Jeff Gawronski runs a site for entrepreneurial inventors and is a consultant on search marketing. In the last issue, he covered some budget-minded ways to market an online retail store, and suggested that sellers focus on search engines and set up an Adwords account on Google (Link). Today he reveals two tips for making your Google Adword search campaigns more profitable.
Now that you've created your Google Adwords Pay Per Click Campaign you might feel your hard work is done. Just set it up and leave it right? Wrong! Setting up your search engine marketing campaign is the easy part, making it a successfully profitable piece of your marketing plan is the hard part.
Google does everything possible to hold your hand through the set up process; from offering tutorials to guiding you through your ad creation, Google even suggests keywords and phrases for you to use. In fact they make the set-up so easy you might be lulled into thinking that there is no hard work for you to do, but that's not the case. A good campaign is only such if it is profitable. Getting to profitability takes hard work and knowing the following tips for search marketing success.
Tip #1 for a Profitable Search Campaign: Don't Over Spend
This does not refer to your "daily budget," as that should be set according to your overall marketing budget for the campaign, rather over-spending refers to how much you are willing to pay per click. Initially the competition may force you to pay over $1.00 per click. Unless you are selling expensive merchandise or your conversion rate is extraordinarily high you'll never be able to afford $1.00 per click. You'll be out of business and broke.
What you can do though is start at the high rate ($1.00+ a click) for your listing to initially appear. Once your ad appears and starts getting clicks it is your job to reduce the amount per click you are willing to spend. The best suggestion is to reduce your rate by ten to thirty cents per day. It may surprise you to learn that if your ads have a high click-through rate, Google will keep posting your ad even if you reduce from $1.30 a click to $.20 cents max per click.
Why? The answer is two-fold. First, Google understands that if an advertiser is willing to pay upwards of $2.00 per click it doesn't matter if no one clicks on it. They realize that obtaining more clicks from qualified advertisers equals more revenue than receiving a smaller number of clicks from over-paying companies that consumers don't want to click on. Second, Google wants their search engine to be relevant. Eventually if Google sold out to highest bidders they would slowly lose market share as consumers would grow frustrated with poor search results and use a different search engine.
These two reasons work to your advantage! Google will never tell you to slowly reduce how much you are paying per click, if anything they'll even scare you into thinking that your ad will drop below page one. Trust that if your ad is getting clicks, Google will not significantly lower your ad if and when you reduce the max amount spent per click.
Tip #2 for a Profitable Search Campaign: Add/Delete Keywords
It may sound obvious to add and delete keywords, but for many this task is only done in its simplest form. For many entrepreneurs starting out with their Adwords campaign it is far too easy to use a few internally discovered keywords or search phrases and to let Google suggest the rest. The mistaken mentally is thinking that Google has the documentation and proof of words most searched and that using their "suggestions is comprehensive.
Although true that Google-provided search phrases or keywords are useful, they only make up half of your marketing potential. You have to dig deep and challenge yourself to discover any possible word or phrase that consumers could possibly use to want to find your website. You can do this by studying your products and creating lists of possible search terms. Do this for 4-6 hours straight and you'll still discover profitable search phrases even in your last hour!
Deleting keywords that aren't profitable is just as important as adding new keywords. Some entrepreneurs mistake getting clicks as success, however success should be measured by getting sales. Unless your goal is to drive traffic for increasing your site's visitors (for advertising purposes) then you do not want to obtain clicks just for the sake of getting clicks. Since you are paying per click, you have to carefully study which keywords have a high bounce rate and which keywords are not achieving sales. This can be monitored and studied with your Google Analytics account. Remember that by deleting unsuccessful keywords, you are making your PPC campaign more profitable.
Overall Google Adwords can literally turn your website and company into an overnight success. The key however is using Google's help and guidance, but also taking into consideration the two most important factors to success which are; Don't Overspend and Add/Delete Keywords. If you can do that, your Internet business has a high likelihood for success and profitability.
Remember, your marketing is only as good as the sales it returns!
