based only on what they see in your ads. If your ads don’t grab their attention, you could be missing out on valuable sales, leads or traffic.

I don’t know what to put in my ad. Help!

As a basic rule, use clear, well-written, and specific ad text to highlight the differentiating characteristics of your product or service. The idea is to attract the attention of those who are looking for your product or service.

Remember to think about your ads from your customer’s perspective, the video below will show you how!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GI7tsbwnVk

Tips to create a compelling ad:

  • Use a strong call-to-action (for example: ‘Buy now’, ‘Call today’)
  • Include prices
  • Include special offers and unique selling points
  • Make sure the text is highly relevant to the keywords in each ad group
  • Use your keywords in your ad
  • Direct users to the most relevant landing page on your website with a specific destination URL for each ad

What does a good ad look like?

Here are examples of both a good and bad ad so you can learn what works.

The good…

SLR Digital Cameras
Sale Now On. Voted Best After-Sales
Service. 80% Off Most Cameras
www.CameraShopSite.com/SLR

Destination URL:
www.camerashopsite.com/SLR.html

What’s right?

  • This headline focuses on the specific offering and contains relevant keywords (eg. SLR Digital Cameras)
  • This description details specific product offerings and benefits
  • This destination URL leads to a landing page related specifically to SLR cameras

And the bad…

online camera store
we sell the main brands
great prices here
www.camerashopsite.com

Destination URL:
www.camerashopsite.com

What’s wrong?

  • This headline focuses on a company description instead of on core selling points and the keywords that trigger it
  • This description is too general – it would be much better if it focused on specific products or services offered by the company – and it doesn’t contain a call to action
  • This destination URL leads to the company’s home page, rather than to a page promoting a specific product or service

Please note these examples are fictional and are intended for illustrational purposes only.

I’ve written a good ad, but is it attracting customers?

You can check your ad performance on the ‘Ads’ tab in your account. Look at the clickthrough rate (CTR) of each ad to see how many people clicked on your ad after they saw it. Ads that produce a relatively low CTR (e.g. less than 1% on the search network) can often be improved by implementing the tips above and learning from the example.

You can easily test multiple ads in each ad group, each with different offers and call-to-action phrases, to see which ads perform the best. Even subtle differences could have a big impact on your success.

We suggest testing 2 to 4 ads in an ad group at a time. This will help you assess what works, at no additional cost. AdWords will rotate your ads and automatically show the highest-performing ads more often. Then, you can edit or delete the ads with the lowest CTRs and repeat the test to get the most successful ads possible. Learn more about how to assess your ad performance.

You can find all of this information and more in our online AdWords Beginner’s Guide.

Adwords Welcome Pack Email 2

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Here is the second email that you receive after you join Adwords.

Hello,

Keywords are the search terms (words or phrases) which trigger your ad, and they are critical to the success of your AdWords advertising. This email explains how you can choose the most effective keywords, assess your keyword performance and how this affects the amount you pay.

Top tips for great keywords

A great keyword is:

  • Ideally, 2-3 words long
  • Specific (keywords that are too broad or general will not reach users as effectively as keywords that are highly targeted)
  • Directly related to the text in your ad
  • Directly related to the page your ad links to (specified by the destination URL)

What keywords should I choose?

First, look at your website content and write down every word, word combination or phrase that describes each category of your business. This is the starting point for creating your keyword lists.

Include all brand and product names as well as plurals, synonyms and alternate spellings for each word or phrase. Capitalization does not matter. Take out keywords that are very generic, irrelevant, or obscure.

Then, group your keywords into close-knit themes and create a new ad group for each theme. Put your keywords into these new ad groups. For example, if your campaign is for digital cameras, you can group together mini digital cameras in one ad group and SLR digital cameras in another.

Try using negative keywords. Negative keywords prevent your ad from showing when a word or phrase you specify is part of a search term. If you specify the negative keyword -repair, for instance, your ad won’t show for search terms such as digital camera repair.

Want more keyword information and examples?

How can I tell if my keywords are working well?

Check your keyword performance regularly in the ‘Keyword’ tab of your account.

An ‘Eligible’ status means your keyword is eligible to trigger ads. Click on the icon in the status column to get more detail on your individual keyword performance.

Then, one of the most important metrics to assess is the clickthrough rate (CTR), as it shows the proportion of people who clicked on your ad after they saw it. Keywords that produce a relatively low CTR (e.g. less than 1% on the search network) can often be improved. Implementing the tips above will help improve your keyword performance. A higher CTR will help to increase your ad’s position on Google.

Learn more about what keyword metrics to look out for.

How do my keywords impact how much I pay?

If your keywords are well chosen and you follow the tips above, your ads may show in a higher position or at a lower cost.

AdWords bidding works on an auction-style system, with advertisers bidding for keywords that will trigger their ads to appear. As multiple advertisers will often bid on the same keywords, Google must determine which ads will show, and in what position on the page. To do this, it looks at both CPC bids and the quality of your keywords:

  • Cost-per-click bids (Maximum CPCs) are the amount you are willing to pay when someone clicks on your ad
  • Quality score relates to how relevant your ads and keywords are to searches on Google, which is determined by a number of things, including your CTR

Find out more about how keyword bidding and quality can affect your ads.

If you’d like more information about keywords, you can find all this and more in the online AdWords Beginner’s Guide.

Sincerely,

Laura

The Google AdWords Team

P.S. Next week we’ll cover everything you need to know to write eye-catching ad texts!

Adwords Max Settings

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There are those of us who know all the limits of Google Adwords but a very good amount of us that do not.

  • 25 Campaigns
  • 2,000 Ad Groups per Campaign
  • 2,000 Keywords per Ad Group
  • 50 Ads per Ad Group (Any Format)
  • About 50,000 Keywords per Account

Most users will never reach the limits put in place by Google.  You just need to be strategic when setting up your Ad Groups.  Setup one Campaign with three to five Ad Groups. Each Ad Group can target specific Keywords with specific Ads. Take your time there is no hurry in getting these up and running. Google will always be there. It is a lot easier to set it up right the first time then to go back and redo everything again later.

For those of you out there that are Go Getters, Google will display a message warning you that you are reaching the limits of the account. If you are one of them and need more of everything, the easiest way to fix this is to add the My Client Center.  This will let you create multiple accounts and join them in one easy to manage interface.

Adwords Welcome Pack Email 1

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I know that everyone that signs up with Adwords gets these emails, but like most people I tend to delete them and never read through them to see if there is anything new or useful. So here is the first email.

Hello,

Welcome to Google AdWords! We want to wish you every success with your new online campaign and let you know there is help at hand if you need it.

To get you started we’ve designed a short email series, The AdWords Welcome Pack, to give you a solid foundation to achieve success with your new online campaign.

This email covers the top 4 things you should know once your ads are set up and activated: how you can see your ad, pay for your AdWords advertising, control your costs and organize your account.

You’ll receive your next 5 emails on a weekly basis, so keep an eye out for them!

1. Where is my ad?

Check if your ad is up and running using the Ad Preview tool. Type a keyword from your account into the Ad Preview tool, and it will show you exactly which ads are appearing for your keywords in any given location, including your own ad.

We suggest you view your ad with the Ad Preview tool instead of searching on Google. When you search for your ad multiple times on Google, it can affect your ad performance by showing your ad too many times without being clicked on.

If you can’t see your ad, use the Ads Diagnostic Tool to help identify the reason it’s not showing. Remedying the problem can be simple. Bear in mind that your ad will only show once you have entered your billing details. If you haven’t done this yet, log in to your account now to select one of the payment methods below and activate your account.

2. How can I pay for my AdWords advertising?

Available payment options depend on the country of your billing address and the currency with which you make payments. You’ll see the options available to you on our Payment Options page.

To enter your billing information, select the Billing tab in your account and click the Billing Preferences link. Once you’ve chosen a billing method, learn more about your payment options and how you can print invoices in our online AdWords Beginner’s Guide.

3. What will my AdWords advertising cost?

With AdWords, you are in control! You control the amount you pay with your daily budget and maximum cost-per-click bids (Max CPC).

Your daily budget is the maximum you’re willing to spend per day. This amount is entirely up to you and you can adjust it at any time. You are also in charge of the max CPC for each keyword within your campaign. This is the amount you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad. The actual cost of each click can be lower than your max CPC bid.

Learn more about how to adjust your budget and keyword CPCs.

4. How should I organize my account?

Adwords Layout

With AdWords, the organization and structure of your account is important. It can have a huge effect on the performance of your campaigns. We recommend you structure your account in a similar way to your website. So, if you offer multiple products or services, you should create a new campaign for each product/service.

Each campaign will contain ad groups that should be based on different themes.

Within each ad group are your ads and keywords. Your ads are what your customers will use to decide whether or not they will visit your website, and your keywords are the words your potential customer will use when searching for your ad.

Take a look at an example account structure to see how you might structure your own account!

If you would like more information about these topics, please visit our online AdWords Beginner’s Guide.

We hope you found this first email in the AdWords Welcome Pack useful! We welcome any feedback you may have regarding this email, so please let us know what you think.

Thanks and happy reading,

Laura

The Google AdWords Team

P.S. Next week we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to choose successful keywords!