Getting started with Google AdWords can be a bit daunting, but we'll break the process down into easy to manage steps to make it simple for even the most novice marketer.There are three steps to configuring a successful campaign:
The Keyword Planner is a great tool to find keywords or phrases to target. Anytime someone searches Google for one of your keywords, your ad shows up (assuming you win the bid).You want to find a keyword that has high search volume, but low competition, making your suggested bid cheaper.For example, when setting up an ad campaign for Cloud Campaign, a powerful social media marketing platform, we started with 'social media management tool'.[caption id="attachment_2731" align="alignnone" width="1381"]
Google AdWords Planner: 'Social Media Management Tools'[/caption]Search volume is fairly high at 8.8k average monthly searches, but ouch, the suggested bid of $9.28 (CPC) is more than we can afford and the competition is high meaning there will be a lot of noise.Let's see if we can find a term that is a bit more targeted that still has high search volume, but low competition.[caption id="attachment_2730" align="alignnone" width="1410"]
Google AdWords Planner: 'Social Media for Bloggers'[/caption]Ah, 'social media for bloggers' has an average of 4.4k monthly searches and the suggested bid is only $2.00.
Now that we've found the term and user demographic that we want to target, 'social media for bloggers', it's time to build a landing page targeted specifically for them.Note: This step is optional, but will yield a higher conversion rate. If you don't have the ability to create a custom landing page, use your standard landing page or choose another existing page on your site to target.The copy should be very specific to your audience. In this case, we're targeting bloggers so our copy is: 'Triple Your Blog's Exposure On Social Media'. Make it personalized and use a value proposition. Rather than saying 'A Social Media Tool Built for Bloggers', we're explicitly calling out what value our software can add.Just below the copy, still above the fold, add a call to action (CTA) to capture interested visitors.[caption id="attachment_2732" align="alignnone" width="2880"]
Blogger Specific Landing Page[/caption]
The last step is designing the ad. Create a new 'Search Network' ad with the goal of maximizing clicks.
For goal choose 'Website Traffic' then enter your new landing page or an existing page in the setup details.
Enter a name for your campaign then only choose 'Search Network' for networks. Deselect 'Display Network' if it was automatically selected.
For bid strategy, choose 'Maximize Clicks'. Then, specify a daily budget. Don't forget this! Your budget will vary depending on your total marketing spend and the competition for the keyword you chose -- for reference, we're running our blogger campaign with only $3/day.
If you have additional pages indexed by Google, add sitelink extensions to 1. take up more space in the search results, and 2. give the user the option to navigate to other pages if they already know where they want to go.
Next, create an ad group using the keyword that you discovered earlier. Choose similar keywords to have a better chance of being shown -- we use 10 - 30 keywords for our ads.Click 'New Ad', then fill out your ad text. This is the most import part of the ad! Headline 1 should be a compelling value proposition: 'Grow your blog on social media'Headline 2 should be the trust builder -- essentially how or who is fulfilling the value. In our case, we use our brand, Cloud Campaign.Description should be the differentiator explaining how you achieve what you promise - 'A drip campaign for social media'
The new ad campaign has a higher click-through rate (CTR), more impressions, and a lower cost per click (CPC)!The most shown ads have a CTR of ~4% with a CPC of $0.33. For our cheapest tier, we have an estimated lifetime value (LTV) of $30 (assuming none upgrade to a higher tier), so at $0.33 per click, we would need 1/90 ( 1.1%) to convert to make the ad worthwhile.For our higher tiered plans, with an LTV closer to $1000, we would only need 1 in every 3000 people to sign up to break even.
Once you give targeted AdWords a try, comment below letting me know how it worked out for you. Or drop me an email if you need help setting your ad campaign up. Email can be found in the footer of https://cloudcampaign.io
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