Top Google AdWords Mistakes Revealed
Are you frustrated by your Google AdWords campaign?
Are you spending more than you used to only to get fewer and fewer clicks?
Did you hope that Google AdWords would be the solution that would finally jump-start your online business but now you’re finding out that you’re losing money every day?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, then this report is for you…
You’re about to discover how to increase the number of clicks you’re getting while reducing the amount of money you’re spending so keep reading.
Sound good?
Well, then let’s get started…
How Google Determines Your Ad Position
Virtually every person seeking help with their Adwords campaign is making the same mistakes. While Adwords can seem daunting at first, once you know a few well-kept secrets, it’s a lot easier than you might think.
Here’s the main thing that confuses most Adwords advertisers. You see, most people assume that the guy who pays the most gets to have his ad at the top of the list.
Nothing could be more wrong. Rather than basing your ad placement on the amount you’re willing to pay, it’s calculated based on a combination of factors.
The cost for your ads can be attributed to two things:
- The amount you bid
- The click through rate
If your ad isn’t getting clicked on, then your ad gets pushed down the page (better ads get more clicks and make more money for Google) causing you to get even fewer clicks, and causing you to have a higher cost per click. I know that’s confusing, so let me say that again. If you have a poorly written ad that no one clicks on, Google would rather replace it with another person’s ad that gets clicks, so they can make money. In fact, Google would rather have an ad that gets tons of clicks at the top of the list, even if the advertiser is only willing to bid $.05 per click. Think about it this way, if their ad gets 1000 clicks per day and they pay $.05/click, then they pay Google $50 per day. If you bid $3 per click but your ad is poorly written so only 2 people click on it per day, then you pay Google $6. Since Google wants to make more money, they’ll put your ad down below the guy who only pays $.05 per click, because at the end of the day, he’s paying them more. Of course, he’s gotten 1000 clicks to his site, and you only got 2 clicks so he’s not complaining.
So, the lower on the page your ad appears, the fewer clicks it gets. It’s a vicious circle resulting in a downward spiral of increasing ad costs and fewer clicks to your site!
But here’s the good news…
The reverse is true too. The more clicks you get per 100 impressions, the better your ad position. And, obviously the higher your position on the page, the more clicks you get, pushing your ad higher and getting you more clicks. Not a bad deal, if you can improve your ads so they get lots of clicks.
But not just any click is a good click. If someone is looking for, let’s say, pots and pans on Google and clicks on your ad because it contains the phrase “pots and pans” then they may not be interested in your site at all if you’re selling an industrial cleanser for pots and pans. After all, they’re on a mission to buy new pots and pans and will likely click the back button.
Be Careful or You Can Lose a Fortune
You just lost $3. So you’re thinking “So what? It’s only $3.” Yea, but by the end of the day that could be $3000 if you’re not careful. Trust me, Google AdWords can be as dangerous as Las Vegas. You can lose a fortune in a short time if you’re not careful.
Here’s an aside…
Google has likely gone out to your site and read through it looking to see if the keywords, like pots and pans are found in your site. If your site is Flash based, Google can not see any of the words that are in your site so they assume that you’re trying to trick people into coming to your site. In cases where the keyword you’re bidding on doesn’t appear on your web page, they’ll disallowed that phrase, and raise the minimum bid to $5 or $10 per click. They assume that if you pay $10 per click, then you must really want the traffic and must have good reason to pay for it.
Determining a Reasonable Cost Per Click
Back those $3 per click expensive ads…
Unless you’re in a very competitive industry like home mortgages or online dating, then your cost per click is out of control. Unless you’re selling your product or service for tens of thousands of dollars, you generally can’t afford to pay that much for what is most likely an invalid lead.
Here’s the key to making Google Adwords work for you:
You need to first know how many people need to visit your site in order to make a sale. Let’s say that 100 people visit your site. How many actually bought your products? And what was the average transaction amount? Once we know that, coupled with the margins on your products, we can determine what a reasonable cost per click is on Google.
Here’s an example:
100 people visit your site. You make 2 sales. One is for $895 and the other is for $349. That’s an average sale of $622. After you consider the cost for manufacturing, employees and other overhead, let’s say you make an average of $85 per order. That means that you’d make $170 if you got 2 people to buy from you. So if you get 100 visitors to your site, you make $170. But what’s the cost of getting those 100 people to your site? If you’re paying $3 per click, that’s $300 you pay Google to get them there. So you pay $300 to Google in hopes of making $170. That’s a losing proposition.
If, on the other hand, you pay $.33 per click, you’d wind up paying Google $33.00 to get 100 people to your site, and you’d make $137 per 100 visitors to your site ($170 minus Google costs of $33). Are you following me? I know it may be a little confusing because that’s a lot of numbers so re-read the previous paragraphs if needed.
Lowering Your Ad Costs
Focus Your Keywords
So, let’s talk about ways to lower your ad costs. The best way to do that is to begin with some research so you know what phrases people are searching for that are related to your products. Then take that tightly-concentrated list of words and create ads that contain those words. Delete all of the other keywords that are just generic keywords. Words like pots and pans are too broad if you’re actually selling cleanser for pots and pans. When you choose popular, broad keywords, not only are you paying to get people who are most likely not going to buy from you, you’re competing with all of the other related businesses in the world who want to bid on those same words. For instance, you sell pot and pan cleanser, but if you bid on the phrase “pots and pans” you’re now competing with the big boys that sell pots and pans like Walmart, Target and Williams Sonoma. If you focus your words, and use only the niche words that are about industrial cleaners for pots and pans, for example, you’ve just set yourself up to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish in an ocean. Focus your words and you’ll save money. Focus your words and you’ll get clicks only from people who are interested in your products.
Create Multiple Ad Groups
Once you’ve chosen a tightly-focused set of words, create multiple ad groups. Now there’s a difference between AdWords and ad groups. As you know, AdWords is the name of Google’s online advertising program. But then what are ad groups? Well, you can create different campaigns in your Google AdWords account, and then within each campaign, you can create multiple ad groups. For each ad group, you assign a different set of keywords that are associated with a specific ad.
Here’s the benefit. If someone searches for “pots and pans” and your ad has a headline that says “pots and pans” then you’re much more likely to get someone to click on your ad. Or if someone searches for “pot cleanser” and that’s one of your keywords, your ad should have a headline of “Pot Cleansers.” If that’s the headline on your ad, and the other advertisers have headlines like “Shine Your Pans” then the person searching will naturally gravitate toward your ad and click on it because the headline matches their search.
Here’s the other neat little thing. When your ad has the words that the person was searching for in it, Google will automatically bold those words in your ad, drawing additional attention to your ad, further increasing the likelihood that someone will click on it.
In order to make sure your ad has the same headline as the keyword that people are searching for, you have to choose a group of keywords that are VERY similar and put them in one ad group. So, let’s say we make a new ad group called “pots and pans.” Here are the keywords and phrases that we might put in that group:
- Pot and pan
- Pots and pans
- Pot and pans
- Pots and pan
That’s all. Notice we don’t have hundreds of keywords in this one ad group. If you have that many keywords, then you need to create lots of different ad groups.
So now we have the phrases listed above. Now you can make an ad that has the phrase “pots and pans” in the headline so that those keywords are always displayed with an ad that closely matches them.
Are you still following me? Good. I know this stuff can be a little confusing, but hang in there. This stuff is guaranteed to save you money.
So then we might make another ad group that uses these keywords and phrases:
- Pot cleaners
- Cleaners for Pots
And the ad that we create for that ad group will have a headline that uses the phrase “pot cleaners.” Are you starting to see the pattern here?
Test Multiple Ads
Now to put this into overdrive, test your ads, modify them and improve them. You can create lots of ads within each ad group and Google will randomly display each of the ads so that you can see which ads are most effective. After you have created several ads you can check back in a couple days and see which ads are getting the most clicks. Look for similarities in the ads that are outperforming the others so you can begin to modify your ads and tweak them a little at a time to try and gradually improve your click through rates. Remember, if you change too many things at a time, you won’t know which change was responsible for the improvement. I usually just change one word and then look back a couple days later to see if the change made a positive improvement.
After a month or so, you can delete the poor-performers and keep the best ones. Over time, you’ll clearly see common threads that will allow you to write better and better ads so your ads get more clicks and eventually rise in the listings.
Other Tips
Other simple tips to increase click through rates:
- Use a capital letter at the beginning of every word. That has been proven to get higher click through rates.
- Make your ads grabbing. Use magic words like “discover the secret” as opposed to “learn more things.” People hate to learn but they love to discover secrets.
- Avoid the use of superlatives. Ads will be declined and not posted. The only superlative that I’ve found that you can use is the word “top.” You can not say it’s the best pot cleanser, but you can say that it’s the top pot cleanser.
An Example of a Poorly Written Ad
Pots and Pans
Learn how to clean your pots
with Magic Clean
www.MagicClean.com
So what would you do to improve this ad? I hope you have a few ideas of your own now that you’ve read through this report.
Here are a few ways that I’d improve it:
- Headline is too generic so you’re competing with the big guys
- Headline doesn’t grab your attention so you get a low click through rate, lowering your ad position while costing you more
- Headline doesn’t have the keyword phrase (otherwise it would be in bold)
- Ad needs to have each word capitalized
- The word “learn” repels people
- There’s no benefit for the customer
A much better ad would look like this:
Industrial Pot Cleanser
Discover The Easiest Way To
Clean Your Pots And Pans
www.MagicClean.com/Cleanser
One final tip…
You can avoid getting poorly qualified visitors to your site by changing your ad to discourage the wrong people from clicking on it. For example, if you’re selling a very expensive product that most people wouldn’t be able to afford, state the price in your ad so that those who can not afford it, won’t click on your ad. Only those who can afford it will click so you don’t waste money on clicks.
Summary
Remember, when your ad is improved, you not only get more clicks, but you also get more clicks from people who are likely to buy from you. Plus your click through rate will improve, pushing your ad higher in the listings. The closer your ad is to the top, the more clicks it will get. And guess what? That will increase your click through rate even more and allow you to eventually lower your bids while maintaining the same ad position. If you can grasp that concept, you will have uncovered the key to Google Adwords performance.
I hope that this report really helps with your Google Adwords performance. I wish you the best of luck with your online marketing!
For information on Red Rocket’s other marketing services, or for help implementing any of these techniques, please call us today at 970-674-0079 and one of our experts will be happy to assist you.