Google Adwords is Essential to Maximise Your Sales

Google developed Adwords about 17 years ago and it has now become huge because it is so effective in enabling advertisers to reach a high spot on page 1 of search for their keywords which then converts to sales. Every dollar spent on Adwords generates $2-20 of sales on average depending on the product price. 89% of people search online to find information on products and services before buying so ranking well in Google with Adwords is essential.

Adwords is great and affordable for all businesses, small and large. Farm Fresh, which delivers organic produce to homes and offices in California says its business has grown 100 times since going online with Google and Adwords. They had the ability to target specific demographics such as location, household income, gender and age. They were easily able to aim their Ads at people who were likely to be interested in their product. Adwords levels the playing field so smaller businesses can compete with global businesses. The beauty is that it doesn’t cost that much.

You think that your referral marketing is working well for you, and it probably is, but if you’re not on page 1 of Google, then you need Adwords. There are always a significant number of prospective customers, clients or patients searching online for your services, unaware of your reputation, that you could acquire. And we will get these customers/clients/patients for you with Adwords with a very high ROI.

Adwords Can be Tricky to Use Well

It can be extremely challenging to understand how to make appropriate optimization decisions moving forward. You need to investigate metrics like average CTR, CPA, Quality Score, impression share, and average positions to set realistic goals and understand where you are in terms of industry standards. Is conversion tracking set up? How is attribution being handled? Is there a mobile strategy in place? This is extremely challenging to do. It is vital that the following aspects are done well and you probably need an expert to do your Adwords campaigns for you to succeed.

Your Click-Through Rates Are Low

CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions on your ad, so a CTR of 2% means that out of 100 impressions, you got two clicks through to your site. CTR also varies depending on the position of your ad – the higher your ad rank, the higher your CTR tends to be.

Advertisers with low CTR’s end up paying up to 400% more for fewer clicks because of the penalty for lower Quality Scores. Not only does having lower click-through rates negatively impact your Quality Score (which impacts the amount you pay per click), it also affects your impression share (how frequently Google displays your ads).

There are lots of ways to improve the CTR of your ads, from testing your ad creative to adding extensions, but if they’re low across the board, you definitely need help!

You Can’t Set PPC and Forget It Because You’re Busy

Half of small-business marketers – the ones most likely to be extremely busy and trying to do it all – only do ad optimizations once per quarter. You let the dust accumulate until you realize you’ve wasted thousands of marketing dollars on irrelevant searches.

The thing with PPC is, you cannot set it and forget it. Many multitasking marketers end up learning this the hard way. Luckily, there are ways to save your account from neglect. If you’re able to, block off some time in your calendar each week to focus on AdWords, and create a workflow to follow and track your progress. Even 20 minutes per week can make a big difference!

Your Average Keyword Quality Score Is 5 or Lower

Quality Score, the mysterious metric that everyone loves to hate. What is it exactly? It’s essentially the score of how much Google likes you on a scale of 1 to 10. You want Google to like you a lot because you’ll end up paying less for the highest positions with the most visibility.

Some known ways to improve Quality Score include improving relevancy between your keywords, ads, and landing pages, as well as achieving high CTR relative to the expected CTR at your ad position. While QS is extremely important, it’s also difficult to control and improve. If the majority of your keywords in your account have Quality Scores below 5, then Google isn’t finding your account too attractive, and you’re likely paying a lot more per click to rank below your competition. This is one scenario that requires help.

Your Spend Is Off the Charts But Your Conversions Are Not

If you’re not seeing revenue flowing in, it’s a MAJOR issue that needs to be addressed. Most people who think AdWords doesn’t work are making one or more mistakes:

•Are you advertising on both search and display in the same campaign?
•Are you using all broad match keywords with no negatives?
•Are you bidding during unprofitable hours of the day or days of the week?
•Are you not even tracking conversions?

So many factors can come into play, so you need help to figure out why you’re not seeing ROI with your PPC efforts.

You Aren’t Sure How & When to Adjust Bids

Understanding how to set budgets and bid properly is probably one of the most challenging aspects of PPC, because it’s an auction that is constantly changing. What you’re bidding for – your top converting keywords – one week might not work the next week, depending on the ebb and flow of the auction. Also, how should you prioritize your budget? How much should you even be spending all together? And then how do you divide that between campaigns or between search and display?

Determining realistic budgets, setting and optimizing keyword bids can be a complicated process. While auto-bidding might seem like the easy way out, DON’T DO IT. Giving Google the reins isn’t always the best idea, especially when it comes to your ad spend.

Don’t Rely on Google’s Suggestions to Optimize

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Google AdWords fan. I’ve spent tons of time in the interface, and the advertising platform they’ve built is insanely impressive. And it’s getting better with new tools and features all the time.

If you’re solely relying on the optimization tips that AdWords provides, then you’ve got a problem! They’re not all bad, but you will likely notice that Google’s solution is often to up your budget or bids. While this is needed at times, there are usually other things you can do to improve results. If you’re solely dependent on Google’s suggestions when optimizing, then you need help.

Let Patterson Digital Marketing Manage Your Adwords For You

Patterson Digital Marketing uses a large Google Certified Partner to set up and manage your Adwords campaigns. This partner achieves much higher conversion rates, lower costs per click, more leads and much lower costs per lead than others.

We have a dashboard for you to monitor progress and success of your campaigns.

We prefer to use a Landing Page to take prospective customers to as this increases the conversion rate from 2-3% to 10-15%.

We give you Remarketing for FREE (most others don’t provide this at all). Remarketing keeps you in front of viewers once they have viewed your website or landing page and left without taking action. Remarketing increases your conversions by 3 times. This is HUGE.

If you run Adwords now, we’ll do an audit for FREE and send you a report of wasted money and outline the better results we can drive for you.

If you’re new to Adwords, we’ll research your business and send you a report showing you what additional sales we can drive for you. You will be amazed at the results.

This post is based on one written by Margot de Cunha, a Content Marketing Specialist at Wordstream Inc. View her post at http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/09/01/.

CALL US on (027) 489 5009 or email chris@pattersondigitalmarketing.com for a FREE consultation on how we will optimise your Adwords and Remarketing results and save you the problems outlined above. We will do a FREE audit on your Adwords account to assess wasted spend and other factors we can improve. Call or email us NOW.

Chris Kirkham