Be ‘Wildly’ (not ‘Mildly’) Successful on Google

Whenever people ask me, “What’s wrong with my Google AdWords campaign?” I always ask the same thing: “How is your campaign organized?”

Mostly I’m met with blank stares. “Organized?” is the usual answer, “You mean the AdWords campaign? I never really thought about it.”

See, most of the time when I’m asked that question, people expect me to tell them about some miracle, magical, secret ‘trick’ that will send the money pouring in. They don’t realize that the basic mundane task of organizing a campaign is often the most critical to determining its success.

Most people pick a product to promote, throw together a few catchy-sounding ads (well, at least catchy-sounding to them), and grab up 600 – 1000 keywords that might be in some small way related to the product, and just… let it go.

I’m not pointing any fingers here. I did the same thing when I started, and since I was ‘lucky’ right off the bat and made a $1500 profit the first month I figured, “Boy, I’m a genius! I’ve got this Google thing whipped!”

Unfortunately I didn’t organize correctly (or at all). My plan was: get a whole bunch of keywords, no matter how loosely related, and put my ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible. As a result my click-through rates were abominable, and Google would slow my ad campaigns a lot. Sometimes more than three times a day. What I didn’t know was that through some basic organization I could have enhanced my campaign’s effectiveness and nearly doubled my profits. And as an added bonus, I would put Google on my side instead of against me. It could have saved me a lot of grief if I’d only organized my campaigns first.

So let’s take a look at the best way to organize.

AdWords is divided into campaigns, and subdivided into Adgroups.

Each campaign can be set to market to a specific audience, and each campaign has its daily budget. The audience is important because there are some products you can only market in the U.S., and others you can only market in the U.K. The daily budget is important because… well, it’s the daily budget. (By the way, I recommend setting the budget as high as possible; the more clicks you get, the more accurate your data will be.)

But it’s at the Adgroup level that the truly savvy marketer can get the best results from AdWords. Most people only have one Adgroup per product, with way more keywords than is wise.

The better approach is to have not one Adgroup per product, but many, each organized around a different ‘theme’, and each designed to speak to a different audience. Choose keywords carefully for each Adgroup, and design ads that include those keywords. Remember that any time an ad displays the exact words a searcher typed in his search, Google shows those words in bold… thus ensuring that ads that have carefully chosen keywords will get better clickthrough ratios.

How many Adgroups? As many as it takes to cover the product from all points of view. You could start off with five, or fifteen, or thirty. Think of each Adgroup as a different way of thinking, a different theme that will attract a different audience. For example, you might be promoting a flower delivery company. Obviously your target audience is going to be people who want flowers. But the audience that is looking for flowers to give to loved ones during a birthday is going to be different than the audience that is looking for appropriate flowers for a funeral, and both groups are likely to be different than someone who is looking for flowers to accompany a get-well card. Flowers for weddings, flowers for making up, flowers for breaking up, flowers for your secretary, flowers for your wife, flowers for your mistress… you get the idea. Play to all these groups separately, using different ads and different keywords, and separate them by Adgroup campaign. If there are keywords that have a high cost-per-click, organize a high cost-per-click Adgroup and see if you can make a go of it. Similarly (and this is where the real money is) create Adgroups for keywords that have a low cost-per-click. If you can get exposure for your ads cheaply, so much the better.

Always have at least two ads running in each Adgroup. That way you can test them against each other. After a couple of days and a fair number of clicks, let the results speak for themselves. The ad that is more profitable is the one you’ll keep, the ad that is less profitable you’ll want to change in some manner, or even throw out entirely. In this way your ad campaigns are always improving, always getting better.

Some Adgroups won’t be successful; that’s alright. The information you’ll gain from their failure will be just as valuable to you as the information you’ll gain from the successes of other Adgroups. Always remember, you’re learning what works and what doesn’t, and even if you have to ‘fail your way to success’, you’ll still hit success.