Reducing your Google AdWords costs and increasing response rates requires a range of creative, trading and technical skills that few possess:
Creative skills are needed to increasing your clickthrough rate (CTR) by writing compelling and focused ad copy that more searchers will click.
Trading skills are needed to keep costs per click down by managing your bid amounts and bid types.
Technical skills are needed to effectively organise the keywords you bid on into different ad groups with matching ad copy and landing pages.
Offline, the equivalent work is often done by specialists. A creative department or agency might look after ad copy and design; a media buyer might be the trader negotiating price for media space and time; whilst techies look after the production of print, radio and TV adverts.
With AdWords, most of us have to do the lot
Although they maybe quite different in the real world, most AdWords users become either Creatives, Techies or Traders – personnas that match just one of the required skill sets. The result is that most people play to their strengths and neglect their weaknesses. They fail to use all tools and metrics available to create higher clickthrough rates, lower costs and better response.
Below we’ll look at some techniques to help you develop your creative, trading and technical skills.
Google Adwords comes with Clickthrough Rate (CTR) and Quality Score (QR) – two key metrics you can use to measure your development.
Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the % of those that see your ads and click on them. It’s a measure of your ads attractiveness and appropriateness to searchers.
Quality Score (QS) is based on your advert’s click clickthrough rate, the relevance of your ad’s copy to the search terms you’re bidding on and the relevance of your landing page.
Google gives lower costs and higher positions on its results pages to ads with higher clickthrough rates and Quality Scores. So let’s have a look at how you can increase them by developing your creative, trading and techie skills
Develop your creative skills
The most important creative technique to practice is writing ad copy that matches the keywords you are bidding on. It’s as simple as this …
If the Search is green tea then bad ad copy might look like this:
Despite the search being for green tea but keyword is not there. The text is too general. A good ad reads more like this:
The keyword green tea is in the ad title, the body copy and the URL. There’s is a call to action (’Buy’), a promise of good tea (’Quality’), you will find what you want (’Specialist’), at a good price (’From $0.99′) and with great service (’Free Next Day Delivery’)
Develop your trading skills
By becoming a better trader you’ll get more value for your clicks. You can gain greater control of your bids and you lower your bid costs by mastering AdWords different match types. Each match type uses its own punctuation to let AdWords know your bid type:
Broad match keywords have no punctuation like this: keyword
Phrase match keywords are surrounded by quotation marks: “keyword”
Exact matches are shown with square brackets: [keyword]
A positive broad match will show your ads for the greatest number of possible searches. With a broad match your ads will match any search containing your bid keyword. For example, if you bid on brew tea your bid will match (and your ads show for):
brew tea
brew loose tea leaves
brewing a cup of tea
However, broad match contains a little sting in its tail – it includes ‘expanded match’. Expanded match will display your ads for plural versions of your bid keywords and any relevant keyword variations. For example our brew tea broad match bid might match with:
brewing teas
brew teas
brew tee
Those examples seem harmless enough – perhaps even useful. But expanded match can find matches that don’t even contain your keywords and you might think are little to do with the product you’re selling. For example brew tea might match with:
tea infuser
brewing coffee
brewing iced coffee
For this reason, broad match bids are us usually accompanied by negative match bids.
Adding negative keyword bids stops your ads showing for irrelevant searches, allowing you to greatly increase your profits by … … increasing your clickthrough rate (CTR) which leads to a better Quality Score and paying less per click (lower CPC).
A negative broad match will stop your ads showing for any search containing the negative keyword. For example, if the negative keyword -coffee is added to an ad group then your ads will not show for any search containing coffee and therefore including:
coffee
brew coffee
However negative broad match bids do not ‘expand’ like positives so you have to add plurals and related keywords. For -coffee this might include:
-coffees
-grind
-grinds
Develop your techie skills
Only if you first organise the groups of keywords you’re bidding on can your ads and landing pages match your bid keywords. Ad groups are the techies tool for this job. An ad groups is a group of keywords you are bidding on, with matching ad copy and the landing pages those ads link to.
The most important thing to do with your ad groups is keep the keywords focused on a very narrow subject. The diagram below shows poor ad group with a wide range of keywords, very general ad copy and landing page (how else could they be with so many different keywords to satisfy).
By contrast, the strong ad group below is focused on a small set of keywords about one subject (green tea) with closely matching ad copy (all about green tea) and a landing page also all about green tea.
Only by organising your keywords this efficiently can you use your trading and creative skills to increase clickthrough, reduce costs and increase response.
Summary
To save money on Google AdWords you need to develop the differing skills of a Creative, a Trader and a Techie.
As a Creative make sure your ad headlines and body copy use the keywords they serve. Do this and your ads can move higher up Google’s results pages without the need to increase bids – that means less cost and more profit.
As a Trader you will master both exact match and broad match types. With broad match you bid on all keywords containing the specific word you are bidding on. As broad match can include irrelevant keywords that will deliver no response, you must combine it with negative keywords to stop your ads showing for those irrelevant searches.
As a Techie you can learn to segment your keywords into tightly-themed ad groups with different match types, bids, matching ad copy and landing pages.
Ian Howie started working in SEO and PPC in 1995, turning professional in 2002 and specializing in PPC since 2003. Ian co-founded London PPC agency 1upSearch in 2006 and he manages Wordtracker’s PPC Training Workshops and PPC campaigns. Ian has been Google’s guest in Mountain View, San Francisco and Dublin and Microsoft’s in the UK and Dublin. Ian’s new book on Google AdWords has just been published: Wordtracker Masterclass: Google AdWords PPC Advertising, step-by-step guide to profitable pay per click campaigns. Ian also hosts Google AdWords Training Sessions in Central London.
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