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Creating a Cost-Effective Google Adwords Search Engine Ad
Campaign

by Marcia Yudkin

Pay-per-click ads like those available through Google
Adwords can be a powerful, regular source of prospects for
your products and services. However, whenever new clients
have asked me to look at their Google Adwords campaigns, I
begin to understand one element in Google’s growth to more
than a $6 billion market value.

Many entrepreneurs fail to take advantage of Google’s
mechanisms for making sure that their search engine ads get
shown only to those who are logically potential buyers and
that the ads encourage such people to click through. As a
result, they pay much more than they have to for the
exposure, get discouraged about the return on their
investment and yet leave the ads running for lack of ideas
about how to improve performance.

Don’t let it happen to you! Use these tips to keep your
costs down and your rewards high.

1. Eliminate countries and languages that do not match
what you offer. For instance, if you sell U.S. foreclosure
listings, your ads should show only to Google users in the
United States and probably only in English. On the other
hand, if you have a translation service whose clients can
live anywhere in the world, define the countries and
languages your ad gets shown to much more widely.

2. Activate Google’s ad tracking. It costs you nothing,
and enables you to keep an eye on not only your cost per
click and click-through ratio, but also which keywords and
which ads best lead to your desired result, whether that’s
a sale, an inquiry for your services or a signup for your
newsletter. That way, you can eliminate or try to improve
elements that get a lot of clicks or cost a lot but do not
get results.

3. Set up negative keywords. If your goal is selling
something, why pay for tire kickers and freebie seekers?
By defining “free” as a negative keyword (Google has a
special button for this), you can keep many of them from
clicking on your ads.

Equally important, think through alternate and unwanted
meanings of your keywords and add negative keywords to
prevent your ads from showing to wildly inappropriate
visitors. For instance, type “cattle branding” into Google
and you’ll see ads for business branding services. Those
advertisers’ click-through rates will improve when they add
“cattle” as a negative keyword.

4. Delete keywords and ads that are not working. Because
Google’s system rewards a better click-through rate with
higher ad placement and lower costs, you are paying Google
more than necessary when you leave poorly performing
elements running. Periodically clean out your losers.

5. Send people to a landing page that makes perfect sense.
People click on search engine ads to learn more about
whatever was featured in the ad. It seems logical that
they’d look around from your home page for whatever
interested them in the ad, but that’s wrong. Searchers are
impatient. So if your search engine ad mentions a software
demo, do not send them to your company’s home page. Send
them to the exact page from which they can access the demo.


When you manage your Google Adwords campaigns according to
these guidelines, you’ll be paying less to get a much more
satisfying response.

Marcia Yudkin (marcia@...) helps business owners and
corporate managers compellingly and tantalizingly
communicate their strengths. See a sample makeover of one
ineffective Google search engine ad into five dynamic ones
at http://www.yudkin.com/sample10b.htm . Sign up for her
free weekly newsletter on creative marketing at
http://www.yudkin.com/markmin.htm .