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Brick No116: The fastest way to master Google AdWords
By Matt Weston, Tuesday 30 November 2004 Slow on the draw? If you were slow on the draw on Friday, you get a second chance to claim your £20 of Google AdWords vouchers today. To recap: Google AdWords are the text-based ads that appear on the right-hand side of the screen every time you (or your prospects) search Google. As an advertiser, your prospects are pre-qualified, having already searched for something specific to your business like"brighton marina hotel" or "urgent VAT help". And you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad (as little as 5p). If you can afford to look several hundred pre-qualified gift horses in the mouth, go ahead, ignore this email. If not, simply hit reply, insert "Google AdWords Vouchers" in the subject line, and I'll email over your unique voucher code. In between doling out the hundreds of voucher codes you've requested so far, I've been thinking about what to write today. (I have to generate them one-by-one, hence the uncustomary lateness of this morning's brick). I considered giving you a blow-by-blow account of my experiences with Google AdWords. I've used the system for three years in total, since it was knee-high to a grasshopper in the UK. And in that time I've generated thousands of customers across various projects. But I didn't want to over-explain something that is tremendously simple. The fastest way to master Google AdWords On Friday everyone - bar one - managed to get their ads up and running on Google within ten minutes. And nowadays, everything you need to get started is on the Google AdWords site, in downloadable black and white. In fact, all of my learning the last few years can be summed up in one line: keywords are king. (By keywords I mean the search terms or search phrases you choose to advertise on). Sure, writing killer ad copy helps. The better your ad, the better your click-through-rate, and the better your ad position (or the cheaper your cost-per-click). Brick No110 might help. But in my experience, keywords matter most. My collected thoughts: (1) An offline parallel: any direct mail whizz will tell you the list of people you send your letter or pack to is far more important than the pack itself. With AdWords the same rule applies: the keywords you choose your ads to appear on simply define the list of people who see your ad . . . "who" matters more than "what". (2) "Ready. Fire! Aim." It takes ten minutes to set up a campaign with say two-dozen keywords. The sooner you play with keywords and variations, the sooner you get to zoom in on what works and forget what doesn't. (3) Use the Google AdWords keyword generating tools. These have evolved considerably over the past three years. With AdWords it pays to be small. Leave big businesses to slug it out over the most obvious (and expensive) terms. Instead I say stick to the nichey - heck even jargony - vocabulary that helps you narrow down your audience to the most qualified prospects. And one extra point I picked up from Andrew Goodman, author of the peerless "Google AdWords Handbook: 21 ways to maximise results". (4) "It's about them." AG knows about search (he also runs traffick.com) Most prospects don't type in something that "describes" your product or service. They are more likely to search something related to the "problem" your product could solve. "[For example] someone selling allergy medication might want to include "irritated nasal passage" and a host of other symptoms . . . and try showing your ad for a personal firewall technology to people typing in very specific phrases related to computer crashes they might be facing. " Remember to sign up: back to top |
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