4 Steps to a Successful AdWords Campaign

Google AdWords has made many businesses successful by providing them with a great deal of highly targeted traffic for as little as 5 cents! Yet many webmasters and advertisers are incompetent when it comes to using AdWords efficiently. After $100 in losses and having many failed campaigns, I have learned how to solve many of these setbacks, so I have put together a list of the 4 steps required to come out on top.

1. Design
Decide how the layout of your ad will present itself. Next consider what you want to be included in the title and what facts or catch phrases you want your visitor to know before they decide to spend your money by clicking on your advertisement. Don’t be a fool and get your ad disabled, please be sure to follow all of Google's rules and regulations on there editorial guidelines page.

Many computer owners are just learning how to purchase using the miracle of the internet and even more people do not understand that when they click on those Google ad’s they are spending someone’s money just by clicking on it. They also don’t understand that most of the pages that they are going to be clicking on are product pages trying to sell them something. Many aren’t even interested in spending any money no matter how convincing your sales pitch can be. Though, this depends on what they are searching for. To avoid this simply yet destructive problem merely put the price of your product directly into your ad.

2. Brainstorm
This is where my downfall began, I selected few keywords and in turn received little traffic, and the traffic I did receive was very expensive! To avoid this start off by taking the position of your possible customer. If you were searching for the product that you sell, what would you, as a customer search for? Do that now and make a list of as many search phrases and keywords you can think of. Don’t be afraid to use Google’s keyword tool, though I found that this isn’t too helpful.

After you squeezed out as many words you can, glance over them and determine what words and phrases can be combined to form a new one. Simply come up with as many words as possible, once you get started its easy and you should come out with around 250 keywords. Review this list and delete some of the keywords that are “out there” and wouldn’t produce targeted traffic.

3. Optimize
Never waste your money using Google’s suggested cost per click; it is 10 times higher than necessary. Many advertisers do not understand that there click through rate effects there position to the same degree with how much they pay per click. To make this easier to understand here is an example: if you pay 5 cents per click for the phrase “shopping cart” and your competition pays 10 cents and has a click through rate of .5%, to surpass this person in position you need to double your click through rate to anything above 1% yet you are still paying half of what he is! For keywords that are less targeted to your product or purpose yet still effective I suggest pricing them to nearly half that of highly targeted keywords for a rule of thumb.

Now that all your keywords and pricing is in place, set your daily budget lower than you plan on spending per day for now, this way incase it’s a failure you don’t lose that much. Let your campaign run for a few days, but before you do make sure you set up conversion tracking. Watch what keywords perform well and convert to conversions, and delete the ones that cost you nothing but money. If at first you don’t succeed try try again.

4. Experiment
As you watch the performance of your keywords and Ad groups you should continue to try new things. Change one word in your ad and compare the results to previous, trust me one word can and will make the difference; whether positive or negative that is for you to discover! If you are having trouble finding an ad that gets enough clicks to avoid being disabled brainstorm again and create as many ads as possible, even if they are terrible they will give you new ideas. Pick your favorite three and create a new ad group while comparing the results to your other ad groups.

If you do not find success after following all of these steps, what you’re doing isn’t wrong it’s what you’re trying to sell. To determine if your product is assured to fail ask your self this question: is this product helping someone or is it just another great idea? Chances are if it’s a great idea people aren’t searching for it, or in desperate need of it.

Continue to track and modify your keywords and Ad groups while watching your sales and popularity excel!