1. Maximize your click-through rate by writing ads that sell

Sometimes advertisers forget that Internet Advertising, especially search engine ad display, is hardly a visual medium. It is not like a television commercial where catchy phrases, celebrities or flashy and even shocking images are shown to promote the product. Most people come to search engines such as Google because they are tired of irrelevant information and unnecessary loudness as far as ads are concerned.

Google is extremely result oriented and its users know that very well. They expect consistent and non-pretentious service from Google. Irrelevant ads or showy catch phrases do not work on Google ads. Do not under-estimate your customers. They will not tolerate nonsense and superfluous information which simply wastes their time. If you do attempt to write something just for the sake of shock value, you might be wasting your money as your target customers will bypass your ads and those who might click on your ad are probably random surfers who out there just to kill some time.

Don’t attempt to use ‘hot’ words or jargon words which come across as a sales pitch and do not appeal to your customers. Technical jargon won’t even appeal to the techno geeks! If your company repairs hardware, say so. Simplicity is the key, don’t try to be unnecessarily cute or cool, it probably won’t work. Don’t use clichés and overly familiar phrases that ruin the uniqueness of your product/website. In any case you don’t have much space in your Search Engine ads, so you need to get straight to the point.

All the don’ts aside, there are also some do’s to follow. Be precise, and to the point. Target your customers and focus on what they are searching for.

Whenever practical, use the keywords (that you are targeting), in the ad. These are the keywords that the person is searching for, so if you use these keywords, you are much more likely to get higher click-through rates, because the searcher perceives that they have found what they are looking for.

Your ad is not your website or your product. It is, as they say, a means to an end! The end here being attracting the prospective buyer to your website and then let your website take over. Most users use search engines as a tool to search and do not specifically look at the ads displayed on the side on the results page. When they do glance at your ad, make sure you offer them the information they are looking for. Your customers are the money-spenders, NOT the casual surfer who is clicking on your ad for its shock value. Every time there is an unproductive click on your ad, you lose money and your revenue and also come down on the Google’s Click-through Ratings.

Understand your clients; if there is something that appeals to their self-interest, they are more likely to click on that. If your product helps your clients in relieving them of any of their problems such as:

• repairing their computer
• fixing the water leakage
• making profitable investments
• helping them or their kids’ pass their SATs with ease
• getting rid of nasty headaches or backaches; etc

Then use this to your advantage and cash in on it!

Focus on what your product will do to make your customer’s life better and easier and they are more likely to click on it. Also, there is competition which should not be under-estimated and one of the key things to make sure is that your ads look more appealing than theirs. Test-drive your ad and if it works, go ahead with the format. The rule of thumb to follow here is: if it works, don’t change it!

2. Research keywords very thoroughly

There is no limit to the number of keywords you can feed in your ad. But if you dump tens of thousands of keywords in your ad hoping that whoever searches for any of those keywords will probably click on your ad and maybe turn out to be a probable spender and will in turn bring big bucks to your company … sadly, this doesn’t happen. Your keywords must be highly targeted.

A single advertisement can hardly be relevant to those thousands of products that you claim to be associated with. And it is futile to compare yourself with big-wigs like EBay or Amazon who display their ads pretty much every time you search for something. They are mass-marketers and are actually selling all those things that they advertise. Remember that Search Engines like Google have a minimum requirement for a click-through rate of 0.5% for all ads. This is not always easy to achieve because the majority of searchers actually click on the main free listings and do not actually click on the ads.

The important thing here is to identify your target market and see what they are searching for. Make sure to include those specific keywords in your ad so that your ad reaches the right set of customers. If your ad has more targeted and more relevant information than the free listings on the main section of the page, then people will click on your ad. If not, then chances are you won’t get many clicks.

You will probably have to identify a number of keywords in order to identify just the right ones for your advertising campaign. However, because this is such a critical aspect of your success, it is definitely worth all the effort.

When researching keywords for your campaign you should be thinking of having hundreds, or preferably thousands of keyword phrases for each campaign. You should also be thinking of spending several hours … probably 6-8 hours researching keywords when you first start doing Google Adwords campaigns. Later you might be able to cut the time down to 2-3 hours when you become a bit more experienced.

3. Use singular keywords in [] to increase your click-trough rate for that keyword

Singular keywords on their own do not necessarily prove to be effective. They are not always cheap and don’t always guarantee high CTR. Plus, they are not that relevant either. Your keyword ‘cold’ can imply anything ranging from cough and cold to cold climates of Siberia and even cold behavior. The phrase ‘combating cold Alaskan winter’ will probably make more sense.

Another trick is to put your keyword in square brackets. What this means is that your ad will only show up when that exact keyword is searched for. which aids in increasing the click-through ratings for that keyword and consequently rising your ad to the top.

Large companies who have bigger budget for advertising can afford to spend more and waste some of their clicks, but for smaller companies, with a limited budget, they need to be very careful in choosing keywords. Hence, they can benefit greatly by using singular keyword in square brackets to boost their CTR.

4. Select your country (countries) wisely.

Google AdWords provides the option of displaying your ad in multiple countries and in multiple languages. However, one should not go overboard in displaying ads in different countries. It is advisable to restrict your target market to some of the prominently English-speaking countries like US, UK, Canada, Australia, and a few other countries if your product or service caters to those people.

Since the United States provides a rewarding market in terms of the size and depth of the market, a lot of businesses do their businesses just within the US and earn huge revenues. On the other hand in other countries there will probably be less competition, which means that the cost per click for advertising your product or service on Google will be lower.

When doing business with non-English speaking countries it is important that you understand the language of your target country and are offering relevant ads in response to the keywords entered.

Also, don’t be dogmatic and only have eyes for just one country. The Internet is vast and the WWW is accessible from almost anyplace on the globe. You might have customers at the most unexpected corner of the world. So, think wisely and invest in your ads accordingly.

5. Minimize your cost per click for each ad - bid the lowest you can, whilst staying in the top 3 ads (or the top 8 if you can’t afford the top 3)..

Most people like their ad to be in the top 3 positions as they assume that people will only look at the first 3 ads. However, if a customer is really looking for a product or service, they will often look down to number 5 or 6 also. Hence, top rating, though desirable, does not necessarily mean high CTR, and it may cost you too much to get into the top 3 positions.Bidding is a very crucial stage in your entire ad campaign process. Even if your campaign is optimized in other respects, with a great ad copy and a careful selection of keywords and keyphrases, it will all be worthless without a bidding strategy.

The best thing from your point of view is to pay the bare minimum of just 5 cents per click! If you do enough research, you are sure to come up with quite a few keywords which may not be highly searched for, but where there aren’t many or any advertisers vying for them. That way you can bid low for those keywords and curtail your cost per click. You can aim at probably the number 3 ad spot or even the number 7 or 8 spot by bidding strategically. Constantly aspiring for the number one spot might prove to be a poor bidding strategy.

One important thing to consider here is that the rank of your ad on the page is not just determined by the amount of your bid, but the amount of your bid multiplied by your click-through rate. Most advertisers discover that unless they bid really high, they cannot get their ads shown on the top 3 slot. What they don’t realize is that they need to bid on less popular keywords and also increase the click-through rate of their ads by making their ads more enticing to click on.

If you bid less than a certain minimum amount for each keyword, there is a chance that your ad might not show up at all for that keyword. Some advertisers want to be displayed on AOL, so if you want your ad to show up on AOL as well, then your ad must be among the top 3 ads. And if your ad is at number 9 position, you will hardly get any clicks. You will no doubt save money, but you won’t even get any business.

Make sure that your ad is relevant and that the ad copy is persuasive. This way, even if you pay a low cost per click, you will achieve higher CTR and a higher ranking, because the ranking of your ad is determined by the CTR as well as your bid amount.

6. Create separate ad-groups for different types of keywords

The main purpose of creating ad-groups is that different keywords are linked with different ads and consecutively you can place different bids for different groups of keywords.

It is better to have multiple ad-groups rather than having a single ad-group which increases the overall costs of your advertising campaign. Your maximum bid, i.e. the maximum amount that you are willing to pay for a click to your ad, will be applied to all the keywords in that ad-group. You can diversify your ad campaign with multiple ad-groups and also each ad-group is connected to its own ads. This is a very important cost-saving strategy.

It is difficult to put a price on each keyword or keyphrase used in your ad. Put a few of them in a group and place a maximum bid on them, which will be applied to all the words and phrases in that particular group. Make another group, and put some other words and phrases in that group, place a new maximum bid on them and so on. This way you can strategically decide which keyword or phrase should be placed in which group and can also lower your bidding costs.

You can set up different ads which can be displayed at different searches. This way you can ensure that your ad does appear no matter what the user preference is! For example, your website is about international cuisine and in one ad-group you have all the keywords related to Italian cookery, when a user searches for a pasta recipe, your ad will appear. Also, in another ad-group, you have a set of keywords describing Japanese recipes and food; hence a search for raw fish recipes will display your ad targeting the sushi lovers.

You can not only divide your keywords into different ad-groups by theme, but also by cost. The expensive keywords can be together in one group and you can allocate another group for less expensive keywords and so on.

It is important to remember that dumping all the keywords in just one group will not be effective. It is also important to match the keywords with the search phrases as explained later. Yes, this is a lot of work and effort and most people are not willing to do this in their campaigns. That’s why if you do it, you will be one step ahead.

7. Try to match search keywords with the same keyword phrase in your ads

Google AdWords offers three forms of syntaxes that we explained before which differ not just in the way they target your customers, but also in the cost per click of the ads. They are (1) Broad matching or wild-card matching, (2) Phrase matching and (3) Exact Matching.

In Broad matching or wild-card matching technique, it requires you to put a phrase in your ad which acts as a wild-card and is displayed in all the searches where that word is used in the search. This technique is not thoroughly targeted and is not as effective as targeted keyword technique.

On the other hand, it also enables your ad to show up on most searches with the least amount of effort. For example, if your wild-card keyword is "banana" (without any quotation marks), then it will show up on all searches like ‘banana republic store’, ‘banana pudding recipe’, ‘banana plantation’, ‘nutritional value of banana’ and so on. It can work but it can generate unnecessary costs for you. It all depends on how you choose the keywords. In particular, if you use a phrase or group of words instead of just that one word, like: banana recipe (without any quotes) you will probably reach a broader market which will eliminate unnecessary searches like the banana republic store or about banana plantation. And the moment someone searches for ‘recipe for banana cake using ripe banana’ or ‘recipe for banana cream cake’ your ad will be displayed.

Hence, broad matching is not recommended for most one-word keywords as it will invariably generate many irrelevant searches and will prove to be ineffective. However, if you are in a specialized industry like for example, manufacturing and selling a rare precious stone and you have the name of that stone as your wild-card keyword then every time someone searches for it, then you have generated a potential market for your product. The same is the case with the single word which means something specific like ‘acupuncture’ or ‘Nylon’.

Phrase matching is very effective if it is used wisely. The phrase should be in quotes so that every time a search is made which includes that phrase in that exact order, then your ad will be displayed. Hence, the ad with phrase ‘brass statues’ will capture search queries like ‘ancient brass statues’ or ‘brass statues found in Chile’. But the problem here is that only the exact phrase in that order will be effective. So, a search query like ‘statues of brass’ will not be caught by the ad. Even ‘brass statue’ will not work! This option can certainly save time and resources as these words on their own have a broad meaning and will show many irrelevant searches. ‘Brass’ or ‘statues’ on its own will catch searches like ‘brass pots’ or ‘wooden statues’.

Exact matching is the most targeted of them all. It is very precise in nature and can be used by putting your phrase in square brackets when placing your ad. Using the phrase [brass statues], your ad will appear only when the exact phrase is searched for. However, the user does not have to use square brackets or any such thing, just type in the exact phrase in order to land to your ad. This is often used by those advertisers who face heavy traffic load and are interested only in targeted customers.

8. Make as many combinations of 2 or 3 words as possible

One simple principle is that the more keywords you have the better. Come up with two or three keywords and put them together and you will often find some keyword combinations that are not only inexpensive but also effective. In competitive areas, there are often so many advertisers bidding for the same set of keywords as yours and this is increasing the cost of those keywords.

Hence, it is advisable to use effective combinations of two or three relevant keywords. Let’s say you are in the business of holiday home rentals. Evidently, you have got competition in this field and their advertising campaign is focusing on the same keywords as yours, which is probably ‘holiday home rentals’. Well, the option you can employ here is to use a variety of combination of these keywords so your ad will be displayed whenever a person is searching for something to do with your product or service. You have to understand that your customers are not only those people who search for the phrase ‘holiday home rentals’.

They may also be searching for vacation home rentals, holiday house rentals, renting holiday home, holiday retreat rentals, leasing holiday home, leasing vacation home, holidayhome rental, and so on. The choice is almost unlimited. So if you focus on just that one keyword, you might lose valuable business.

9. Consider putting your cost per click higher in the beginning, and then lowering it.

Your maximum bid is not your actual bid. Maximum bid is the maximum possible amount that you are willing to pay for every click on your ad. Actual bid is the amount finally set upon in conjunction with Google AdWords which determines your cost per click. Consider putting your cost per click higher in the beginning of your ad campaign. Then when you start to see a good click-through rate for your ad, then you can consider lowering the cost per click. But slashing it down completely will not give desirable results.

You will be able to lower your cost per click when you provide relevant results and achieve higher click through ratings. The more relevant your ad is, the higher are your chances of getting a benefit over your competitors.

10. Track your results very carefully

There are a lot of tools available to track your results. These sales conversion tracking tools can be employed to get an idea of how your ad is performing. These tools range from the most basic ones to the highly advanced software.

One way of tracking sales is to use separate URLs or domains from the rest of your website for your ad campaign to measure your ROI effectively. It is very simple as all you have to do is determine which page of your website generates the most sales. By using a different URL or domain for your AdWords ad you know that all the clicks that appear on your page are the result of your AdWords campaign. This is one of the simpler ways of tracking your results. Then there are some handy tools available that require you to insert a little bit of extra code into your target URL that makes it possible for you to determine the source of your sales.

If you have an affiliate program for your own product or service then you can create a separate affiliate account to track each advertising campaign. It acts as a numbering system and counts the number of clicks which are resulting from clicking on your ad. If you are promoting another person’s affiliate program then it is a little more difficult to track the sales generated by each Search Engine campaign. However there are some affiliate programs that allow you to create a separate tracking code for each advertisement, and this way you can work out exactly how many sales are generated from each advertisement that you do.

This information can be used to determine the quality and effectiveness of your ad. You can find out if your ad is powerful enough to deliver the required results. You can also find out if you are reaching your target customers or are piling up unnecessary advertising costs. You can eliminate entire ad-groups and re-structure your ad campaign based on these results.

11. Use phrase match keywords in ""

You can use certain phrases or keywords in quotes which act as a semi-wild card for your ad. Let’s say you want to your ad to capture all the queries about milk chocolate. When you use "milk chocolate" as your phrase match, then every query which has that phrase in that order will be caught by your ad. You can also use single word in quotes, but this is essentially the same as the broad matching of that keyword without quotes. The phrase matching technique is effective for phrases with more than one word as it searches for the same exact phrase and hence targets your searches.

12. Use negative keywords to eliminate phrases such as "free"

Google AdWords Select has a feature called negative keywords which enable advertisers to put a negative (minus) sign in front of some keywords. Lets say you put ‘-free’ as one of your keywords. This ensures that your ad will not be displayed to those people who are searching for anything that is available for free. This way you can avoid clicks by those random surfers who are definitely not money-spenders. You can consider filtering out a number of such words and phrases like ‘gratis’, ‘bargain’, ‘cheap’ and so on. It depends upon what type of buyer you are looking for.

Sometimes you will want people who are looking for "cheap widgets", but if you offer expensive widgets you are unlikely to sell to these people. Apart from these, you can insert a wide range of such negative keywords to eliminate non-buyers, casual surfers, inappropriate clients, etc. For example if you sell health insurance (for people!) you might want to eliminate anyone who is searching for health insurance for pets (yes there is such a thing). So you would use the negative keywords of ‘-pets’, ‘-dogs’, ‘-cats’ etc.

The more negative keywords you include in your keyword list the higher your click-through rate will be, because your ads will be more targeted. And, if the click-through rate is higher, the ad position will increase also, so negative keywords can have a lot of benefits.

13. Look at your competitor’s ads to see how you can stand out

In any business, it is always advisable to study your competitor’s strategies. Google Adwords is no different. Make sure that you don’t end up using your valuable words and phrases in your ads. There are bound to be a few good keywords and phrases which are not yet considered by your competitors. Explore those options and you will be able to outperform your competitors.

14. Make sure you put the daily budget at the maximum (unless you are really worried about going over budget).

The first part of any campaign that you do should be to work out your ROI. Once you have calculated your ROI you will know how much you make for every person who clicks on your Google Adwords ad. Let’s say you make on average 32 cents for every person who clicks on your ad, and lets say you have set your maximum cost per click at 10 cents. Now you know that you are making money for every person who clicks on your ad.

So you should make sure that you maximize your daily budget. Don’t keep it just above the amount that search engines such as Google suggests you will need … keep it 5-10 times the amount that they suggests. This way you will ensure that you get as many impressions and clicks as possible.

15. Consider whether to syndicate your ads

Google AdWords has a wide range of syndication partners. These include, Earthlink, Infospace, AskJeeves/Teoma, AOL, and Lycos. The list is definitely going to expand with time. There are two types of syndicated ads: Search sites and content sites. If your ads are syndicated for search sites then they will show up on parter search engines such as AOL. If they are syndicated for content sites then they will show up on hundreds of small websites.

If you have a fixed budget, submitting your ad to AdWords alone may get you a better ROI. The general belief is that syndicating your ad with smaller content sites is less likely to be effective than advertising on Google alone. However if you are getting great results on a search engine like Google, for example paying 8 cents per click and making 80 cents per click then it is probably worthwhile to include content sites. On the other hand if you are paying 70 cents per click and only making 90 cents per click you should consider eliminating content sites from your advertising.

16. Double check to make sure that everything is correct - the target URL etc

As you complete your ad campaign, make sure that every thing is in the right order before you go ahead with the campaign. Make sure your ad is relevant and is likely to entice the viewer to click. The URL which is targeted by your ad should be the correct one and it should not display any misleading information. Use tracking software or code to determine the sales conversion rate for your ad. Test it to make sure that it is working fine. Develop a reasonable bidding strategy. Do not give up if you don’t achieve the desired clicks in the first few days. Be patient and if required, change your advertising strategy.