Creating a good Google AdWords marketing strategy

Thanks to lots of Google Adwords vouchers that have been sent out offering free advertising, and also thanks to lots of fly-by-night Adwords agencies, a lot of companies have dabbled with Google Adwords, usually with very little success.

Google Adwords can work. But it can also be a black hole that will happily eat up every penny you throw at it, without much to show for it.

Most companies go about it completely the wrong way and end up concluding that Google Adwords doesn't work, rather than that they didn't understand how to make it work.

When Google first brought out the Adwords program, it was a marketers dream. You could get clicks for as little as 5p on some really profitable search terms. But over the years, the cost has gone up as more companies jumped on the bandwagon and bid the prices up too high.

The first point that most people fail to realise is that the object of the game is not to get the highest ranking. That is what the natural rankings are for.

The object of the game is to get the most clicks for your money.

If you are on a limited budget, you are unlikely to be able to afford all of the clicks that Google can send (which depending on the keyword is likely to be several hundred or thousand clicks per day). So, you can drop your ad ranking and get more clicks.

Let's say you have a budget of £10 per day for a particular keyword. You could maybe get a number one ad ranking if you bid £2.50 per click. And this would give you a maximum of 4 clicks per day. If Google doesn't have any extra people searching for that search term, that's fine. But chances are that your budget will actually be used up in less than an hour.

It would be better to reduce your bid to, say, £1 and have an ad ranking much lower, but because your ad is now viewed all day, you can get 10 clicks per day.

Probably the number one waste of money is people trying to get the top ranking.

Unless you're prepared to throw some serious money at Google Adwords, you should abandon that idea completely.

The next thing to consider is which keywords you are going to target. Chances are that all of the one word and two word terms will already be quite pricey. But at the same time, these short terms are frequently too generic to be worth targeting.

There's no point in a telecoms company spending tens of pounds per click on the keyword "telecoms" because people searching for that keyword are unlikely to be looking to buy some telecoms equipment. People search for what they want, not your industry terms.

If somebody wants a touch screen mobile phone with a handsfree car kit, they don't search for "telecoms", they search for something more specific like "touch screen mobile phone with a handsfree car kit". Simple really.

There are likely to be fewer people searching for that specific term, but it's likely to be much cheaper, and much more effective.

And one of the most important (and most frequently overlooked) areas is the link itself. It's no good paying a load of money to target someone looking to buy a product that you have a really good deal on....and then directing them to your homepage.

The visitor has already done a search. That's what Google is for. They don't want to have to do more searching once they reach your website.

Send your adwords visitors to the most appropriate page.

We all know that people are impatient and once a visitor arrives at your site you've got less than 10 seconds to give them what they want. Don't waste those seconds asking them to search through your website for what they thought they'd already found.

OpenGlobal E-commerce can help you to set up a cost effective Google AdWords campaign. Contact us today to find out more about our Google Adwords management programs.