February 5, 2012

Adwords Express looks like a safe bet for small business.

July 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Some time ago I wrote about my frustrations with AdWords resellers and the crazy CPC mark-ups, poor results and resulting High churn rate in the local space.

The economics and the business model are a challenge. Resellers have to pay sales teams who have to sign up as many advertisers as possible and account managers (if the business has any) have 100′s or 1000′s of accounts to look after.  The reseller than has to slap on a massively high mark-up on the Cost per click to drive any revenue at all.

I’ve seen 100% mark-ups ‘out in the wild’.

It’s a low quality, high volume business. and yes, the churn rate is massive because advertisers are not happy with results or service.

Honestly, It’s not a business model I’d touch with a 10 foot pole!

What I have begun to do is share my knowledge on this blog (via the ‘Mind your own PPC’ posts) in the hope that small business readers can start to wrestle control of their marketing back from dodgy resellers and actually get some value for money. Eg don’t pay a 100% mark-up on Click costs if you don’t have to.

 

However the reality of the situation is that many small business owners simply do not have the time (even a few minutes a day) to devote to managing their own local search campaign, nor the time to devote to learning what they need to learn to get things going properly.  Yet they also know that that they are potentially missing out on valuable traffic by not having a presence in the search results or map pages.  So they’re forced to find a supplier who can get them there, even if it means paying more than they should for mediocre campaigns…

Enter Google AdWords Express

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Local Search Marketing, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

What most Agencies never ask new AdWords advertisers.

March 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

But probably should ask…

Do you have your web site ready for PAID traffic?

It’s very easy to get carried away at the thought of instant traffic to your site in the form of AdWords clicks. But if that site of yours is not ready for traffic, then you’re just wasting your time and money.

I’m not talking about conversion optimisation here – all these things follow later. I’m talking about giving your business the best possible chance of generating ROI from your ad spend, and forming some kind of relationship with the user that just clicked through. Conversions that matter are not always transactional in the form of money in the bank and a product sold. They can often be as simple as an email sign-up or a ‘White Paper’ download.  Building a relationship with the researchers and the information hunters is just as important as converting those ready to buy.

The idea here, in simple terms,  is that even if this user (who’s click you just paid for on AdWords) does not purchase from you on their first visit, if you get your ‘hooks’ into them somehow, then you may be able to get them back to your site for free the next time when they are ready to buy.

Here’s a list of things I’d consider:

  • Email sign-up form (even if you don’t send out emails yet)
  • Facebook Fan/Business Page and a ‘Like’ box on your site. (yes, simple as that. They’re free, 500 million ++ people might see it… so go get one).
  • A Contact Us form that works… (You know who you are, the site with the broken contact form that emails no one, or the incorrect email address listed.)
  • Follow Us on Twitter link. (If you are on Twitter make sure you let people follow you easily).
  • Local business?  Phone number and even your address on every page!

OK that’s just a few ideas for now.

The other question to continue to ask yourself even while you are paying for traffic is:

Are you also doing everything you can to build a consistent and reliable source of ‘free’* traffic?

* nothing’s ever free… in the case of free web traffic I refer to that which you have not had to purchase it via amedia buy. Eg.  SEO  versus PPC (SEO you pay for on-site dev, and off-site factors, not the actual click from the search engine).

Filed Under: AdWords 101, Online Marketing Tagged With: , ,

BP Show You How to Claim Bankruptcy! AdWords Fail

July 6, 2010 By 4 Comments

This is too good not to share.

Search on Google.com today for ‘How to Claim Bankruptcy‘ and look who’s in second position….

Broad Match fail in AdWords. Oh the irony!

They have already lost millions, what’s a few more thousand a day on badly managed adwords?

BP-AdWords-Broad-Match

Filed Under: AdWords 101 Tagged With: ,

AdWords Displayed URL is Too Long

July 5, 2010 By 6 Comments

I came across this post over at at WebmasterWorld and It made me laugh.

Question:

Unfortunately the displayed URL is too long.
I skipped the www. , but it is still one letter too long. Asking for an exception was rejected without any further hint, how to make it work.
Any suggestion?

Answer:

Get a shorter domain.

If you don’t know already, AdWords allows 35 characters in the display URL field.

eg.

get-a-really-long-spammy-domain.com -> count = 35 Chars.

Honestly, there’s NEVER a good reason to have a domain name this long anyway. AdWords display URL limits are the least of your problems dude.

Additionally, if you are trying to stuff keywords into a hyphenated domain name so that you can try and rip off people with weight loss re-bill offers, Google won’t take long to bring down the ban hammer.

A word from the wise.

  • Long domains suck.
  • Keep your domain short regardless of where you’re advertising. You want people to remember it after all.
  • Hyphens in domains suck.
  • If you really need a hyphen – keep the domain short.

Happy AdWor’tising!

Filed Under: AdWords 101 Tagged With: ,

It Seems Landing Page Quality Score Does Not Matter When you are Google

May 20, 2010 By 3 Comments

I searched for ‘adwords credits for non profits’  on google.com.au

SERP

Awesome: ‘Google Grants is now available to AU non Profits…’

Picture 157

I click on the ad…

404!

Picture 158

Fail!

Filed Under: AdWords 101, Random Stuff Tagged With: , ,

More Common AdWords Mistakes

May 4, 2010 By 2 Comments

AdWords mistakesOk much has happened since last I updated, so I’ve decided to finish the remaining ‘adwords mistakes’ in one giant post!

Mistake #5 – Not monitoring bids at the keyword level.

Don’t fall into the trap of just setting bids at the ad group level and forgetting about individual keyword bids – success is in the detail guys, so pay attention to what’s happening in your accounts at the most micro level possible.

I spoke with someone the other week over the phone who couldn’t work out why their average CPC was 2 x what ‘they were bidding’. A few questions back and forth and we realized that while the ad group bid was set at $0.12, the individual CPC’s for keywords were all set at $0.25. Ouch.

Anyway – easy fix, but pays to remember this.

The thing is though that, depending on your ad group structure, setting the bid ‘just’ ad the group level may well mean you’re missing out on opportunity, or paying too much for some phrases, and not enough for others.

To illustrate, you could have an ad group for ‘compare home loans’ and in that group you have the following keyword with 2 match types.

History of this keyword – you already know this terms converts well…

What would happen if the bid was set only at the ad group level? Say at $2.50.

compare home loans
phrase match
conversion rate 18%
compare home loans
exact match
conversion rate 26%

Well chances are you will end up paying either too much for the Phrase match term, or not enough for the exact match term. Eg. The better converting ‘exact match’ phrase should be treated differently than the phrase match variant, simply because it converts better. But if you’re not controlling at this level, then you may be leaving opportunity behind.

Mistake #6 – Not using different keyword ‘Match Types’.

I started going into this above… and while I’ve covered negative keywords in an earlier post, and another great write up can be found over at PPCHero, today I want to go through broad, phrase and exact match in a little more detail.

Broad match, according to a Google rep at SMX Sydney who said  ‘Broad Match is your friend’….  I disagree!

Broad match may be Google’s best friend, but it’s not yours. Think of it more as that annoying friend on facebook that always takes things too far and is often inappropriate.. yeah that’s Broad Match!

Reason? Well BM is designed as a ‘catch all’ in the adwords system. You can set one key phrase on broad match and bam – your appearing for all sorts of crazy stuff (hence why negatives are important too!).

Let’s go back to the example above ‘compare home loans’.

If this is set on BM then you could match for things like

  • compare home loans
  • home loan compare
  • loan compare
  • compare home loans in melbourne
  • do not compare home loans
  • compare home loans for dummies
  • compare mortgage insurance for home loans
  • home loans
  • home loans suck
  • home loans for dummies

See what I’m getting at – it’s dangerous. Goes to far, and is inappropriate at times

That’s why we have ‘phrase’ and ‘exact’ match.

That same list again using phrase match:

  • compare home loans
  • compare home loans in melbourne
  • do not compare home loans
  • compare home loans for dummies
  • compare mortgage insurance for home loans

Getting better – phrase match tells google ‘we only want to match in the specified word order.’

The same again with ‘exact match’:

  • compare home loans

Simple as that – exact meant ‘exactly as I’ve written it!’

Match types allow more control and flexibility, but… and more importantly,  you’d be amazed at how much the intent of a search query changes with just a few words added.

Take the following where it matched on Phrase Match..

  • compare home loans in melbourne
  • compare mortgage insurance for home loans

If you were on broad or phrase match for ‘compare home loans’ and did not have these terms in another ad group – chances are that they would trigger you generic ‘compare home loans’ ad. However, if you were smart you’d see straight away that these terms should be directed to a specific landing page – one addressing ‘melbourne’ and the other incorporating ‘mortgage insurance information.

Powerful stuff when done well.

Mistake #7 – Not splitting out Campaigns to target Search and Content Network separately.

This was going to be a big rant about not separating out your campaigns between search and content… but you know what, I’ve written about the google content network quite a bit, and this really is the most basic of the basic step.
Simply put, you must always break up your campaigns into one targeting Search / Search Partners and another (potentially) targeting the content Network. Ever have the one campaign targeting both because it just makes things harder for you.

Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , , , , ,

Targeting Your Geographic Region in AdWords (7 AdWords Mistakes – #4)

March 25, 2010 By 13 Comments

7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.geo_targeted_world_small

Mistake #4 – Not Targeting Your Geographic Region.

In the last post we talked about using Negative Keywords and how to best utilise these to cut out on unwanted and un-targeted AdWords traffic. Pretty neat huh?

But there’s another fatal mistake that I’ve see all too often and this one can be even more costly in the long run – Geo-Targeting.

The PPC engine such as AdWords allow the advertiser to be very selective in where they want to show their ads, eg. which countries, cities, regions or languages to target.

Most common targeting that an advertiser would use would be the country level, i.e. Australia, and for an online business that does indeed ship products country wide, this probably makes sense.

However I’ve also seen, time and time again, US merchants targeting Australian ‘eyeballs’ with their ads, and after investigating realise they only ship within the US and Canada! I’m sure there are a few Australian merchants that have done the same and accidentally targeted the US and other English language countries without realising. Can be costly!

I’d like to take this a step further however, think about the current targeting for your campaigns, then think about your target market, delivery constraints, serviceable regions, etc…

Does your product or service really cater to everyone in the region your are currently targeting who search using your keywords? If it does then great, keep your geo-targeting broad, but if it doesn’t think again.

If you’re a small business that only services a specific region, then this is especially important. Rather than target your PPC ads to the whole country or state, perhaps you would be better off targeting your city, or even a region within that city. Sure this will vastly cut down on the impressions and clicks that your ads will potentially receive, but we’re after quality, not quantity in cases such as this so there is not point in wasting hard earned dollars on visitors  who will never buy your product or service.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

Sending All Clicks to Your Homepage (7 AdWords Mistakes – #3)

March 21, 2010 By 7 Comments

7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.man_on_arrow

Mistake #3 – Sending all Clicks to Your Home Page.

Let’s start this post with a question. What is one of the single most powerful features of search engine marketing? The key to why PPC and SEO work so well?

Quite simply, the user is actively broadcasting their needs and desires to the world every time they search for something.

‘Useful’ is an understatement… The ability for us to promote products and services in the targeted manner that Pay-Per-click allows is incredibly powerful and profitable when done right.

The key (excuse the pun) to being successful is choosing the right keywords in the first place (to be covered in separate posts) which will not only target the users when they’re ready to buy, but also target users when they are at other stages of the buying cycle – research, comparison etc.).

Once you have developed your master keyword list, you then need to break this up in to campaigns & ad groups, write your ad copy and select your targeted landing pages…
This is where many advertisers let themselves down and ultimately pay the price in the long run.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: ,

Are You Making These 7 Google AdWords Mistakes? (Mistake #2)

March 17, 2010 By 11 Comments

7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.

Mistake #2 – Not using negative keywords.

Google AdWords (Yahoo and Bing) allow advertisers to select words or phrases that you do not want your PPC ads to appear against. They call this adding ‘negative keywords’.

The idea is pretty simple, but often overlooked.

Let’s just assume you have added in your list of keywords to AdWords using the default ‘broad match’ match type. What this means is that Google will show your ad for not only the keyword you’ve chosen, but also for any other potential phrase combination that includes your original keyword.

Let me use a real world example.

My father is an owner of an organic olive oil business called Donkey Hill Organic Products. They’ve decided to run a small PPC campaign on Google to hopefully attract some wholesale enquiries and potentially a retail client or two. The main focus however remains B2B.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

Are You Making These 7 Google AdWords Mistakes? (Mistake #1)

March 2, 2010 By 12 Comments

Series: 7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.AdWords mistakes

Mistake #1 – Too many keywords per ad group.

I see this mistake all the time and, as a new AdWords advertiser, it’s not exactly 100% your fault. I’ll explain why.

Google (and Yahoo and MSN) pretty much lead you down a path of adding way to many keywords per ad group right from the account set-up stage when they ask you to add your keywords. How many of you had a list of 100 or so and just added them into one ad group to get going? See what I’m getting at?

Well I’m here to tell you that it most definitely is a big mistake, but it is understandable given the way the account set-up process works.

While there is no single correct answer when it comes to the number of keywords per group, the aim of the game is simple – each ad group should only contain highly targeted, related keywords that focus on a specific product or service.

Take a look back at all your ad groups and ask yourself, “Are these groups individually targeting a single product, service, or action?” If not then you have some work to do.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , , ,
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