The beauty of most marketing tools these days is that they’re mostly online and open to the public. While anyone can pretty much set up online advertising themselves, these tools are complex and often difficult to navigate. This is especially true of Google AdWords. If you’re sitting at your desk ready to throw your computer out the window because of an AdWords campaign, hold up! We’ve put together a few tips to help get your AdWords account back on track, so you can get the best value out of your advertising campaign.

Before we get into these tips, we recommend you pause your campaign. If you aren’t seeing any success, there is no real need for you to keep spending your business’ money unwisely. On a tight deadline? We still think it’s best to pause your campaign…but read this quickly!

Do your research

It’s essential to set aside some quality time to research before you start your campaign. Start with Google’s Keyword Planner to research associated keywords, competitiveness and search term volume. Then make sure you know how Google’s different match types work.

It’s also important to note any keywords you don’t want associated with the advertisements. These will be your negative keywords you will input into your campaign.

Jot down your research and input it into your campaign later. This will help you form a relevant and comprehensive AdWords campaign and ensure you won’t be wasting any money.

Relevancy is everything

Google formulates a Quality Score to determine your cost-per-click (CPC). The Quality Score is based on a number of factors, but generally relevancy of:

• Copy
• Keywords
• Landing page

In short: if your ad copy, keywords and landing page is all relevant to the product and service you are trying to sell, you should receive a high Quality Score. By ensuring these all line up harmoniously through the ad copy you create, the keywords you put in, the negative keywords you add and the landing page you use, you should have a better performing ad and have a lower CPC.

Become AdWords certified

Google provides free AdWords certification programs so you can learn the ins and outs of the platform. Knowing exactly how the platform works is the wisest way to start a Google AdWords campaign, as you would be aware of modifier types, be able to make sound judgments regarding cost-per-click amount, optimise copy for best performance on Google (the company has ever-changing rules around copy), and more. Being certified will give you the ability be able to make the most out of the platform and therefore have a higher chance of success with your campaigns.

Be warned: it’s no walk in the park. There is quite a bit of reading material to get through (yep, it really is a complex beast) and each exam is two hours (you have to pass two of the six modules in order to become certified). Ouch. But it’s definitely worth the effort, especially if you want to use AdWords heavily in future.

Start small

It’s best to start off with one small “trial”-type campaign so you can get a feel for how AdWords works. You may be certified, but knowing how your audience reacts to advertisements often differs from demographic-to-demographic. It’s also important to get a feel for the platform and its features. The best thing about Google AdWords is that your campaign is fully customisable at any time – meaning you can change aspects that aren’t working.

Trial a number of advertisements

Another beneficial feature of AdWords is that it lets you input a number of different advertising types and copy versions under the one campaign. You can easily split test advertisements on AdWords to discover what placement and copy works well for your audience. We usually recommend testing four advertisements for one small ad group or single ad group campaign, but the amount is limitless. If you are trialling more than four, it’s best to cut down the number of advertisements after a week so you are not wasting money on poor performing versions.

Monitor and change regularly

It is crucial to be monitoring your campaign regularly and make changes when needed. If you’re a small business, you should be monitoring every day initially, and then once a week if you feel your campaign has been properly optimised. You should be watching out for any advertisement that is performing poorly, keywords with a low relevancy score and anything else you have noted that is out of the ordinary. Making constant changes is one of the most important things you should be doing to ensure your campaign is successful. It’s also beneficial to keep an eye on your campaign spend, as Google may spend up to 20% more than your inputted daily budget (yep…sneaky!).

Time poor? Contact us!

We have a wealth of experience running a variety of campaigns for clients. Save time so you can carry on doing what you do best – running your business! Get in touch here.