GOOGLE ADWORDS. IS IT BURNING UP YOUR BUDGET?
As Creative Founders, we’re all looking for ways to increase our brand awareness and drive sales, but for small businesses advertising can sometimes be daunting. Google Adwords sounds like the perfect way to connect with new customers through keywords quickly and easily. It’s a no-brainer right? Well yes and no. We know tons of brands that have had amazing success with Adwords, but we’ve also seen many just throw their cash into thin air, and as a small creative business that’s just not a good look. If you’re a newbie to Google Adwords, these are some tips that can prevent you from wasting your time and money.
IS GOOGLE ADWORDS BURNING UP YOUR MARKETING BUDGET?
CHOOSE YOUR KEYWORDS (AND NEGATIVE KEYWORDS) WISELY
We all know that keywords are important, but with Adwords it’s equally important to understand the various types of keywords and how to use them. These are the five types of Adwords keywords:
Broad Match – This is the default type of keywords if you just type in your keywords with no symbols, and it means that your ads will show up in a wide variety of searches that include those keywords plus misspellings, variations and synonyms of those words.
Broad Match Modifier – Add a “+” sign in front of your keywords, and your ads will show up in searches using those exact keywords or different orderings of them, but not synonyms.
Phrase Match – Add quotation marks around a “keyword” phrase and Google will display your ads in searches that contain that exact phrase or variations of that phrase.
Exact Match – Enclose your [keyword] phrase in square brackets and your ads will come up only in searches that use that exact phrase with no variations in word order, spelling or synonyms.
Negative Match – Use the “-” sign at the beginning of any keywords and Google will make sure your ads don’t show up in searches where people use those words.
Many people use Broad Match keywords because they think they will get maximum exposure and that is a good thing. They’re correct about the exposure part, but at the end of the day it’s not just about driving any old traffic to your site, it’s about conversions. You want to make sure you are attracting the right kind of people and seeing a return on your investment.
We suggest narrowing down your reach as much as you can so you really target your ideal market. Think about who your ideal clients are and then tailor Exact Match phrases to the terms they might search for. For example, if your goal is to sell fine art prints, then you may want to use Exact Match phrases like [buy fine art prints], [fine art prints for sale] or [fine art prints sale].
Negative Match can also work in your favour as you can weed out people who might click through (costing you money) with no intent to buy. For example, if you’re trying to sell fine art prints, you may want to use the negative keywords -free, -classes, or -stock photography so that your ads don’t show up for searchers looking for things like fine art classes, free art, or stock art photography.
RELEVANCE MATTERS WITH GOOGLE ADWORDS
Another mistake that many people make is going crazy on the keywords, but not fully matching those keywords to the product. For example, let’s say you are selling knitted hats. The word ‘wool’ is related to knitted hats, but there are multitudes of reasons people may search for wool online, and many of those reasons will have nothing to do with your product. Don’t waste your time and money or the searcher’s time by putting in vague keywords that don’t directly relate to your product and end goals.
It is also important to make sure your keywords and ad copy are relevant to the landing page you are directing people to. For example, if your ad includes the keyword phrase ‘knitted hats for sale’ and your ad copy describes a wide range of knitted hats, the searcher who clicks through will expect to arrive at a page where they can peruse and buy knitted hats. Imagine how confused or annoyed they might be if they arrived at a random homepage for a clothing brand with no obvious mention of knitted hats.
Besides making the user experience smoother for searchers and streamlining the traffic that goes to your site, relevance plays a huge factor in your Quality Score, which is Google’s estimate of the quality of your ads and performance. The higher your Quality Score, the better prices and positions you will get for your ads. Your Quality Score is based on a number of factors, with the majority of the focus on the relevance of your keywords, ad copy and landing pages.
START LOW AND SLOW AND TEST, TEST, TEST
If you own a start-up or small business you’ve probably got a limited budget, so it only makes sense to start low with your minimum bids and placements so that you can build up your experience and see what works before taking huge risks and potentially breaking the bank. Don’t be fooled into thinking that only the number one ad spot will bring you traffic or that you need to win all the top bids to push out your competition.
At first, you may want to stick to lower spots that cost less so you can see what ads work the best and bring in the most impressions and clicks. Use these lower priced ads to test the waters, gain knowledge and increase your Quality Score. You may also want to look at what your competition is doing so that you can try out some of their techniques and see if they make a difference for your ads. Once you have a better idea of what is working for you, then you can start splashing out a bit more.
Finally, we can’t stress the importance of TESTING! Sure, you may have an ad that is doing great, but do you know exactly why it’s doing great? Don’t just assume you know. Try testing out some variations on that ad so you can narrow down the exact elements that work best for you. You may want to start with two ads or sample a number of different ads at one time, each with slight variations in keywords, headlines or descriptions to come up with a winning formula. This will save you lots of time and money in the future.
Feeling confident? Head over to Google Adwords to get started!
