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Objective: Learn how to build a strong foundation for success. Find out how to organize your account logically at the campaign and ad group levels.
Google AdWords gives you a basic structure to work within. From here, it's essentially up to you to organize your own campaigns, ad groups, keywords and placements in a way that makes the most sense. Organization is a key component to starting off strong and to helping you determine what works and what doesn't.
Note: This lesson is geared toward campaigns that are using only keyword targeting. However, many of the concepts can also be applied to campaigns that use placement targeting in conjunction with keyword targeting. To learn more, please read the lesson about how keywords and placements work together.
Every account starts with a single campaign. Each campaign — whether you have one or multiple — should reflect a single, overarching goal. When building a campaign, ask yourself "What do I want to achieve with this campaign?" Your answer might be to target a certain audience, sell more products, increase signups, or bring in more leads.
Some effective ways to organize your campaigns are by:
- Theme or product line (coffee products, tea products, gift baskets)
- Your website's structure, such as by categories (purchase, learn, signup)
- Different brands (X, Y, and Z)
- Geography (New York, Chicago, and United States)
- Language (English, Spanish, German)
- Distribution preference (search engines only, content sites only, or both search and content)
- Budgets (different budgets per product line)
Map your structure on paper first to provide a template for the real thing.
Just like your campaigns, your ad groups should be organized by common theme, product, or goal. Often, picking keywords and placements can lay the groundwork for your ad group strategy. Think hard about your keywords and placements. When choosing keywords, think of what words someone would use to search for on Google when seeking your product. Try writing down every keyword that comes to mind. You can refine them later. (This is discussed more in the Selecting Keywords topic below.)
Next, group similar keywords together — such as by a common theme. Each grouping reflects an ad group. For example, if your campaign goal is to sell more coffee beans, logical ad groups might include:
Gourmet coffee beans |
Organic coffee beans |
French roast beans |
Keywords:
- Specialty coffee
- Gourmet coffee
- Gourmet coffee beans
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Keywords:
- Organic coffee beans
- Decaf organic coffee
- Natural coffee
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Keywords:
- Decaf French roast coffee
- French roast coffee beans
- French coffee beans
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Similarly, when choosing placements, consider where your typical customer might be browsing, and target those types of sites for ad placement. Although this lesson is geared
toward campaigns that are using only keyword targeting, many of the concepts can also be applied to campaigns that use placement targeting in conjunction with keyword
targeting. To learn more, please read the lesson about how keywords and placements work together.
If you find that the keywords or placements in one ad group become unwieldy, split the ad group into two to make them easier to manage.
Finally, give your campaigns and ad groups descriptive names. This helps you manage your account at a high level without memorizing what each of your ad groups contains.
Your AdWords account needs constant checkups. You can continue to reorganize your account as you learn more. The key is to check your progress and continue to refine your account. As you add more products, keywords or placements, you may need to reorganize your account. This is explained in more detail throughout this lesson and in the Optimizing Your Account lesson.
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Objective: Understand how to build an effective keyword list for your campaigns through a simple five-step process. Delve into some simple but very important concepts about starting off right.
Keywords trigger ads. Ads influence clicks. And clicks bring you business. Or that's the general idea. Since keywords start this advertising food chain, it's important that you choose keywords relevant to your business from the get go.
Keyword creation involves a five-step process: expand, group, match, scrub, and test and refine.
Your first step is to come up with as many relevant keywords as possible. List any keywords that you think users might search for to find your product or service.
Use the Keyword Tool for help. Available through the Tools page on the 'Campaign Management' tab (or via the 'Keyword' tab in your Ad Group Details page), the Keyword Tool offers additional keyword ideas — including synonyms and spelling variations — to yours. It allows you to build extensive, relevant keyword lists, review traffic estimations, and add your keywords directly into your ad groups from the same page.
To learn more, visit the Keyword Tool lesson.
Keywords lay the groundwork for the ad groups and ads you create. As mentioned in the previous Organizing Your Account topic, group your keyword list into similar items, such as by product line. Each group makes up an ad group. You can write multiple ads for each ad group, so keyword groupings should match a single theme.
For example, organize keywords pertaining to organic coffee in one ad group and keywords relating to gourmet coffee in another.
Finally, remember to keep your keyword lists small and manageable.
Now it's time to target your keywords using Google's keyword matching options: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match. These match types help you pin point ad delivery so your ads reach people precisely when they're searching for what you have to offer.
- Broad match is the default setting for all keywords. All searches made using your keyword (in any order or combination) might display your ad.
- Phrase match narrows your reach by requiring the words to appear in that exact order.
- Exact match further narrows your reach by showing your ad when the exact phrase is used in the search — without any other words before, between, or after.
- Negative match eliminates searched phrases you don't want your ad to appear on, such as cheap or free.
For a more in depth understanding of keyword matching, visit the Keyword Targeting lesson.
After you've expanded, grouped, and provided match types to your keyword list, start refining it. Strive to keep specific keywords that relate most to your product or service. Which keywords are irrelevant or are likely to bring you the least traffic? Delete them.
Two- or three-word phrases generally work best. For example, instead of the keyword coffee, use fair trade coffee or gourmet coffee beans. Consider removing any single-word or general keywords. These are often too broad and can lead to clicks from people who don't know what you're offering.
To keep up with the dynamic nature of online advertising, you should continue to test and refine your keywords. Build on keywords that work, and delete others that don't. Also, if you're running ads on the content network, consider using placement targeting to refine your reach to your desired audience. Track your results using your performance stats in your account. To learn more about tracking results, visit the Tracking Ad Performance section.
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Objective: Learn how to write clear and compelling ad text — from the headline down to the destination URL.
Ad text is a crucial distinguishing factor in luring a user to your website. Successful ads are clear, well-written, specific, and compelling. Here are some tips for writing ads that will get people clicking:
- Include a call to action, such as buy, order, and purchase. While find and search may be accurate, these words imply that the user is still in awareness or interest mode, and doesn't easily encourage the user to click through.
- Include keywords in your headline, since that's what people are looking for.
- Relate your ad to offers that you make on your landing page to help users complete the sales cycle.
- Get to the point — fast. Include the most relevant information about your business first.
- Write more than one ad per ad group, and test the results.
Here are two sample ads promoting the AdWords program: The first ad is vague, redundant, and doesn't offer any benefits or contain a call to action. The second ad contains clear ad text, a specific benefit to the user, and a call to action.
Google
Online advertising.
Google's online advertising program.
adwords.google.com |
Online Advertising
Improve your website ROI. Sign up
for AdWords. Show ads today.
adwords.google.com |
The best headlines directly relate to the keywords being searched. That makes your ad seem especially relevant to the searcher's interests. Therefore, include successful keywords in the headline. Plus, if the keyword in your ad text is identical to the keyword searched for, it will appear in bold font in your ad.
To determine which keywords are successful, review your ad groups and find keywords with the highest number of clicks or impressions. For example, if the keyword online advertising is clearly generating the most clicks and impressions in your account, use this term in the title of your ad.
Commonly, advertisers make the mistake of including the company name or the website domain in their headlines. This typically doesn't attract more clicks unless you're advertising an established company with a distinguished brand. Consider using more general ad titles that inspire clickthroughs, which will eventually fortify your brand.
The description should convey both the benefits of your product or service and include a call to action. Keep everything as short and simple as you can. To start, list your products or services (online advertising, website advertising, AdWords) and benefits (high ROI, show ads immediately). Then put it all together with a call to action, such as Order now or Sign up now.
Your display URL (or web address) doesn't have to be the same as your destination URL (where users go when they click your ad). But it should be an actual URL for your site.
Choose a destination URL that promotes the exact product or service your audience is searching for, rather than your usual homepage. It's usually most effective to direct users to a landing page that they're most interested in, as soon as you can.
There's a common theme in this lesson, and that's to test and refine. Just like with ad groups and keywords, you should continue to watch, review, and rewrite your ads for the best results. AdWords makes this part easy for you. You can create multiple ads per ad group. If your ad serving options are set to optimize (the default setting), Google automatically shows the best performing ad more often.
Check your stats, and swap out new ads for low performing ones. To learn more, visit the Optimizing Your Account lesson.
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