Monthly Archives: February 2014

How to Save Money While Using AdWords (PPC Advertising)

A Quick Heads up on the Future of Search, Advertising & Sales!

Ads on Adwords can often be much more accurate and helpful then organic listings. Why? Because people can make sure that any specific landing page will show up when a browser comes across their ad. This means they have the opportunity (this does not always mean that they do) to present all of the right and important information for the browser to make a decision to purchase from them.

Google Adwords

AdWords money can be wasted easily! Be careful not to waste your own cash.

REASON 1

Imagine your looking for an apartment in Arizona. You type in Arizona Apartment Rentals or Apartments for Rent in Arizona as the Keyword/Phrase. You see the advertisements and they read, “Golf Club Rentals Phoenix” or “Car Rentals Phoenix”. Well you could imagine the head of marketing at the car rental company or golf course/shop would not be happy. They are certainly losing money from these keywords that show up when the browser is simply not looking for their product or service. The service being an apartment to rent, the ad showing up, golf club rentals. This is where people make accidental clicks and your money is thrown down the drain.

REASON 2

Imagine you’re a Plumbing Company in a suburb of Chicago. However, you work in a suburb of Chicago and will not hire a plumber that will have to travel a few hours to get to you. So you run an AdWords campaign with the geographic region of Illinois and Chicago. WRONG! You need to refine your list of geographic locations to ONLY the areas that will be feasible and ultimately profitable for your company to service.

REASON 3

You are simply not looking at the flow chart of visitors to your site.

REASON 4

Your landing pages just aren’t doing it!

 

How to Fix It!

 

  1. Make sure that you have your negative keywords set so that “golf course”, “golf” or “car” is a negative keyword and your AdWords ad will simply not be displayed if the browser searches for golf or any of the other negative keywords. However, if your apartments are near golf courses and that is a main attraction, you would need to be mindful of your negative keywords. This is just in case the end user is browsing using a long tail keyword such as, “apartments near golf courses in Arizona”
  2. Make sure you set your geographic parameters so that all locations you don’t serve or will not serve do not see your advertisement when your keywords are typed in.
  3. Use your Google Analytics account and features to check the visitor flow of your websites visitors that entered your site via a PPC advertisement. Research this flow and find what pages have the highest percentages of exits or the highest exit%. Once you establish this, go check those pages and make sure that there isn’t something that would make YOU leave. Make sure to study that page and add another call to action, symbol of trust, more relevant content or something else that will reduce that exit%.
  4. Make sure that you associate each and every advertisement that is placed on your Google Adwords account with a unique and related landing page. This will make sure to reduce your bounce rate, therefore reducing the amount of money you will need to apply to your Adwords campaign to see results. The best landing pages will be product/service/brand specific and will typically have a clear and concise call to action. These landing pages should also contain the same verbiage that your ad contained (so as not to confuse web browsers that will lead to a click but not a conversion).