How to use Google PPC Advertising (AdWords) PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising can be tricky to get right in order to get the results you need for your business. With so many options and criteria, it can be a minefield and often time-consuming to implement.

Introduction to How to use Google PPC Advertising

Google Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) is one of the best forms of marketing on the planet, but like all marketing, it can be done well, or badly.  PPC implemented effectively can create instant and significant traffic to your website and an on-going torrent of leads for your business.  Done badly, it can cost you a fortune in clicks, with no or little reward.  

The problem with PPC Advertising is that it is not simple to use and understand.  It requires research, an understanding of writing copy, keyword research and most importantly regular monitoring of its performance.

One of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is that they set up their campaign and just let it run.  It is essential to check the effectiveness of your keywords, campaigns, headlines, click throughs and budgets.

There are many different types of PPC Advertising.  Google PPC, also known as ‘Ad Words’ is probably the best of these and for the purpose of this report I am going to focus on Google Ad Words.  

The other PPC Advertising mediums include Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Bing and LinkedIn to name just a few.  LinkedIn and Facebook work very differently and the main difference is that on these systems you target people with your PPC Advert, rather than relying on them doing a search for you.

What is PPC Advertising?

PPC Adverting is advertising that you only pay for if someone looks at your advert, or in this case, your webpage.  If they don’t click your advert, then you don’t pay.

When someone does click your advert, then you pay each time they do.  The amount you pay will depend upon the value of the word and the amount you have bid for that word.

Of course, you are not charged when people simply see your advert (known as impressions).   

Why use PPC Advertising?

If you are trying to grow your business and you see on-line marketing as a key to this, or perhaps a weakness in your business, then you need to do two things:

1. You need to get a lot of highly targeted traffic to your website

2. You need to convert as much of that traffic as possible into leads

PPC Advertising is really the only way to get instant and immediate results.  You can set up a PPC Advert at 10am and by 2pm you can be on the first page on Google under the keywords that you have selected.

In other words, you can get found immediately on the first page on Google!

You also have total control.  If you get busy, simply turn your campaign off for a week, or reduce the time that your advert is shown.

Another good thing about ‘Ad-Words’ is that you can set your own daily spending limits.  This, by the way, is really important.  You might not want to get a bill for £20,000 on your first day (if your ad is really, really popular).  

Instead, simply set your daily budget and when the budget is used up, you will disappear from Google until the next day.  A word of warning – don’t set your budget too low, or you might reach your limit by 10.30am and therefore miss all of the traffic for the rest of the day.

Location

On Google Ad-Words you can specify where you want your advert to be seen.  So, for example – if you were running a LinkedIn workshop in London, you could set up your advert so, that it can only be seen by people in London, or the Home Counties.  

Google has a map so that you can select the locations you want your advert to be seen in, or you can leave it blank and get your advert seen all over the world.

Scheduling

Advert scheduling allows your advert to only be seen at certain time of the day, or week.  For example – If I sold a service to retired people, I may set up the advert to run during business hours.  Alternatively, if I sold high end skiing holidays to top executives, I may run my advert at the weekends and during the evening when they are more likely to be searching for holidays.  The great thing about PPC Advertising is everything can be tested, improved and refined!

Creating a highly effective advert

When considering your advert there is an old saying in advertising and that is – “the headline is the advert, for the advert” and so it is with PPC Advertising.  In Ad-Words you have a limited amount of text for both the headline and text.  

So, you have a problem – you don’t have enough text to sell your product and service, so don’t try to.  

Instead, the job of your advert is to drive people to your website and the job of the website is to create leads.

You need to write your advert so that it creates attention.  You can do this by using your top keyword in the headline.  This will help you to get your advert rated higher for less money per click by improving relevancy.

Using text adverts

There are two types of PPC adverts and they are:

1. Text based adverts
2. Image based adverts

In this section I am going to discuss text-based advertising.  Text adverts are the most commonly used PPC Adverts and usually consist of a headline, a sentence or two of copy and a link to a web page.

Having covered writing an effective headline in the above section, I want to reiterate the power of a headline.

For example – Which headline would pull better:

1. Marketing Advice

Or

2. Get you free CD from leading marketing expert

My point being that different people click different things and testing headlines is essential.

Below is an example of two PPC text adverts:

Effective B2B Marketing
Robust lead gen & marketing training
Contact us today: 07977 074 497

2. B2B G-T-M Experts
   www.thechannelpartnership.com/
   Complete B2B go-to-market enablers.
   Proven results. View our training programmes here

Neither are very good in my opinion, but my opinion does not matter.  The only things that matter are:

Click Throughs & Conversions

Tips for writing PPC Adverts:

1. Offer something free
2. Ask a question
3. Use your phone number
4. Capture their attention
5. Use the key word (that is what they are looking for)

Using image adverts

If you decide to test another advert, you can create either another text advert, or you could create an image advert.

An image is not like a text advert.  It is more like a banner advert.  In order to create an image advert, the first thing that you need to do is to create an image and then upload it.  

AdWords do not provide images and so my advice would be to get a designer to produce one for you.

When you have uploaded the image, you will need to provide the URL to display on the image and a link to the URL that you want to drive traffic to.  

When you look at the right-hand side of the screen you will be able to view the different image formats that AdWords allows.

Mobile advertising

The next thing to consider is Mobile PPC Adverts.  These appear on mobile websites and can be either text, or image based.

These adverts appear when the person is searching on a mobile, or tablet.  

Long tail keywords

A long tail keyword is simply a phrase and not a ‘word’.  In other words, it is a group of words added together.  When a long tail key phrase is searched on Google, any website that uses the phrase will be found.  

Sometimes you may get websites that only show certain words in your phrase.  This is not a mistake.  It is just the way that Google shows websites.  

If you want the exact search results, then you need to search with the search in brackets.  for example – ‘LinkedIn Training Berkshire’.

One of the best things about ‘long tail keywords’ is that most small businesses don’t use them and so the competition is limited.  

For example – if you sell health insurance, the words ‘health insurance’ are very, very competitive and so tend to cost a lot per click.  Whilst a long tail key phrase like ‘health insurance for small business owners’ will be far cheaper per click, and there will also probably be less competition.

Broad matches

If you use a ‘broad match’, you will find that it allows your advert to be viewed with similar phrases.

In AdWords ‘broad match’ is in the default settings.  So, for example – if you are selling sailing holidays and you use ‘sailing holidays’ as the keywords, you may appear under include:

• sailing holidays
• holidays
• sailing
• how to find a sailing holiday
• cheap sailing holidays

Phrase matches

A phrase match is like a keyword phrase.  When a phrase match is used the phrase that you use will be viewed as well as words that may be added within your phrase.  For example:

‘Sailing holidays’ may also attract:

• cheap sailing holidays
• sailing holidays for families
• sailing boats ideal for holidays
• boat sales for sailing holidays 

Exact matches

Exact matches are exactly as they sound.  You advert will appear only when your phrase is searched.

For example – If you use the words ‘IT support London’, then your advert will only appear when someone types in ‘IT support London’ and not for ‘IT support’, or ‘Support London’, or ‘IT support in the entertainment industry in London’.

To set up an exact search PPC campaign all you need to do is to enclose your phrase like this – [internet marketing training].

This strategy is very, very powerful and targeted and yet not one in a hundred businesses use this!

Negative matches

Negative phrases are set up by using a ‘-’ before a specific word.  For example, if I sold ‘brief cases’, but my brief cases were top of the range I might not want my advert to come up when someone types in the phrase ‘cheap brief cases’.  

To remove the word ‘cheap’ and so remove people searching for ‘cheap brief cases’, simply set it up like this:

-cheap brief cases

Negative keywords are very useful in getting rid of people that you don’t want.  Another example could be if I was running an internet marketing workshop I might use:

-free internet marketing workshop

Thereby getting rid of people searching for something for nothing!

Keyword macros

Keyword macros are a great way of marketing your PPC Advert in AdWords, but most people do not even know that they exist.

Keyword macros control the way your advert is seen.  Quite simply, keyword macros allow you to create dynamic advert copy that display the exact keyword phrase in the headline of your advert.

By using this special feature, you can get lots of traffic to your website.  Here is how you set it up:

{keyword:alternate headline}

By adding the above in your headline, Google will present your advert with the keyword that was entered into the search.

Research tools

If you really want to grow your business then Google AdWords is a great way of doing so and it is also a great way of driving traffic to your website.

But as I have already said – it is a little complicated and therefore it is essential to ensure that you know what you are doing.

Below are several tools that Google provides that are great for optimising your AdWords.  If you want to find these go to Google and search for them!

1. Campaign Optimiser:

Looking for ways to boost your performance of your ads?  The campaign optimiser automatically creates a customised proposal for your campaign

2. Keyword tool:

Build a master list of new keywords for your ad groups and review detailed keyword statistics like advertiser competition and search volume

3. Search based keyword tool:

Get new keyword ideas based on actual Google search queries and match them to specific pages of your website

4. Edit campaign negative keywords:

Manage your negative keywords which help you to reduce wasted clicks

5. Site and category exclusion:

Refine your Google network targeting by preventing individual websites or categories of webpages from showing your ads

6. IP exclusion:

Refine your targeting by preventing specific Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from seeing your ads

7. Traffic estimator:

Thinking about trying a new keyword?  Enter it here and see an estimate of how well it might perform.

Common mistakes

There are many common mistakes and I have listed the top 10 mistakes in no particular order:

1. Setting the campaign up and then letting it run.  It is essential to manage your account on a weekly basis and to make amends to your campaign in order to improve its performance

2. Not testing different headlines and text

3. Not testing different keywords in order to improve performance

4. Not understanding how to use AdWords.  The system sold by Google for PPC Advertising is great, but not simple to use and so it is essential to train yourself how to use it

5. Seeing PPC Advertising only as Google AdWords.  There are other great options including LinkedIn and Facebook PPC Advertising

6. Not using long tail keywords/phrases

7. Paying too much for your clicks.  There are ways of reducing the amount you pay per click and it is important to maximise your PPC Advertising budget

8. Not sending people to the appropriate page on your website.  Don’t send them to your home page.  Send them to the page that is selling the product, or service you are marketing

9. Most people don’t even realise that there are image PPC Advertising

10. Having a low daily budget and therefore losing out on traffic by disappearing early in the   day, due to spending all your budget

11. Sending traffic to your homepage rather than setting up a specific landing page

12. Expecting too much. Trying to make a sale, or to get a sales meeting from the advert instead of just trying to get the email address by offering something for free

The Google advertising ranking system

When working with Google AdWords you have to consider that your maximum bid is not the only factor that Google takes into consideration when deciding where to position your advert.

Relevancy is also crucial.  If your advert title and your website are viewed by Google as highly relevant, then Google will rate your advert highly and also may reduce your cost per click (CPC).

The Click Through Rate (CTR) is also a factor in the way Google ranks your advert.  AdWords looks at your:

• Campaigns
• Ad Groups
• Keywords

Lastly, a quality score is considered in your ranking.  

Summary

One of the keys to marketing success in 2013 and beyond is without a doubt Internet Marketing.

• There are about 7.5 billion people on the planet  
• In 2006 6% of these people had Internet connection
• In 2012 that number had gone up to 23%
• By 2020 this figure will be 68%.

One of the keys to your success on the Internet is ‘TRAFFIC’.  You MUST get traffic to your website.  Without traffic it does not matter how nice your new website looks, or how great your products are.  

With PPC Advertising you can get instant, highly targeted and qualified traffic.

If you want to learn more about PPC Advertising and Internet Marketing in general, then go to https://steve-mills.com/ and click on the link to the training courses that I run.

If you need further help, then call me on 07977 074 497.

I hope that you enjoyed reading my report.  Please feel free to pass it on to others.  If you want access to other reports like this sign up to my email system on my website.

Steve Mills – Managing Director

Croften Limited