Adword Tips

As advertisers, you know it’s basic to find your real target market.

For example, it’s not just young men between 18 and 34 who like sports- it may more specifically those who are online, have spent money online and make more than 50,000 a year.

Well for an adwords consultant like me, prospects include anyone who isn’t doing adwords optimally. And I’ve discovered that’s just about everybody who’s doing adwords.

Let’s forget about the advanced things we can do with reports, excel, optimizing ROAS, negative keywords, etc.

I’ve found that amongst clients some of the BASICS are still neglected.

What I’m thinking of, the most offensive thing right now, is the lack of conversion tracking.

If you haven’t installed conversion tracking code from adwords into your thank you page, you just don’t get it.

Google has a conflict of interests, you see- the more you pay for ads and the more clicks you generate, the more money they make. But still they want you to be happy, so they have plenty of help pages on increasing click through rate (CTR), tracking conversions, etc. And they certify AdWords Qualified Individuals (professionals) like me once we have a certain amount of experience and pass a rigorous third-party exam.

But you know what they don’t do? They don’t show the conversion rate of ads next to the CTR. You have to run a report to get that.

So you may end up deleting your more profitable ads. I’ve seen clients miss out on millions of dollars of revenue doing that.

But of course, if you haven’t installed conversion tracking, you won’t be able to make any decisions about profitability with adwords- whether it concerns ads or keywords.

Install conversion tracking?

Just do it.

Brian B. Carter, MS is a San Diego e-business consultant who helps helps businesses create new adwords campaigns and optimize existing ones, make more money, get better ROI and find more customers.

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Pay per click is great! But it’s so much work.

You can’t or don’t want to manage all your own pay per click campaigns? Understandable. It requires a specific skill set and you have to stay on top of it.

But how do you find a good pay per click (PPC) professional? What questions do you ask ahead of time to make sure you get the right consultant?

I do this for a living… so I can tell you from the inside what’s required.

7 Important Pay Per Click skills and characteristics:

* Obsession with metrics and split-testing
* Good copywriting skills
* Strategic, process-oriented thinking
* Organization, attention to detail, reports to client
* Having the adwords qualified marker helps, because it shows you can pass the test and are willing and able to spend a small amt of money to get it
* Ability to do custom work on landing pages is nice too- quicker turnaround for what’s needed
* Track record of positive results

7 Questions to Ask Pay Per Click Management Candidates

1. How do you work with metrics? What do you look for? What are numbers do you aim for in CTR, CR and ROAS?
2. What kind of copywriting and sales writing experience do you bring to the table?
3. How do you think through the advertising process for clients (from prospect to sale) in terms of your PPC campaigns?
4. How many split tests do you run and how do you keep track of them all?
5. Are you an adwords qualified individual or company?
6. Can you do HTML, CSS, javascript and graphics for custom landing pages where it would be optimal?
7. What results have you achieved for other companies? Who can I talk to about it?

The 7 Kinds of Answers You’d Like to Get to Those Questions

1. Monitor the stats that Google provides and any others we can gather from client sites. Increasing click through rate (CTR) by split-testing ads is important to lower cost per click (CPC) and thus increase return on ad spend (ROAS). Improving product page conversion rate (CR) is also important to increase ROAS. Good target numbers: CTR 3-10%, CR 3-8%, ROAS 5:1-10:1

2. Have written for the web, particularly to increase sales. Have communicated about a variety of topics- experience turning jargon into everyday language. Direct marketing experience a huge plus.

3. The right keywords are the crucial starting point. Target audience, general category, brands, industry jargon and more must be investigated to find all possible words customers use to try to find you. Reviewing keywords in terms of closeness to buying decision (as opposed to information gathering searches) helps decide which ones to use or bid higher on. Ad must reach customer mind and pull them through click to landing page. Landing page must reflect the specific words/ideas in the ad that stimulated them to click. Landing page must also turn this interest into buying desire and ask for sale.

4. Optimal to run 2 ads split-testing per adgroup until you plateau above 5%. This includes checking all minor variations on best ad. Inspiration for new angle (big idea) should be tested at plateau points. AdWords will save previous ads but not date ranges tried- diligent recording of tests and results in excel clarifies what has worked and hasn’t. Good reference for future tests.

5. Yes.

6. Yes.

7. Should have started campaigns from scratch and achieved positive ROI, desired ROAS. Should have optimized campaigns to much higher ROAS.

Brian B. Carter, MS is a San Diego e-business, copywriting, and adwords consultant. He’s an AdWords Qualified Individual who achieves exceptional results for his clients.

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