Online Marketing — Google AdWords (part 2)

Last month I gave you an overview of how to create a successful Google AdWords campaign. This month I want to give you a masterclass on creating your Google AdWords ads.

Over the years, I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of pounds and dollars on AdWords. Right now we spend several thousand pounds every month on our AdWords campaigns.

It is without question one of the best marketing strategies you should be using to grow your company.

But many people fail because they don’t truly understand how AdWords works (see last month’s issue) or how to create ads that get the CLICK-THROUGH.

That’s what this article is focused on. Creating ads that get prospective clients clicking on your ads and arriving at your website.

Here’s what you need to do…

1. PREPARATION:

Before creating your ads, type several of your keywords for each campaign into Google and note what the competition are saying in their ads. Write down any wording that makes you think, ‘I would click on that’. Don’t copy it but modify the words to suit you. This will give you a great head start.

2. LASER-BEAM FOCUS:

One of the biggest reasons for the failure (or excessive cost) of AdWords is the ads aren’t focused enough on the keywords for each specific campaign. So you should make sure you have tightly knit keyword groups and create an ad campaign around them.

For example, here’s a list of keywords…
jeweller shop
jeweller shops
jeweller stores
jewellery shop
jewellery shops
jewellers shops
jewelleries shop
jewelleries shops
jewelleries store
jewelleries stores
small jeweller stores
top jewellery shops

Look carefully. Whilst it would be easy (and lazy!) to just create one ad campaign for these keywords, you should create two.

Notice one set of keywords is focused on ‘jewellery shops’, the other on ‘jewellery stores’.

So what we do is create two highly focused ad groups…

GROUP#1: Jewellery Shops:
jewellery shop
jewellery shops
jeweller shop
jeweller shops
jewelleries shop
jewelleries shops
jewels shop
small jewellery shop
top jeweller shops

GROUP#2: Jewellery Stores:
jewellery store
jewellery stores
jeweller stores

NOW WE CAN CREATE ADS THAT ARE COMPLETELY FOCUSED ON EACH GROUP AS OPPOSED TO CREATING WATERED-DOWN ADS TO TRY AND ACCOMMODATE BOTH SETS OF KEYWORDS.

3. CREATE YOUR ADS TO GET A HIGH CLICK-THROUGH RATE:

Although you’re limited in space, make sure your ad entices people to click on it.

HEADLINE: The headline is very important (as it is for all marketing pieces). Do NOT use your name (other than in your brand campaign—see last month’s issue for details).

You have just 25 characters for your headline. Do NOT put it in capitals or Google will decline the ad.

I’ve found repeating the keyword in the headline works really well. That’s another reason why you want laser-focused ad groups.

So for the ad group ‘Jewellery Shops’, our headline would simply be…

Jewelry Shops

Notice the first letter of each word is capitalized. The reason why this works so well is that, when someone enters the search term, Google automatically highlights all or part of the search term in their results. So your ad is more prominent.

AD DESCRIPTION LINES 1 & 2:You now have 35 characters for the first description line and another 35 characters for the second description line. Use this space to get the click. Try and repeat the main keyword in the ad and use words like ‘free’, ‘you’, ‘click here’, etc.

So, for example, our ad could be something like…
Jewelry Shops.
Free Size Alterations With Top
Jewellery Shop – Click Here

Notice the first letter of each word is capitalized, and we managed to get the keyword ‘jewellery shop’ in again. This has all the hallmarks of a great ad.

4. CREATE A MINIMUM OF 2 ADS PER AD GROUP:

Always create at least two ads for each AD GROUP campaign. This is because Google ‘split tests’ your ads, which basically means it will tell you very quickly which ad performs best.

This is where the fun really starts. It constantly amazes me what a difference just small changes can have on your results. So, for example, I would create the following ad to test against our initial ad shown above…

Jewellery Shops.
Specialist Jewellers
Call For A Free Booking Now…

Then, once you know which ad works best, you pause the weaker ad and test another. This is how you get AdWords to work really well for you. I promise you, as long as you continually test, your click-through rate will increase significantly and your costs will reduce.

5. MAKE YOUR ADS BIGGER AND MORE PROMINENT WITH SITELINKS:

This is an advanced strategy that works really well. Google allows you to add ‘sitelinks’, ‘location extensions’ and ‘call extensions’ to your adverts.

Sitelinks are the little blue links that appear underneath the advert. They give the user more information about your website, allow you to deliver further marketing messages and simply make your ad look bigger (increasing the click-through rate).

Because they’re bigger, they also ‘push’ competitor ads further down the page! ‘Location’ and ‘call’ extensions add your address and phone number to the ad, making it look even bigger (see above screenshot).

Here’s an example of the sitelinks I was referring to:

Read What Clients Say
Free Size Alterations With Top
Jewellers – Book Here! These sitelinks would then go to the testimonial page or ‘What Clients Think’ page of their website.

6. SELECT THE RIGHT AD PLACEMENT:

To ensure success with your AdWords campaigns, it is imperative that your ad shows on the first page of Google when someone enters your keyword phrase.

Ideally, each ad needs to be placed in the top 5.

That does, of course, mean that you will have to pay a premium for your ad to show, but remember you only pay if someone clicks on your ad.

This is another reason why your ad needs to have a high click-through rate. Google rewards ads with high click-through rates and the reward is a decrease in cost per click. So even if your ad is placed above your competitor ads, if its click-through rate is better, then you will be paying less than those below you.

7. SET YOUR MONTHLY BUDGET:

Set your monthly budget at an acceptable level for you. My advice is to go for it in the first couple of weeks. In other words, if you have, say, £/$300 to spend, it is better in the beginning to spend this in the first two weeks, so your campaign gets sufficient data for you to start improving it (you don’t want to wait a month before doing this).

DO NOT COMPROMISE ON YOUR AD PLACEMENT TO REDUCE YOUR COSTS. If your budget is tight, just set your monthly limit and accept that for parts of the month your ads won’t be running. It’s not ideal but it ensures your budget is fixed. Of course, once you start getting results, you can then increase your budget.