Google Ad campaigns can be effective in driving a lot of traffic to your website, but they can be incredibly expensive, both in time and money, if you’re not careful. I’ve seen several ISVs make mistakes in trying to run their own AdWords campaigns. Without too much effort you can end up spending thousands of dollars and seemingly endless hours each month tuning your campaigns and still not get measurable results. And don’t forget about designing and developing an effective landing page and conversion goal.
If you are adamant about using Google Ads as part of your marketing strategy, here are three tips for optimizing your Google Ad campaigns.
Tip #1 – Don’t Advertise on the Google Content Network. You will spend a lot of money paying for irrelevant click-throughs. Make sure the content network box is unchecked in your campaign settings. If you do try out the content network, be sure it is related to a conversion goal and watch it carefully and frequently to avoid paying for useless clicks.
Tip #2 – Your ads should only be running in countries/regions where you can sell your solutions. You can choose the different locations you want to run your ads in, by adjusting your campaign settings.
Tip #3 – Have small, targeted ad groups. This is one of the most important parts of your Google Ad campaign, as it will ultimately effect your cost per click. Therefore, I’m going to expand upon this in more detail.
Each ad group should contain no more than twenty keyword phrases, and have between two and four ads. The keyword phrases within the add group should focus on one “primary” phrase and contain different variations of that phrase. Then, the primary phrase should be matched with a “constant” phrase. Thus, forming your different keyword phrases. For example, let’s say your product focuses on EDI for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Your primary phrase would be “Microsoft Dynamics AX”, and your constant phrase would be “EDI”. Therefore, you would want your keyword phrases to be as follows…
* Microsoft Dynamics AX EDI
* MS Dynamics AX EDI
* Dynamics AX EDI
* Microsoft AX EDI
* AX EDI
* MS AX EDI
* Microsoft Dyanmics AX EDI (throw in a misspelling or two within certain keyword phrases, as some people tend to type fast and make typos when searching in Google, for example)
Make sure to create between two and four ads that contain these keywords. Monitor the performance of each of these ads, and keep revising them to improve click-through rates. Also, when your prospect is searching online and types “Microsoft Dynamics AX EDI” in the search box, they are more likely to click on ads that contain this phrase or a variation of it.
I’ve reviewed some ISV Google Ad campaigns that contain none of their keywords within their ads. By doing this, the Google AdWords system will view your keyword phrases and ads as being “relevant”, and will therefore assign higher ratings to your keyword phrases. The higher the rating your keywords achieve, the less you need to pay per click. Google will also reward you with better placement within the search results. You want to achieve as a high a rating as possible, but don’t want to go below a seven out of ten.
What has your experience been with Google AdWords? Has it paid off as you’d hoped?
