Friday, 9 October 2009
5 Tips To Boost Your Google Adword Campaigns
Every marketer that deals with paid Google advertising understands how competitive this form of promotion has become. To stay competitive and cost-effective we need to make sure our Google ads are working to full capacity, here are five tweaks you can make to your Google account to improve performance and generate more business.
1. Get those headlines matched up
When a user searches Google, sees your ad and clicks on it, they have an expectation. Most likely it’s your ad headline that has motivated them to click, don’t send them through to a landing page that doesn’t acknowledge what you said on your Google ad. If you’re specific in your Google ad, be specific on your landing page. We want to build up a potential client’s forward momentum when they entire the buying process with that. Lazy landing pages and mismatched headlines can make a user think twice and dissipate built-up momentum. Only you might not get a chance to re-build it!
2. Use specific landing pages
Wait, you’re not sending people through to your homepage are you? That’s pretty old school. If you’re trying to extract customers from Google and you’re covering a very specific search term, make sure your ad links through to a specific landing page with a matching headline (see tip 1) and relevant body copy. If you just send people through to your homepage or a generic landing page you’ll be wasting a golden opportunity to seal the deal.
3. Use dynamic ads with caution
A lot of clever Google advertisers set up their google ads so the headline automatically matches the keyword or keyphrase a user searches for. This is intended to increase relevancy. Although this technique can be highly effective in boosting click through rates, it can look strange and sometimes even spammy. Also you may not always want your ad to match a users search phrase exactly. They might be searching in the form of a question. Better to craft a relevant, well written ad if at all possible. Especially if you sell a smaller range of high end products or more complex services (e.g financial services).
4. Don’t trip over the long tail
There’s been a lot of fuss about the long tail in every aspect of online marketing and commerce. This has certainly been applied to the area of Google advertising, where advertisers run targeted ads against a long range of niche keywords. This can work well if you’ve got the budget to support it. In fact, if you’re like Amazon and you sell 1000s of different products/services then you live in the long tail.
However, if you have a much more focused range of products and services, it’s better to re-allocate any long tail budget back to your core group of keywords. Once you’ve got a highly optimised campaign in this area you can venture back out to the long tale.
5. Synchronise Google Ads with your other activities
Although Google Adwords can perform very well in isolation, performance is way more powerful when tied in with your other marketing activities. If you’re running specific offers or promotions, don’t be shy about including these in your Google ads. If people are searching for your offers or recently launched products or services, make sure you’ve modified your Google Ads to reflect these.
Ok there you have it, five straightforward tips to boost your Google Adwords campaigns. I hope you find them useful.
· · · · · · · · · ·
