subject: Search Engine Advertising: My Five Tips [print this page] As a Search Engine Advertising Professional I have a lot of experience in setting up AdWords campaigns for different clients, and I would like to share my experience with you by giving you five effective tips on how to boost your advertising campaign:
1. Research
To who do you sell your products (i.e. Target Group)? To males only between 18 and 24 years old in Texas or Amsterdam? If you do not know, find out. If you know who your target group is, it is easier to set up your advertising campaign to effectively target your potential buyers. Also, know your product. Knowing your product and target group makes it easier to know which keywords you should use.
2. Check Competition
Check your competition! Does your keywords generate a lot of competing ads matching your keywords in Google or other search engines? Then, don't go in unless you know what you're doing. Find another keyword you can use to bid on and display ads for.
3. Costs per Acquisition
Now you know your target group, keywords to use and competitors to avoid or to compete against. If you have no competitors, that is great by the way! Which is rare. Okay, now you're starting to generate some clicks and views. You are seeing the costs go up and your client or boss asks you how the campaign is going, and you're saying; "Great! We've sold 25 of our olive bottles already! (each $ 25 dollars each)". Now comes the hard part.. Boss/Client: "Alright, how much did it cost?''. You: "Let's see... Uhm.. $ 30 dollar a bottle..". That's a $5* 25 bottles = $ 125 dollars, that you have lost. IMPORTANT, make sure you know your Costs per Acquisition/Sale so you can manage your costs effectively.
4. Analyze
Use an Analytics program like, Google Analytics, to measure your results and know how your target group using different keywords are performing on your or clients website. By doing so, you can find out where a potential customer leaves the website. Are there a lot of exits (people clicking bye bye) in the checkout process? Then, you can optimize for better results which will save you or your client a lot of Money!
5. Test
Keep testing your Ad Campaign with at least two ads per ad group, Split-test your landing page with Google's Website Optimizer. By split-testing your landing page you can increase your conversion rate with a lot of percentages. This means 'more of the same'. What I mean to say with " more of the same" is that with the same number of visitors on your website you could generate more conversions (sign in, leads, orders).
Alright. These were my five tips which could help you to effectively set up and maintain your ad campaign. First do your research, know your competition, your cost per Acquisition, than analyze your campaign with analytics and keep testing!
