Business Bricks

Clive says:
I went AdWord crazy when I first started playing with it … about this time last year thanks to Matt’s freebie voucher. I created a bunch of campaigns with loads of keywords and I just couldn’t leave it alone which resulted in lots of time assessing the results! The key to adwords is finding those gem keywords that no-one else is bidding on, that will cost you pence per click for a high ad position … But remember - the problem with these nice cheap keywords is that there may be a very good reason why no-one else is bidding on them … there is little point bidding on words that surfers don’t actually use for your industry/product in a search. If you end up with too many of these your click through rate for that campaign will suffer which can ultimatly affect the position of your ads (high CTR’s can help get a higher ad position for less cost per click - apparently). Here’s my take on it all - Make better use of negative, phrase and exact match keywords - Don’t assume lots of clicks is a good thing. Make sure you have conversion rates set up (so you can see how much each sale or conversion has cost you). It’s all well and good having a great click through rate and hundreds of clicks a week, but if it doesn’t convert to sales … is it worth it? This is where you should compare a few similar keywords to see which will give you the better conversion. Go crazy and try different keywords for a month, you never know if you’ll get lucky. If not, just change them for a different set of words. It’s one big on-going experiment! And above all don’t spend every day obsessing over it, set up a couple of campaigns and just let them run for a month, then come back to it and start tweaking … Hope that helps a little bit?
by Clive on 11 May

Paul says:
A useful thing that we’ve found (although it’s certainly worth bearing in mind Clive’s when doing this) is to include locations into key phrases where relevant - ie. instead of paying through the nose for a highly-contested ‘frizbee hire’ keyphrase, use several campaigns related to the areas that you cover, ie ‘frizbee hire shrewsbury’, ‘frizbee hire telford’ etc - that way you should pay less for the click, and pick up clickthroughs that are more targetted.
by Paul on 11 May

Adrian Pepper says:
o I listened to Alan Stewart’s The Marketeer’s Podcast which I found interesting and useful but essentially showed me that ‘experts’ in pay per click only remain that way by spending substantial time tracking the latest thing that works on AdWords.
o I listened to Denise Wakeman’s Conversations with Experts podcast because several of her guests are working in PPC.
o The Marketing Edge podcast is more general but has some useful ideas.
o I used Google’s keyword tool and compared it with the 123 tool to choose my keywords
o I tended to set my rate at 50% of Google’s suggested cost per click to see where that got me in the rankings. Then if that was too far down, I increased the rate until I was in the top 10. I never chose to be number 1, 2 or 3 because I heard that a lot of click bandits sabotage your marketing budget by clicking cynically on these links.
o I was interested that I gained more Alexa ranking from ‘views’ (which are free) than from ‘click throughs’ (which cost me). So I got a lot of free promotion.
o I also noticed that where I chose a minimal PPC rate (say 0.05), Google would come back a week later and claim the minimum rate was now higher (say 0.25). This was not actually true as I found out by deleting the campaign and starting a fresh with the same keywords at the original low PPC. I think Google actually creates artificial bid conditions if they feel you are not paying enough!
o Since I am not at the stage of offering physical goods over the net, I found that AdWords was good for promotion but didn’t actually make me any sales. In terms of promotion though, I spent £100 over 12 months more effectively with AdWords than I did with either Yellow Pages, Thomsons or the other paper media.
by Adrian Pepper on 11 May

Tony Zemaitis says:
Thanks to Matt’s free starter I found that adwords gives me great return on my expenditure! Maybe not a huge amount of sales but using a modest budget I still make over 500% ROI. I tried using place names as suggested by Paul (above) but that so far has given me minimal clicks, which did surprise me. Maybe I’m not using the right phrases. I have also found using adwords has helped my with my own marketing strategy - by looking at responses to ads & keywords I have been able to improve my market segmentation and even discovered a market that I didn’t initially think had so much demand. As a real convert I have now converted some of my clients to adwords. However, I think running a campaign does need real care and attention and analysis to stop money being wasted. That said, if you are not in a highly competitive business, adwords can be pretty cheap.
by Tony Zemaitis on 11 May

Jim Tilsley says:
I got loads of clicks from AdWords which was good but the resulting sales were disappointing but I think I understand why now …
o Firstly I struggled to get the first line to be very specific. I think it is really important from a cost point of view to make sure people can tell from the first line exactly what you do and (probably more importantly) exactly what you do not do to avoid people clicking on your ad and finding it is not what they wanted. You waste their time and your money.
o Secondly you need to have a product that you can sell lots more of, provided you can find the demand. I used the ad to promote my holiday business and the problem is that everyone wants to book for the summer but once it is gone it is gone so I spent lots of money getting enquiries for something that did not exist because I had already sold it.
o Even when I made it very specific that I was offering Autumn breaks to fill in the quiet times I still got too may people clicking in hope that they would find a Summer booking so I guess the next lesson is think about what you are trying to sell and if people might click on it in hope of finding something else and the demand for the ‘hope’ product is much larger than the real product don’t use PPC or work hard to find a filter that will work.
o Finally I think you should keep a very close eye on the spend. I ran for a few months at a few pounds per month and thought - ‘OK I can afford this so I’ll just let it run’. Along came Spring and I was deluged with clicks from people looking in hope of finding a last minute holiday in Cornwall. So my few pounds per month turned into a lot more but with few sales. I didn’t keep close enough tabs to catch it at the time.
o If there is a way of collecting the e-mail addresses of people who click then I would like to know about it. One thing that does worry me about PPC is the lack of audit trail to the cost so while I’m sure Google don’t sit there clicking your ad someone else could. Perhaps you could persuade Google to charge on the basis of pay per new customer i.e. if someone clicks on the ad they only charge on the first time - after that it’s free.
by Jim Tilsley on 12 May

Rachel Collinson says:
My experiences… I got a pretty good click-through rate on my first campaign (8%!) - 4 times the average. The trick? Reading a very good book on Adwords and following it to the letter. Top tips:

* Make sure your ad title contains as many of the keywords you’re bidding on as possible. Eg, if you’re bidding on “colchester florist” make sure your ad title has “colchester florist” in it. The keywords will appear in bold, helping your ad stand out at no extra cost.

* Don’t aim for #1 position or you will get into pointless bidding wars. Positions numbers 3 or 4 generally yield maximum results and are best value for money.

* The least but most important point - make sure the page that the ad points to is relevant. I once clicked on a Google Adwords ad for a big software company’s product, expecting to go through to a page about that product. Where did the ad take me? To the home page. No way was I going to search through that massive site to find what I wanted. They are throwing money away - so will you if you don’t make your ad go to the exactly relevant page within your site. If your ad talks about cheap scooters, make sure that the page is about scooters and give a price too. Otherwise you’re just teasing and then frustrating your customers. Or if your ads say “our product will reduce baldness by 30%” then the page must say how!

* Don’t try to be clever. In general, the best Adwords ads avoid puns, are straightforward and to the point. They use facts rather than hyperbole. Although it does depend on the target audience.

* Get a good idea of what keywords your prospects are searching with. It’s easy to get so inward-looking when you run a business and not realise that some people search for “tennis gear” when you thought they would always search for “tennis equipment”. Use the keyword suggestion tools Google provides, in order to help. Some well-phrased questions to friends and strangers will open your eyes to more keywords as well. This works best in industries that have their own jargon which buyers don’t necessarily get right all the time.

Some negative words and phrases you might want to include if you’re not hiring: -job -jobs -vacancies -vacancy -recruitment etc. Then you won’t waste your money on receiving unwanted cvs. I’m sure I’ve got loads more tips but those are the first ones that come to mind. Hope it helps you all - would love to know how everybody gets on.
by Rachel Collinson on 15 May

Brenda Buckingham says:
Being a total novice at these things, I chickened out after checking my keywords, shoes, Italian, designer etc. The checker came up with £1052 per day so I shut it down quick and didn’t use the voucher. Sorry.
by Brenda Buckingham on 19 May

Matt Drought says:
Spend the time to create lots of little targeted campaigns rather than bigger, all encompassing campaigns to ensure maximum ROI.
by Matt Drought on 20 May

Andy Davies says:
Here’s an interesting read about some of the issues that small niche advertisers can come across: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060525.html
by Andy Davies on 27 May