This is for any business running Google AdWords, wondering if you are pouring too much money down a deep, black hole. It might offend some AdWords geeks – but I’m going to call it as I see it.
The dilemma with AdWords is the admin interface is so complex, it’s like an aircraft cockpit. It provides a heaven for those who love analysing data, tweaking bid prices etc. And therein lies a problem.
After running many AdWords campaigns since 2005, I have concluded 80% of results come from 20% of your efforts (it might even be closer to 90/10).
And the tasks in the less important “20%” category are those most AdWords professionals tend to focus on – i.e. analysing data and endless tweaking.
Low value versus high value work
One thing I see people agonising over too much is tweaking bid prices on various keywords. For most people it’s better to let Google set your bid prices automatically. You can ask Google to optimise your campaign for clicks or conversions. They are better at it than most people will ever be.
And, of course, there is software now that will do all the tedious admin tasks for you in “20 minutes a week” (as one of the leading AdWords software providers claims).
What tends to get overlooked in many AdWords campaigns is the ads themselves!
Without great ads, that get clicked on, you will never have a truly great AdWords campaign.
My first three years running AdWords, I was marketing my own websites, using my own credit card. This tends to focus the mind on what really matters. And what I discovered really matters is the quality of the ads.
I tested various ads, with two or three different versions competing against each other to find the “winner”. Then I would remove the losing ads and test yet another new one.
I also tested different keyword and ad combinations.
Eventually, I got campaigns ticking over and generating leads at a far higher rate than if I’d done what most advertisers do – throw up a few ads and hope for the best.
Another factor, even more overlooked
Equally important (in fact, arguably more important) is to continually look at how you can improve the pages people go to after they click on your ad. These are known as landing pages. I’ve looked at so many AdWords campaigns where people are not getting results and ultimately it comes down to their landing pages simply not converting the visitor to take action.
Just yesterday, I was talking to a business owner who recently started an AdWords campaign and has got over 300 clicks to her website – and not a single sale. When I looked at her website, it was obvious why sales were so poor. The page simply wasn’t enticing enough to get people to buy.
AdWords is where the rubber meets the road
One of the great things about AdWords is that it quickly lets you find out if your website is poor. A lot of websites, which are relying on organic search traffic alone, can go for months or years with poorly converting landing pages but never realise they have a problem. When you use AdWords and start directing some significant traffic to a web page, you quickly find out whether it’s converting or not.
So, to summarise, for a successful AdWords campaign – focus on writing the best possible ads and making your landing page as persuasive as possible. That’s where 80% of your results are going to come from. The other 20% (analysing data and tweaking) is just the icing on the cake.
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