Have you heard of Google Adwords? Probably you are already a little familiar with the Internet’s most powerful tool for promoting your business to the largest community of Internet users in the world. There is no bigger opportunity to reach out to customers all over the Internet than Google and its search partners. Using Adwords effectively can make your site pay for itself and earn you huge profits, but if you don’t really know what Google Adwords is and how it works, you may waste your ad money on subpar results.
The first thing you need to do to write effective ads for Google Adwords is to determine what your visitors are looking for when they do their Google search. You want to make sure you attract the customers who will find the content they want on your site. If you get inside their heads, you’ll know what they need and you will develop a better rounded keyword strategy.
Do some basic keyword research. List the keywords that are already on your site. Be objective about how the content on your site will attract customers and motivate them to come back or to make purchases. Use WordTracker and Keyword Discovery to find more keywords. Start brainstorming a list of words and phrases that you think potential customers will look for on the net. Make the longest list you possibly can. You don’t have to whittle it down straight away, but you will find a few high performers that will give you high Click Thru Rates (CTR) and conversions as your Adwords campaign matures.
After you have your master list of keywords, create and fund your Adwords account. You will choose the most promising keywords from your brainstorming list to start an initial campaign. Start with just one ad for the keywords you choose. Then write at least one variation of your ad to see which copy brings you the most visitors. This process of testing one ad against another is called split testing. The process of split testing allows you to establish which ad’s wording is more effective. You do this by analyzing your conversion rates and CTRs. As your Adwords campaign matures, you will repeat this fine tuning of your ad copy and your choice of keywords over and over again. You will create new ads that are slightly different each time to see if small changes in copy and keyword lead to small (and occasionally large) improvements in CTR and conversions.
If there’s a basic rule for Adwords survival, it’s setting your advertising budgets low until you have completed your Adwords testing. Sometimes just $100 a week will get you the data you need to make your site truly profitable. Other times, it takes a lot more than $100 a week to test ads for a broader niche. Either way, always check your returns against your investment. Adwords allows you to do this by inserting values for goals, such as a sale of a product. You will measure conversions to compute whether you have made your money back and by how much.
Always aim to make at least 50% return on your investment. A 50% return will ensure a profitable campaign that allows you to fund expansion of your site and gives you some profits to pocket. Paying attention to CTR and conversion rates makes it possible for you to grow your site from the sales you make with Adwords.