If you’re looking for the ideal platform to advertise your business, you may be wondering if Google is still a valuable option. But Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches every day, and while Google Adwords launched in 2000, it’s as popular as ever. Adwords generated more than 136 billion dollars in revenue for the tech giant in 2018.
Convinced that Adwords is a worth a try and ready to take the leap with your first Google Ad Words account? We have 7 tips to help you get the most from your account. Read on to learn more about how to succeed with Google advertising.
1. Identify Your Business Goals and Align Your Ad Tactics
Before you begin spending money on Adwords, you should define your business goals as they relate to the platform. Do you want to drive traffic to your website and drive brand awareness? Or do you want to generate leads or promote immediate sales?
Every aspect of your inbound marketing strategy – including your Adwords strategy – should align with your business goals. If you’re wanting to spread awareness, you may focus on creating eye-catching display and videos ads. If you’re looking to make sales, you may create search ads that call out your pricing or make claims to the quality of your product.
2. Get Your Website Ready
Your Google Ad Words account will be driving clicks to your website, so you want your website to be in the best shape possible. You want people who land on your site to find what they were looking for with ease. This means making sure you send your clicks to pages that align with your ad messaging.
If your ad is about your brand, consider driving to an About Us page. If your ad is promoting a specific product, drive to that product page and make sure there is a clear path to completing the purchase. As you grow your Google advertising, you may even consider having specific landing pages or micro-sites made for these purposes.
3. Commit to the Research
Before you plan out a detailed strategy for your Adwords account, you should do some research. Conduct some test searches – there’s even a tool for this within your Adwords platform – to see what others are doing in your industry. This can help you determine your own messaging, as well as understand how competitive the space is for your specific product or service.
4. Get Familiar with Keywords and the Keyword Planner
If you’re going to be using search ads in your account, a good portion of your research will focus on keywords. Rather than leaving you to do the guesswork, Google offers a Keyword Planner tool to help. The tool can help you see the cost, competition, and search volume for keywords you may be considering for your campaigns.
The Keyword Planner can help you identify keywords you want to bid on, but it may also reveal key terms that you want to avoid. If you see suggested keywords that you know you don’t want to be associated with your ads, you can add them to your negative keyword list. The negative keyword list allows you to exclude certain search queries from triggering your ads.
5. Be Strategic in How You Structure Your Google Ad Words Account
Once you have chosen your keywords, you need to plan how you’ll use them for optimal performance. This is when you need to consider the structure of your account. At the highest level is your campaign, and then you have your ad groups, and within those groups are your keywords and ads.
Within one campaign, you can include a variety of keywords and ads promoting something specific. Then, you can use ad groups to group similar key terms together and write the ads within those groups to be relevant to those specific terms. For example, a campaign can focus on alteration services, with separate ad groups for dress alterations and suit alterations.
6. Learn About Quality Score
If there’s one metric you should focus on in your Google Ad Words account, it’s a quality score. This metric is Google’s grading system for keywords and ads. The quality score measures how relevant these things are to Google users and their search queries.
The more relevant your ads, keywords, and even your landing page content are to your users, the higher your quality score. A good quality score can help you achieve a lower cost-per-click. Whenever you need to assess the performance of your account, start by checking out your quality scores.
7. Set Up and Use Conversion Tracking
When you’re spending money on advertising, you want to be able to track your ROI. Though tracking your click-through-rate and cost-per-click is helpful, you should also track conversions. A conversion can mean different things, depending on your original goal.
Your conversions can be leads from form fill outs, purchases, or even a simple download of brochure or whitepaper. Your Adwords account can create special tracking codes for you to place on your thank you pages or other pages. These codes will send data back to your Adwords account and help you track conversions for your paid ads.
Learn What You Can, But Know When to Turn to the Professionals
When it comes to your business, it’s important to have full knowledge of where your marketing dollars are going. Our tips can help you better understand how to use Adwords and make the most of your budget. Still, Adwords is a complex platform, so you may want to consider partnering with a digital marketing agency.
If you’re looking for experts to help with your Google Ad Words account, you’re in the right place. We’re proud to offer professional services for inbound marketing, including Adwords management. Contact us today for your free inbound marketing consultation.