My Three Cents

For our client marketing project, I was the one to take on the Google Adwords campaign mini assignment. I had no prior experience with Adwords and was unsure what to expect. The one thing I did expect was that I was about to learn a lot in a short amount of time. Guess what? I was right. Go me. However, it seemed that that was about the last thing I was right about.

Setting up and running a Google Adwords campaign takes a lot of time and effort. The goal of an Adwords campaign is to drive traffic to your website and convince consumers that your website is the best way to find what they’re looking for. Specifically, the ads have three general goals: (1) to generate clicks from your potential interested customers, (2) to discourage clicks from customers who aren’t interested in your brand or product, and (3) to provide an expectation of what the customer will find on your website.

To realize these goals, you need to optimize the independent variables of your campaign. These variables are your keywords between ad groups and the ads that you’re running. Keywords need to be specific and targeted towards your customers. You need to ask yourself, “What are my customers looking for and where are they looking for it?” Then, once you’ve identified your most effective 10-20 keywords, you need to create an ad that will drive a customer to your website. These ads needs to have a captivating headline, a descriptive line that defines your product, and then a ‘call to action’ line that tells your customer to act. Lastly, you need to have a website URL that shows who you are and establishes trust.

I’m looking for new windows for my renovation? Many ads pop up for companies that manufacture top of the line windows as they’ve identified what I searched for as an efficient keyword. Note, it’s funny that the first two organic search results have nothing to do with actual windows.

To optimize your keywords and your ads, you need to be monitoring their performances daily. Each day will produce new results. Effective keywords need to be kept, ineffective ones tossed out. Effective ads need to be kept and further A/B tested, ineffective ones need to be dropped. You need to be monitoring what your most economic maximum bid is to be producing a good ratio of impressions versus clicks.

Google Adwords isn’t something you learn overnight. You need to care for it and influence its growth. It’s an extremely effective tool for bringing customers to your websites, but it’s only effective if you use it right. Trust me.