In the previous article you learned all about Google AdSense, how it works and how to make it work for you.
Now that you understand about AdSense you're probably wondering where all those ads actually come from. You might also be wondering how to put your own company on one of those ads and get more customers on your website. All will be revealed in the second part of our advertising guide as we delve into the complex and competitive world of Google AdWords.
AdWords is Google's pay-per-click advertising (more on them later) system whereby the ads Google display link directly to your site. Every time someone clicks on these ads, therefore, you pay Google a small fee (the minimum rate being $0.05) for directing visitors to your site. You can see these ads all over the web, basically anywhere where AdSense is implemented, as well as on Google searches, where the sponsored ads are displayed on the right hand side of the search results.
The advantages of AdWords is that it can potentially bring a huge amount of people to your website, millions in fact, in a matter of minutes. But before you run off and start spending all those millions you're going to make you need to know exactly how AdWords works first of all. Then you need to learn the various ins and outs of choosing the right keywords, tracking those keywords and seeing not only how well your ads perform by bringing visitors to your site, but also how frequently these visits are converted to sales.
The bottom line is this - it's not called pay-per-click for nothing - so, if every person that visits your site buys an item from you, then there's really no problem but such a result would be nothing short of miraculous. So - unless you're incredibly, and I mean incredibly lucky - then you're going to have to put the work in the same as the rest of us and start thinking about things such as Cost Per Click (CPC) and Click Through Rate (CRT) ratios.
Put simply, the Cost Per Click is the price you pay each time a person clicks your ad, thus redirecting them to your website.
Click Through Rates is a percentage of how many times a person actually clicks on your ad, in relation to how many times your ad is displayed. So say your ad is displayed 100 times that day and three people clicked it, your CTR is 3%.
Now, if you're paying 5c (that's 5c in US Dollars by the way) per every person that clicks your ad and visits your site and your average CTR is 3% then that's 15c a day, which isn't much, when you think about it. Thing is, sometimes, in order to get an edge, you're going to have to pay more for your clicks so you might have to pay 10c a day, instead of 5c, in order to get a higher ranking than your competitors. So now, instead of 15c a day you're paying, on average, 30c a day, which means you're paying around $110 per year. That still doesn't sound like that much money, however (especially when compared to other forms of advertising) but considering how AdWords is showing your ad(s) to millions of potential customers, a 3% click through rate is pretty paltry. What you want to do is make your advertisement more effective, bringing in more and more customers, but not pay through the nose for clicks.
You see, because the Internet is a global network, the reality is that no matter what your business is, it's pretty much guaranteed that you're going to have an enormous amount of people already in the same business, with websites of their own and that's where picking the right keywords comes in.
One example, and one I used in the previous article, is if your page is about cars. Let's say you own an auto dealership. In this case you're better off using your locality as a keyword than using "cars" which is an extremely saturated keyword. However say you have a garage which deals exclusively in one brand of cars, then perhaps you could use this brand as your keyword. You'll still have a lot of competition, however because Google ads are regionally targeted you'd stand a much better chance than if you used "cars". The brand of car would also impact on your results, if your car is a Volkswagen or Toyota dealership you're going to get far more competition than if your keyword was "Bentley".
Now, instead of cars, say you own a small town computer shop, selling and repairing computers and computer accessories. Now, if someone were to type in the word "computers" into Google, both the regular links and the sponsored links will be dominated by some of the industry's heavy hitters, IBM, Dell, Apple, HP and so on, as well as the larger computer retail chains. Realistically your company could never hope to match their ranking and the fact is there is simply no way you can outbid them on a PPC basis. To do so, at any rate, would be utterly ridiculous. What you need to do is think about what keyword you want and research it, you can even do it now by testing various keywords in Google and seeing how many ads come up. In the case of the computer shop, a good strategy might be to use the name of the town, rather than use something obvious (and therefore expensive) such as computers. A lot of the time people get more clicks using a less popular, rather than using a more popular, and therefore more expensive, keyword.
In both cases setting a narrower keyword criteria would result in greater results. It's worth noting, too, that at the time of writing a Google search for "Bentley Ireland" presented zero sponsored links whatsoever and, picking an Irish city at random, "Cork Computers" presented only a few links, none of which were directly relevant to Cork. So if you've got a Bentley dealership or a computer shop in Cork maybe it's a good idea to set up your AdWords right away!
In other words it's all about getting a niche. Sure you could spend obscene amounts of money to try and out-rank a much, much larger company on a global scale and you might even succeed, for a day or so, but then what would be the point? Whilst Google allows you to target several countries and even write ads in a variety of languages, none of this matters if your business is local. If a woman in Kansas comes across one of your ads the likelihood of her flying across the Atlantic to visit a computer shop in Cork or even a Bentley dealership is beyond infinitesimal, which brings us onto our next point - making those clicks count!
In addition to CPCs and click-through rates, there's another factor, the most important one of all. No matter how good your ad is at grabbing attention, no matter how swanky it looks or how snazzy your slogan is, none of that matters if you're not able to employ that special magic that turns visitors into customers.
Let's say, just as an example, you're one of the lucky ones (the real lucky ones) with an astronomical click-through rate of 98%. Well if you're paying 5c per click, you're paying just under $5 a day, which would bring your annual total to over $1,800, which, suddenly, doesn't sound quite so lucky does it? In other words you want to make certain that you're selling much more than $5 per day and that your net profit per year is far in excess of $1,800.
Such a click-through rate is pretty unlikely though. To get click-through rates like that you're going to need a product that EVERYONE wants, and I don't mean Harry Potter books, I'm talking world peace, eternal youth, meaning of life type stuff. But even if you're getting a respectable 5 - 7% you should still monitor their CPC and CTR values very, very carefully. Google offers a wealth of webmaster tools which provide statistics on everything from where your visitors came from to how long they stayed on your site and so on. Using these tools you can also see how well or poorly certain ads are performing, and adjust your strategy accordingly, as well as helping you to see if you can afford to up your Cost Per Click amount. Firstly to see if you can gain some advantage over your compeditor, and secondly, to improve your rankings overall.
One of the ways Google ranks the placement of ads is by multiplying both the CPC and CTR of each ad. The resultant value therefore impacts how high a ranking your company recieves, rather than simply how much each company pays. This serves to level the playing field somewhat. (And means the Big Boys can't dominate web advertising as they do everything else.) Bear in mind though, that having too low a click-through rate can also affect your ad and if you have a click-through rate of less than 0.05% your ad just gets pulled regardless of how much you're paying for clicks.
In order to best ensure that you have the highest CTR possible you need to be able to anticipate, exactly, what your potential customers will be looking for and set your keyword(s) accordingly. AdWords gives you a range of options to tailor your words to specific searches, you can display your ads whenever one of your keywords is mentioned, when both are mentioned, or when an exact match is given or even set it up not to show when certain other words are mentioned.
Don't forget, either, that a lot of the time people aren't the best with computers in general, search engines in particular. It's also worth remembering that the Internet isn't exactly celebrated for its high standard of spelling and grammar and one of the golden rules of chosing keywords is to consider not how a word should be spelled, but how it could be misspelled. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the competitive world of AdWords.
One hotspot at the moment, in more ways than one, is Bulgaria. I often feel like I'm the only person left on this island that doesn't own a house there. Understandably, if you're looking to sell property in Bulgaria, a quick Google search for "Bulgaria property" will bring up lots and lots of other people who've had the same idea. In other words, the more popular the product, the more competition you're going to have, and, in this regard, AdWords is no exception.
A quick Google search for "property Bulgaria" brings up countless exact matches in both regular links and sponsored ones. In such a competitive market you're going to need to outbid your competitors just to get a look in but of course, with that, you've no guarantee that you'll be able to get the right amount of clicks in the first place, let alone convert those clicks into sales.
Plenty more people have already figured this out and so decided to deliberately misspell the word property. A cursory Google search brings up sponsored ads for "Proporty Bulgaria", "Propirty Bulgaria" and "Proarty Bulgaria". There's also plenty of ads for "Bolgaria" as indeed there are for "Moroco", "Portigal" and, believe it or not, there's also plenty of people out there looking to buy "propirty in turkie".
Ok, so you've set up your Cost Per Click and worked out your ratios, balanced these against your projected sales figures and carefully selected your keywords - Thunderbirds are go, right? Nope, not quite. You've forgotten what is, arguably, the most important part of the ad campaign; the make-or-break factor between someone just seeing your ad, and someone clicking on it. After all, it's what you say on an ad that's important.
So what makes a good ad, then? Well, it helps that we're surrounded with advertising every waking minute of our lives - bombarded you might say - with all manner of images, jingles, and slogans, on TV, on radio, on the bus stop in the morning, not to mention the bus itself, on the newspaper you read on the bus, on the billboards you drive by and the newspaper you read on the way. In fact you've probably seen dozens upon dozens of advertisements before you even started work. Many, if not most, don't grab your attention, they're just part of the ambient noise of modern life which you've seen or heard so many times now you hardly even notice them. But then there are the ads that you do notice. The ones you find really funny or clever, with a catchy tune or visuals that appeal to you or a slogan that permanently jams in your brain. So before you think about your AdWords, first, you need to start thinking of the sorts of ads, slogans and headlines that get your attention, then try and place yourself inside the minds of each of your target demographics and try to imagine what grabs their attention and what you think they would like to see. If you can manage this, then you stand a far, far better chance of getting these potential customers to click on your ad, above all others.
Now it's time to focus on the ad itself, how you want it to look and what you want it to say.
The following guidelines are designed to help you.
Make it Clear: An ad is useless if nobody knows what the ad is for, so make your ad as simple and as clear as possible. Unless circumstances specifically require you not to, you should always include your keywords in ad, and, if at all possible, in the ad title. For example, if a potential customer does a search for "Bentley Ireland" and two ads come up, one with the header "Paddy Murphy Motors" and the second "Bentley Ireland" which ad do you think the person is going to click?
Make it Different: At the same time, you should always do your best to make your ad stand out from those of your competitors, though this isn't always easy. Given the above example, however, let's imagine that Paddy Murphy Motors decided to change the headline of their ad from "Paddy Murphy Motors" to "Looking for a Bentley?" they now, potentially, have a much better chance of getting a click. So here's a good idea, try and anticipate not just the search, but the actual question a potential customer may pose whilst searching for your product or service. It's psychology really, but somewhere at the back of your mind a voice goes oh! and you think to yourself, "yes that's exactly what I'm looking for" and you click the link almost subconsciously.
Get to the Point: Let's be honest, you don't have much space, so you need to get your basic message down to three sentences, then, try whittle it down even more. It helps to think of it as a business card, a business card usually has three pieces of information; The person/company name, the service/product, and the means of contact. It's similar in AdWords, however in this case the person/company name isn't as important, the service/product is. So you put that as your header at the top, then expand on it, then finally, put your company's web address at the bottom.
Always bear in mind that you've got a limited amount of words, so you don't really need to bother with complete sentences. Just like if you're selling something in the local paper or the Buy and Sell, you wouldn't put
"Washing Machine for sale. This particular washing machine is a Hotpoint and has a special energy saving feature. It is four years old. The going price for this washing machine is €60 however I am open to negotiation. I, myself, am based in the Dublin area, so if you would like to see this washing machine or discuss prices with me my telephone number is 01 1234567. I would appreciate, however, if people would contact me only if they
are serious about purchasing my washing machine. Thank you for your time. Yours sincerely, Patrick Mc Daz."
Instead you would condense all that into "Hotpoint washing machine 4yrs w energy save mode, €60ono, Dublin area 01 1234567, no timewasters."
It's the same thing with AdWords.
So, using our two examples, lets make ads for the two companies:
|
Looking for a Bentley? |
Computers in Cork |
*Note: Both Paddy Murphy Motors and Rebel Computing were just two names I picked off the top of my head and any similarity to persons or organisations is purely coincidental.
Another point I should mention, regarding AdWords is to once again emphasise how quickly the ads go live and this is something you should definitely capitalise upon. One perfect example is to keep a close eye on current events and figure out how they might influence your particular product or service, and make it topical. With new technology such as RSS Feeds you can subscribe to a range of news services and specify a news digest tailored to your needs. Then, with AdWords, you can have your specially-tailored ad online just minutes after the newsflash hits. If your field is business and finance, for example, then real-time targeted AdWords will give you a considerable edge over competitors. Or say your company sells sporting merchandise online. It's the World Cup qualifiers and you're hoping to make a lot of money if/when Ireland qualify. Of course there's no point in advertising your services until after the match and then, only if Ireland wins the qualifier but you're already prepared. All going well the very second the ref blows the whistle you can log into your account and get your AdWords live by the time the lads in the pub are finished the first chorus of Olé Olé. Of course business and sport are but two examples, there are dozens more, politics, science, technology, entertainment, the arts, you name it.
For many, AdWords is a dream come true. It offers the broadest possible exposure to a global audience, quite literally, for pennies. Consider your local newspaper. Like many business owners you may very well have considered advertising with them until you found out the cost. Even the most modest allowance of column inches can cost hundreds, just for a single ad, in a single issue placed in a small newspaper with a negligible circulation. For half the cost of what the newspaper's asking, however, it's quite conceivable to engage in a successful AdWords campaign and bring thousands of visitors to your website.
It's important, however, to know the pitfalls, to understand that you may well be up against stiff competition. Most of all you will need patience, you will have to pay close attention to the statistics and test and retest different CPC rates and of course different keywords, for you to have a successful campaign. But remember, like anything in life the harder you work the greater the rewards and there's nothing more rewarding than to see your company name sitting pretty at the very top of the Google search results.
We provide many advertising services to our customers. We can provide advice and consultation for those who are interested in setting up their own AdWords account and help you devise a winning AdWords strategy. If you wish to outsource your AdWords to us we can also do the whole thing for you, if you so wish, and at the basic consultation charge.
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In the next section you'll learn more about other pay-per-click advertising companies and the different types of advertising they provide complete with a detailed list pay for click providers.
A Guide to Online Advertising - Part 3
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