Our top tips for scoring success at AdWords for small businesses
Daria Isanska - 5 March 2015
If you have a small business then starting to use AdWords can seem like a daunting process. Whilst AdWords is a well-known way of driving business to your website, there is also a risk that you end up spending lots of money competing for keywords against large businesses, and your ad campaigns may not always be successful.
As well as the worry about spending more money than you get back in return, the technology behind AdWords can also be confusing. We find that people often struggle to understand how keywords and phrases work, which may put them off using AdWords.
However AdWords can actually be really beneficial for small businesses and it is a good short-term way of increasing traffic to your site and hopefully gaining you more customers. At Wagada we know that AdWords doesn’t have to be terrifying so here are some tip tips for how to make it work for you.
1. Get your targeting and keywords right
With AdWords it definitely pays to take the time to do your research on keywords before you launch a campaign. Google even has a keyword tool to help you with this. Find out which keywords your competitors are targeting as otherwise you may end up paying a higher price for these keywords. You also want to get your keywords right. Although it is tempting to go for as broad a base as possible with your keywords this ends up being less effective as you will not get the targeted hits that you want. Make sure you know your market and that the keywords you choose reflect this. So for example if you have a luxury florist shop don’t use keywords such as “discount flowers” or “deals on flowers”.
2. Experiment with different advertising copy to see which works best for you
You can split your keywords into groups and use different advertising copy for each group. This enables you to monitor how well each ad is doing and you can then keep the groups with the highest return. Keep experimenting to see what works well for the demographic you are targeting and use these learnings for your next campaign. You will gradually see your success increasing.
3. Create ad-specific landing pages
One of the biggest mistakes people make with their AdWords campaigns is just sending them to one landing page. Although it make take some time it is worth building several different landing pages that are tailored specifically to each targeted ad group. Once the pages are built, you can then deeplink them to the relevant advert. This makes your campaign a lot slicker and also means that you can take a look at which landing pages are leading to the most conversions.
4. Keep your budget realistic (but not too low!)
We know it can be all too easy to let your AdWords budget spiral out of control. There is a risk that you end up spending more and more to keep the clicks to your site coming. Start with a lower budget and when your campaign starts to become profitable you can then increase it at a rate you are comfortable with. Once you have trialled different keywords and copy you will be able to come up with more successful ads which will then lead to a greater conversion rate for your budget. However the flip side to this is that you don’t want to go too low on your CPC or there is the chance that your ads will not be seen until large paying advertisers’ budgets have gone.
If you take the time to really think about your keywords, ad copy and targeted landing pages AdWords can work wonders for a small online business. The key is to do your research first and make sure that your ads are constantly evolving to make your AdWords campaign as successful and as cost effective as possible.
Find out how Wagada can help you with your keyword research in order to better target your Adwords campaign.
