5 Basics for Getting Started with Google Adwords

Since Google drives so much internet traffic it's important for you to be seen there. There are two ways for you to do this...natural search (SEO or search engine optimization, where your site URL shows up in the body of the results pages) or pay-per-click (PPC or otherwise known as SEM, search engine marketing). Google Adwords is a pay-per-click engine meaning, when someone does a search and your ad appears (usually down the right-hand sidebar) you pay when someone clicks on your ad.

How does it work? Basically you create an account with Google Adwords that you fund with your credit card. When someone clicks on your ad, Google deducts the cost-per-click charge that you agreed to pay, out of your account. This is a great form of 'performance marketing' since you only pay when an action (a click) occurs. Make sense?

Before you dive into Google Adwords:

1) Keywords and Phrases - You basically "buy" keywords and key phrases that people who buy from you or visit your site most likely will search on. What types of people do you want clicking on your ad? What are they typing into Google to find you? For instance, if you sell watches, is someone going to be more qualified if they type in "Men's Watch", or "Bulova Men's Watch"? Chances are the latter, so you want to be specific. Google will suggest keywords for you just be careful they may suggest a term like "Watch" to drive a ton of traffic to your site, but you may end up paying for traffic that won't convert to sales. Remember, the Google Keyword Sugggestion Tool is just that - suggestions.

2) Targeted Ads - Google will ask you where you want your ads targeted geographically. It could be country, state, city specific and radius around a zip code.  This is important because if someone is searching for something that you deliver locally, you'll want that click versus the one from an area you don't serve. See the ad to the left, notice "California" on the ad. That showed up because I'm searching "Bulova Watch" from California.

3) What to Say, What to Say - You've got 25 characters in the headline and 35 characters in the next two lines, then your URL, not much room for your information huh? You need to be careful here on what to write. Do a search on your keyword and review what your competitors are doing. Then one-up them. If you've got a better feature or product,try focusing one "ad group" on that particular feature or product. You can then use another ad group to test out pricing. You'll want to include the particular keyword that someone searched on somewhere in the ad. Google has a tutorial on how to create an ad.

4) Your Budget - You're pretty much in control. You specify the maximum cost-per-click you're willing to pay, and daily budget caps. And you can change either variable  virtually at any time. Great tools! Keeping with the watch theme I used Google's keyword tool to check out what position I'd be in if I spent 15¢ per click on "Bulova Watch". So I see that I would be on the first page of Google, somewhere in position 4-6 if I spent 11¢-12¢. Not bad.

5) Reporting - Data will be available to you by keyword, ad group, URL, in any given period of time. You'll be able to see the effectiveness of how your keywords are doing and at what cost so you can change it up at any time. In the campaign below the maximum this company wanted to pay was $1.00 per click.

Now...create your Google Adwords Account - Google has a page of really great tutorials so you may want to start there.

Choose a language you want to advertise in, the targeted location you'll want to advertise to, create your ad, choose a daily budget and maximum cost per click. Use that keyword tool to help you with that but you can change it when you want. You're ads won't start running until you provide your billing info but your account will be ready to go.

Google is also beta-testing a Cost-Per-Action model, where you can specify a price you're willing to pay for a specific action - like a sale or a lead. Stay tuned for more on that.

Now I know VerticalResponse has a ton of Google Adwords experts...what am I missing?

Comments

[Paul]

I keep hearing tales of people who quickly exhaust their budget when first approaching PPC. I'm wondering if it would be best, for me at least, to employ someone experienced in the field to manage my account? Thanks for explaining the start-up basics.

[Andrew]

Split testing! Possibly the most important part of the process!

Google lets you run multiple adverts against your keywords. This means you can run simultaneous ads with small differences in the advert, you may find that a mall change in the url, title etc can produce a much better Click-through-rate (or CTR to add another 3 letter acronym).
Using split testing you can slowly but surely increase the effectiveness of your advert, you can even split test different landing pages.

The basic methodology is simple:

1) Write 2 or more ads for each ad group and wait to get a decent enough amount of traffic through to judge them by.

2) Delete the less successful ad and try to write one that will beat your more successful advert.

3) Repeat.

Above all though, make sure you have an effective way to capture data once visitors reach you (your conversion rate).

Clicks and conversions go hand in hand, they're pointless without each other.