Google and Yahoo-Overture control over 90% of the PPC
market and as such you should seriously consider using them
if you want the maximum possible exposure to targeted web
traffic through PPC advertising .
Sign up for the Google Adwords program is free but
they require a $5 USD deposit before they will start to
display your ad copy. Google provides an excellent interface
to work with. A pleasant modular design groups all of your
work into nice "containers" that can be manipulated and
viewed in a variety of ways.
The system reporting is by no means real time but the
delay on their results display is palatable when comparing
them to the other major PPC provider, Yahoo-Overture.
A nice feature that sets Adwords apart from other PPC
providers is that your ads display almost instantly
after you place them in their system. They have built a lot
of their editorial guidelines into the ad entry system.
Their system will flag your ad before you can enter it if
it doesn't meet their terms of service . That is a lot
better than waiting 2-5 business days to find out if your ad
had a problem or not. Time is money.
Also provided with your Adwords account are a number of
free tools to help you with your campaign management.
While several of these tools are great starting points I
have found the need to augment what Google provides through
my own online research, tools and software as well as e-book
purchases.
The lesson learned, everybody that uses Google Adwords
has access to the same tools that you do, including your
competitors. It goes without saying that if you want to
get an advantage here you will need other resources to
supplement your knowledge other than what Google provides.
Having said that the Google Adwords system is still
extremely powerful . Providing you with keyword suggestions,
automated bid management, campaign optimization (by Google
staff), geo-targeting, roi tracking, and all the reporting
you can handle, their system allows you a b level of control
over your spending and the ability to truly identify who
your customer really is.
What I really like about the Adwords system is the fact
that the guys with the most advertising dollars are not
guaranteed to win any particular market.
Google tracks the Click Through Ratio (the
percentage of people who see your ad and click on it) for
each of your ads and keywords. Their system gives you a
better position in their display listings if more people are
clicking on your ads.
Why do they do this?
To reward people who take the time to write relevant ad
copy and marry that to a tightly relevant keyword list.
You see, Google will reward you for doing your homework .
The time you invest studying and learning their system will
save you money , which can be just as rewarding as making
money.
Hey, if I could afford 5 dollars a click I would pay it,
but I can't. I need to lower my advertising costs while at
the same time generating as much targeted traffic to my site
as possible.
Unfortunately, my experience with their support system
does not paint as rosy a picture of the mighty Google .
In general, their online information is pretty good. It
will solve your routine questions such as "when exactly does
my credit card get billed? ) " quite well.
Google's support system seems geared towards keeping you
off the phone with them. They like to refer to their
repository of online documentation and use template driven
email communication.
In instances where I needed specific information (i.e.
why is this keyword disabled even though I created a brand
new campaign to put it in?) I received "canned" emails with
my support persons name "pasted" into the email.
Often times I was required to send them another email
asking if they had even read my first one and to get the
answer I was REALLY looking for.
At the end of the day I was left feeling that eventually
my problem was going to be solved I just wasn't sure when
that was going to be and how many times I would have to
contact them in order to get the answer I really wanted.
Typical Costs associated with Running an Adwords
Campaign
There's two ways to approach this:
Are you going to manage your own campaigns?
or
Do you want to leverage someone else's experience and
invest money in a company that can manage your Adwords
campaigns?
Let me suggest that you manage your own accounts
at least in the beginning . Start small and start collecting
reference materials while you learn how the system works.
Search for other products and resources that can help you
but keep in mind some of them won't work out . Don't let
that stop your research, there is material out there that
can truly help you and save you a lot of money.
Investing in a $40 e-book is a lot cheaper than
blowing $500 or more with Google while you are learning the
ropes .
Having said that if you want to get a successful campaign
started now you can enlist an SEO company to manage your
Adwords campaigns.
The question is: How will you know who to trust?
You can burn several thousand dollars for overpriced,
untargeted traffic if you let the wrong companies manage
your campaigns. How can anyone honestly know what to look
for in an Adwords Management company if you haven't even
tried the system out for yourself? Food for thought. If you
manage your own campaigns at first you will get a feel for
the system.
Campaign Costs
Ok, let's talk about the typical costs you can expect
running a Google Adwords campaign. The good news is
Google Adwords gives you the potential to reach millions
of surfers in a matter of minutes for pretty much as little
money as you want to spend.
The bad news is after the novelty of having an Adwords
account and setting up your first few campaigns wears off it
can begin to feel like a ball and chain. There are a lot of
monotonous tasks that have to be managed daily and it can be
a tough thing to manage unless you are a disciplined person.
Before you spend money on campaigns and resources acquire
this mental discipline. Realize before you begin that it
isn't going to be fun after a while. Google Adwords is a
business tool, one of many, and as such it has it's
advantages and flaws . It can make you a lot of money or it
can cost you a lot of money and create a lot of stress for
you depending on your ability to consistently manage your
campaigns.
Ok, your minimum initial deposit is $5 to get started as
we learned above. Start here, and I suggest resisting the
urge to JUMP in and start spending like crazy... stay at or
near this $5-$50 level of investment until you use it up .
You're not going to see any returns on this investment
financially but you will gain valuable knowledge of how best
to use the Google Adwords System to generate income without
learning the hard way.
You have a lot of learning to do before you want to start
pouring money into your account. Google is in the business
of making money and their system makes it "REALLY" easy to
spend as much as you want.
Minimum bids start at a reasonable $0.05 USD. After
developing your keyword list and dumping it into Google's
system you have to start making financial decisions.
If you take Google's suggested bid prices for your
keyword list you can pay a lot of money for your web traffic
depending on how large your keyword list is and how much
traffic these keywords generate.
Rest assured Google's system will provide you a lot of
traffic quickly if you want to pay for it. It's not uncommon
for Google's big management system to suggest max bids in
the $20 - $30 range.
You don't have to accept these outrageous suggestions of
course so your first big money saver is to lower the max bid
to something you find acceptable and enter it for all of
your keywords.
Please note Google's system will not charge you this full
amount unless someone else is willing to pay that much for
the keyword. Leave this number set higher if you want to
produce a lot of clicks quickly.
Bidding into position's 1-3 will deliver the most
traffic, but will be less targeted than position's 4-6.
Position 1 will get the most clicks but many of these
clicks will be untargeted "impulse" clicks. Taking the time
to scan all the way to position 6 in the listing and click
on the advertisement at that position suggests that the
searcher is extremely interested in the subject being
advertised.
Over time you will learn which keywords are making you
money and which one's are simply too competitive for your
budget. Google's campaign tracking abilities in
conjunction with other 3rd party ad tracking software can
help you identify these profitable keywords and track your
website visitors.
Unfortunately every system can only provide so much
traffic and you will find the larger companies can afford to
bid pretty high for more general, high traffic keywords
because they can afford it.
Large companies will pay $5 for general keywords like
"credit cards" because they know over the lifetime of using
a credit card they will recover their investment.
The big boys can squeeze you out of the Google Adwords
World just as easily as in the "real world". Of course it's
not all "doom and gloom". You still have a powerful and
relatively inexpensive tool in your hands if you can exploit
niches and find the "bargain" keywords.
Google's system of tools leaves you high and dry in this
respect unless you have a lot of money to blow on "throwing
out a wide net" by trying a large keyword list and then
refining your campaigns as you start to get clicks and track
your conversions.
You can get a lot of garbage clicks by bidding your way
to the top for general keywords . This is expensive, less
targeted, and lower converting than if you bid to position
3-5 or spend time finding the less expensive niche keywords
(using your third party software or e-book techniques).
Chances are when bidding on more general high traffic
keywords you will be competing with large companies and
competitors using SEO company services to manage their
campaigns.
These companies can afford to pay a lot more than you or
I for their clicks. In order to counteract this you need to
tightly target your campaigns and find niche keyphrases to
be profitable with Google. I can't stress this enough.
To make proper decisions you will need to gather as much
data as you can on how the Adwords system works. Obviously,
you won't have this data until you run a campaign or two
which is why I suggest running your own Adwords Campaigns
for a while to get familiar with their system.
Study the stats provided by Google which are really
quite good in conjunction with one or more 3rd party stats
tracking packages.
You will start to notice trends in the numbers which will
allow you to make more effective use of your time and money
by bidding only on the keywords that are generating sales.
Analysis may also prompt you to tweak your site content
if you notice a niche you want to start competing for
(better yet start up another site or tier two web page on
your site targeting that niche and remove these keywords
from the original campaign moving them into a new campaign
pointing to your new content).
Minor tweaks can save you BIG money using Adwords
Some Notes on Scalability:
Google allows you to bid on 3 types of keyword matching
options which immediately gives you three times the keywords
to bid on without any more brainstorming on your part.
Each matching option provides different results and
should be managed on a keyword by keyword basis.
Google also provides two methods of displaying your ad on
their network: Content Match Listings and Search Network
Listings .
Effectively this allows you the potential to be
noticed by:
1) anyone searching on Google's portal
2) anyone searching portal sites that get their search
results from Google
3) anyone viewing a site displaying Google's ads that
has content related to the keywords you bid on.
4) anyone reading an email with content related to
your keyword at Google's free email service Gmail.
That's a lot of options and a lot of potential exposure.
Tweaking to find the right combination for your particular
situation and spending requirements is something you simply
have to do on an ongoing basis. I think the benefits are
obvious to you by now.
A final word on costs. You may have noticed that I didn't
use a lot of numbers in my discussion of campaign costs with
Google. What I think I have illustrated is a Google campaign
truly can cost as little or as much as you want it to.
It can get you as much or as little traffic as you want
it to. What kind of traffic it brings and how much it costs
is up to you.
Where will your ads be displayed? More places than you
might think:
At the time of publication AOL, Netscape, Ask Jeeves,
AT&T Worldnet, EarthLink and Excite all get some or all of
their search results from Google.
Content Match Listings vs. Search Network Listings
When user's do a search on one of the Google family of
portal sites your paid listings appear either along the top
of the search results highlighted as sponsored listings or
to the right of the actual search results in text boxes.
Your position on these search pages is determined by your
keyword list and your bid for that keyword.
Your results with the Search Network Listings can be
quite successful as long as you manage your account using
some of the techniques suggested in this article.
Use the included Geo-targeting capabilities built into
the Adwords system to ensure your ads display only in areas
that are potential customers for you.
Content match listings appear as inserts on web pages not
in search engine results pages. My experiences with the
content Match Listings haven't been as successful as with
the Search Network Listings although I still use this option
for some of my campaigns.
Google's system analyses the content of web page and
serves up ads to those pages based on the what it feels the
page is about . A web page on motorcycles may feature
ads about buying motorcycles, motorcycle catalogues, parts
distributors ... I think you get the idea.
And this idea is a good one since the ads it displays are
usually pretty close to what you would think they should be.
When you display ads on your website using Google's Adsense
program for example, you are effectively joining their
content network.
A drawback to the content matching system is you can't
really know who is clicking on your ad. It could even be
a competitor clicking on your ad from their own site!
Google gives you the option of disabling either of these
display methods if they aren't working out for you with the
click of a button.
You can do this on a campaign by campaign basis only
enabling/disabling what is working for you. If you want to
minimize your risk but still utilize the Content Matching
system you do have an option.
You can set up a separate campaign with lower bid prices
for your keywords and only enable content matching for this
campaign. Remove the content matching option from your
original campaign and voila! you've minimized your risk.
A few more notes on Google Campaign Optimization
I can't stress enough the importance of getting a good
Click Through Ratio (CTR) for your best target keywords.
Google has really offered you a chance to save some big time
money if you know how to get a good CTR for your ads and
keywords.
Getting a good CTR allows Google to sell more ad space
which makes them more money. Google transfers some of this
money to you the advertiser by increasing your ranking
within their search results it displays for your keywords,
at no additional cost.
That's right, if you can write relevant ads for your
target keywords you don't necessarily have to pay the higher
bid prices for those keywords that your competitors are
paying. More money saved!
Advantages of the Google Adwords System
- Highly configurable system with an intuitive web-based
interface.
- Reporting system is near real-time so you can tweak
campaigns on the fly
- Since their system is web based you can access your
account at any time.
- Good list of Free tools and guides (although third
party tools may still be required)
- Rewards advertisers that pay attention to providing
relevant content to their search clients not necessarily the
highest bidder. Get a better CTR and your ads are cheaper.
- Geo-targeting capabilities. Target by City, Country or
display your ads Globally.
- Multiple ad delivery systems. Content and Search
listings, Partner Network listings, Email.
- Multiple keyword matching options including the ability
to 'filter' keywords.
- Reasonable minimum startup cost of $5 with no monthly
minimum spend requirements
- They have licensed their search results to several
other large search engines improving your web site's
exposure to people that don't use Google as their main
search portal.
- Free ROI tracking tools.
- Minimum bid is a reasonable $0.05 USD.
Disadvantages of the Google Adwords System
- Learning curve can cost you a lot of money.
- Not the most expensive PPC search engine but certainly
more expensive than all other PPCs except Yahoo-Overture
- Click fraud is an unavoidable risk.
- Content matching system does not always deliver the
same ROI as their search listings. If both ad delivery
systems are enable for a particular campaign the content
match results can lower your overall campaign CTR and get
keywords disabled.
- Support system is email template driven. It can take
you a few tries to get the information you REALLY need from
Google's support.
- Interface does not indicate what your competitors are
bidding, only the maximum bid for any particular keyword,
making the implementation of bidding strategies much more
difficult.
Google Adwords Resources:
Google Adwords Homepage
