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Google AdWords is an online advertising service, developed by Google, where advertisers pay to display brief advertising copy to web users. Google AdWords is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website. For a small business, Google AdWords can be a hugely successful method of driving traffic, marketing your product and ultimately getting increased sales. Google Adwords Management is key in ensuring a high return on investment and get results.
Optimising your campaign
Once a Google AdWords campaign is live, then there will be 4 core areas that must be continually monitored and improved. These 4 areas are where testing and optimization efforts should be focused.
- Keyword optimisation
One of the most critical targeting factors in a search campaign is your keyword selection. Assuming you launched your ads with keywords your ideal customer is likely to search, then you should have a head start on the optimization process. Keyword optimisation can be an iterative process. You may prune keywords to remove irrelevant keywords, find additional keywords that look promising, and replanting keywords (the process of moving your best performing keywords from a campaign that contains lower performing and unproven keywords, to a completely separate campaign that contains only high performing keywords)
- Ad Targeting
If your ads are not targeting your ideal customers then your campaign has a high chance of failing. During the initial campaign setup, you found all the relevant keywords you think your ideal customers are searching, but you never know for sure until your ads go live.
In addition to keywords, other targeting factors include geographic location, device, and time of day. All of these factors must be analysed to determine the ideal targeting for your campaign by segmenting your audience according to ad type. For example, ad performance will likely vary substantially depending on which device the prospective customer is using. It’s very possible that your campaign is performing well for desktops, but very poorly for mobile devices. Overall that could mean your campaign is unprofitable, but if you cut out the mobile targeting, then it could instantly be profitable!
- Ad Content
Assuming your ads are targeting the right audience, then the next critical factor is your ad content. Again, a lot of work goes into ad copywriting before your ads go live, but there’s a good chance the first drafts of your ads will not survive long. You’ll need to continually test new ad content to determine what works best for your ideal customers.
- Landing Pages
Your landing page that the customer arrives on once an ad is clicked is key to converting the website visitor into a lead or sale. It’s important to note that the landing page performance depends greatly on the targeting and ad copy discussed above.
There 4 core areas interlink to form a complete campaign management strategy. perfectly designed landing page will fail miserably if you’re not using the right ad targeting and ad copy. Focus on your targeting, then your ad content, and then make sure your landing page is congruent. For each of these areas, there are dozens of elements that can be enhanced through testing, which can maximize the performance and ROI of an AdWords campaign.
