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In contrast to search engine optimization, Google advertising offers a clear time advantage with its AdWords offer: Once an AdWords campaign is set up and online, conversions and leads can already be gained from day one. As soon as the (good!) campaign is online, users can see it immediately after entering the respective keywords.

Thus, Google AdWords is an excellent opportunity to boost sales in a short period for both small and large businesses alike. However, mistakes that heavily limit the campaign’s success, and can make it more expensive than it needs to be, are easily made, especially by inexperienced AdWords users. For this reason, we’ve accumulated some tips in our recent blog article, which allow you to optimize your existing campaigns, or improve the setup of new campaigns from the start.

Empathize With Your Target Group!

Who do you want your ads to reach? Determine in advance, which target groups you want to aim your campaign at, and base the following actions on that decision. Only then, the respective keywords can be found, and the best possible ad texts can be written. For that reason, you should always keep the viewers that you want to address in mind, both before the launch of the campaign, and during the entire campaign lifespan, so that you can conduct optimizations accordingly, and to increase, or keep up your ROI.

Google AdWords: Find the Right Keywords!

Which goods or services does your business offer, and for which of these do you want to be found on Google? Good and, above all, relevant keywords are a must for your AdWords campaign. However, when it comes to the selection and collection of your search terms or phrases, you need to pay attention to a few important things, to get the most out of your marketing budget.

Short and general keywords are often faced with a lot of competition, as well as a high click price, and on top of that, they often don’t exactly display the product range of a particular business. Instead, especially with a small to medium sized budget, it is recommended to choose phrases that give a description of goods or services, and with that, address users that are already in the final stage of decision making. This increases the chances of users clicking the ad, and purchasing a product, significantly.

Before setting up a campaign, extensive keyword research is key (here, the Keyword Planner by Google can help you), to find relevant and suitable keywords for your business. When your company is a local business, it also makes sense to add the name of the city to the keyword, like Jeweler NYC or Nail Studio Detroit, for instance.

Google AdWords also allows you to add keywords with different keyword options which can be booked using certain symbols. As the keyword options influence the display of the ads, using them is highly recommended. Here, you can distinguish between the following options:

• Broad match: Keywords and phrases that are added into the campaign without additions have the attribute Broad match. This means, that your ads are also displayed when a user searches terms that are different from your keywords. This includes abbreviations, typos, as well as synonyms or supplements.
• Broad match modifier: When adding a plus (+) to keywords, this can limit their range slightly. Thus, ads are not displayed for synonyms, for example, when the term carries a +.
• Phrase match: If you add quotes to keywords or phrases, they are saved with the option Phrase match. Then, they are only displayed when the order of the terms of your keyword phrases matches the one in the user’s search requests. Nonetheless, the amount of words before or after this phrase is unlimited.
• Exact match: If you enclose your keywords in square brackets, they are assigned to the option Exact match. Then, your ads are only displayed when the user enters the exact words, with no exceptions.

Aside from the keyword options mentioned above, there’s also the option to refine your campaign with negative keywords.

Add Negative Keywords!

Whenever a user clicks your AdWords ad, it costs you money. Thus, it is important to design a campaign as precisely as possible, and only to display it for keywords that are fitting, and, in the best case, lead to a conversion. Here is where the negative keywords come into play. Negative keywords are words or phrases for which you don’t want the ads to be displayed at all. That’s logical, as the click on your add because of such a keyword would only result in wasted money.

Because you as a business want to sell your goods or services, you can exclude keywords like free, cost less, for nothing, and so on right from the start, for which there’s a separate slider. While doing so, also choose the keyword option “Broad match” for the list of negative keywords, to make sure that combinations of said words don’t lead to the display of your ads. For other phrases, the option “Exact match” is recommended, as it allows you to exclude specific word combinations.

Evaluate the Search Requests!

Do you know for which words your ads are actually displayed in the end? Although your campaign already has relevant, as well as negative keywords, it can always happen that an ad is shown for a wrong search phrase, which causes unnecessary costs. For that reason, it is recommended to check the user’s search requests on a regular basis, and to filter and save negative (or positive) keywords.

Write Appealing Ad Texts!

Generate more attention by directly addressing your target audience with the ad texts, making them curious about your products and services. Empathize with the user to get a feel for what he expects.

The ad texts are rather important when it comes to leading the users to your page, which is why it should be written in an appealing, brief, and grammatically correct way. For this, there are three lines available: Heading (25 characters), as well as two lines of text (35 characters each), which you should make as much use of as possible.

To do that, it is smart to include the keyword that the user entered in the Google search engine in the ad, as he will then gain the impression that he will find just what he was looking for on your page. Google offers the option to implement a keyword placeholder, which automatically integrates the search term when the ad is displayed.

Google AdWords: To Success With Know-how and Time

With the presented advice, you can optimize your campaign significantly, so that in the future, your conversions should become better. However, there are other important aspects that can’t be missing in a good AdWords campaign. It requires know-how and time (!), as only with regular control, and continuous adjustments of keywords, ads and so forth, you can achieve a sustainably successful campaign result.

(dpe)