To maximize results on your website, you need traffic. Starting a Google Adwords marketing program can be a great way to deliver lots of visitors to your website who are already pre-qualified - after all, these are people who found your ad because they typed a keyword term related to your business into a search engine.
How Google Adwords Marketing works
Google Adwords is what’s known as a pay-per-click (PPC) marketing program.
If you’ve ever done a search on Google, you’ve probably noticed the top and right side areas of the search results page. These are under the heading of Sponsored Links.
These are the Adwords ads of business owners who offer products or services related to the keyword term you searched for.
If you click on one of these ads, the business owner pays Google a certain amount. The amount varies based on how competitive the keyword term is.
As an advertiser, you would bid on certain keywords related to your product or service. Google places your ad on the search results page for those keywords.
The position of your ad would be based on how high your competitors bid in relation to your bid and how well your ad performs in comparison to your competitors’ ads (more on this below).
Four Steps To Maximize the Performance of Your Google Adwords Marketing Program
1. Make sure your website is ready to deliver.
What do you want the want the visitor to do when they click on your ad and arrive at your website’s landing page?
Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Do you want them to buy a product? Optimize your page for your Most Wanted Response (MWR).
People are often resistant to an immediate sales message, so I would suggest you start with using your Adwords marketing program to invite visitors to sign up for your free ezine. Encourage them to do so by offering a free special report or eBook.
Once they’ve joined your list, you will have the opportunity to create a relationship with them through the great content you provide in your ezine. They will come to know you, like you and trust you as an expert in your field and will eventually buy.
2. Choose the right keywords.
Avoid bidding on single keywords or broad phrases with lots of competition. Instead, choose targeted keyword phrases that better apply to your specific product or service.
For example, if you sell digital cameras, you would be better off bidding on “Nikon cameras” or a specific model of Nikon digital camera. Your cost per click will be less and you’ll receive more targeted traffic.
If you provide a service to a specific local community, bid on keyword terms that include your region. For example, if you’re a dentist in Buffalo, choose “Buffalo dentist” instead of just “dentist”. Once again, you’ll only be paying for clicks that could result in real patient appointments.
3. Lower what you pay by making your ad perform.
Remember Google only gets paid when someone clicks on your ad. As a result, if you create an ad that attracts more clicks, they’ll reward you with a lower bid price and better ad placement.
Google measures the clickthrough rate (CTR) of each ad. The CTR is the percentage of people who actually click on your ad. If 100 people search for your keyword term, your ad is shown 100 times. If 1 person clicks on your ad, your CTR is 1%.
Let’s say you have this 1% CTR and you’re paying $1.00 per click to be in position #2. If you can change your ad to increase your CTR to 2%, Google may reward you by lowering your pay-per-click rate to only 51 cents for that #2 position. You’re basically getting two visitors for the price of one.
So how can you increase your CTR?
It all comes down to testing the wording of your ad. Adwords marketing expert Perry Marshall offers the following example of two slightly different ads with drastically different CTR’s:
Popular Ethernet Terms
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Complex Words - Simple
Definitions
www.bb-elec.com
2 Clicks - CTR = 0.1%
Popular Ethernet Terms
Complex Words - Simple
Definitions
3 Page Guide - Free PDF
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www.bb-elec.com
39 Clicks - CTR = 3.6%
All Perry did was reverse two lines and he increased his CTR by nearly twenty times!
Increasing your CTR can sometimes be a simple matter of changing the order of your words. The only way to know is by testing.
4. Keep track of your results.
In addition to the CTR, there are two other numbers you need to keep track of: your average cost per click (CPC) and your average revenue per click (RPC).
If you know that each of your leads brings you in about $10 in initial sales and it takes an average of 20 clicks to get that lead, your RPC is $0.50 ($10 divided by 20).
Knowing this helps you realize that your CPC needs to be below $0.50 or you’ll be losing money on every click. Obviously, when you’re first starting your Adwords marketing program you’ll need to guess at some of these numbers, but remember to track them as the results come in.
While a good marketer would do all she can to attract as much free website traffic as possible, a Google Adwords marketing program can be a valuable tool to help boost targeted traffic to your site. Using the suggestions above can help maximize the cost-effectiveness and profitability of your Adwords marketing program.
Bill O’Shea is a marketing consultant specializing in helping independent professionals and small business owners create maximum growth and profit in their businesses. For more great resources on small business marketing and a free Marketing Plan Development Guide and Special Report on “The Top Ten Advertising Mistakes Most Small Business Owners Make”, please visit Small-Business-Marketing-Success.com