Want Your Phone To ring?

Profitable Adwords Campaigns are a very cost effective way!

In its simplest form, an online pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is a tool that businesses, individuals, and organizations use to communicate with their target audience(s) and drive “qualified” search engine traffic to their websites.

What does “qualified” mean? Simple – customers who are ready to buy!

An Adwords campaign should be the first tool you use to reach out to new customers. And, it should operate like a well oiled machine quickly turning your ad spend into profitable ROI!

Many other companies offer PPC campaigns but NO-ONE goes through the rigorous research to build a profitable campaign prior to the launch like us!

Of the three major search engines – Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Bing – Google is, by far, the most widely used search engine (Yahoo! is second and MSN is third). Likewise, Google’s advertising programs – AdWords (PPC) and their Display Network – are the popular online advertising programs of their type on the Internet, so it makes sense to begin there and expand to other search engines over time if appropriate.

Following are some very top-level Google AdWords basics:

• PPC advertisers must open up a Google AdWords account (AdWords.google.com/). There is a $5.00 charge for opening an account and advertisers must submit credit card information that will be used to pay for any/all additional costs incurred.

• Once registered, advertisers can set up one or many AdWords campaigns – each with one or more ad groups and ads.

• Advertisers specify their geographic parameters (i.e. where their ads will show), maximum daily budgets, maximum cost-per-click (See Glossary of Terms, Section 7) prices, language preferences, destination and display URLs, and more.

• Once live, advertisers’ ads appear in search results lists (on the very top left hand side of the results page, under “sponsored searches” or along the right hand side of the same page), along with live links to their web pages. Ads are triggered when searchers who fit campaigns’ set parameters enter targeted keywords or phrases

• Whenever advertisers’ links are “clicked on” users are sent to the designated web page and the advertiser pays an agreed-upon fee – thus, the term “pay-per-click.” Content placement ads appear on web pages, not search engine results listings. Depending on their type (i.e. whether they’re generated from AdWords or from Google’s Display network) advertisers either pays a flat-fee for “impressions” or per click.

In order to obtain excellent results advertisers must carefully orchestrate and execute a number of complicated variables nearly flawlessly.  If not, their campaigns perform poorly and they lose money.

All of these factors work together to increase – or decrease – the odds that a company’s AdWords campaign will generate a positive return on their investment (ROI). However, as is the case with all forms of advertising, there are other external and internal factors that may have a negative effect on PPC campaign results or ROI. Here are several:

• Exorbitant cost-per-click prices due to increases in competition
• Lower-than-average standard industry conversion (defined as opt-ins, direct online sales, or leads) rates
• High cost-per-click (CPC) rates and/or lower conversion rates vs. low average product/service pricing or profits (i.e. products/services with prices/profits that are too low to offset the costs per click and/or low-than-average conversion rates)
• Company’s product and/or service offerings are not what visitors expected, or wanted
• Advertisers’ websites and/or follow-up sales processes are not “conversion-ready”

In other words, there are many variables to consider before choosing to conduct an AdWords campaign, and many options to weigh after making that decision. In spite of the low-cost to entry ($5.00) and the relative ease of creating an ad campaign, it is a highly technical and complex form of advertising and one that requires a great deal of objective research, considerable skill and know-how, constant testing and monitoring, and a keen ability to analyze results and make changes accordingly.

The primary reason for these disappointing results is simple:

For instance, they lack insider knowledge on Google’s requirements and algorithms; they fail to coordinate their SEO efforts with their PPC efforts; they lack knowledge on finding “money” keywords; they bid too high, or too low, for their keywords; they are not schooled in writing effective ads; and much, much more. So, what happens?  They give up and think, “We tried AdWords and it doesn’t work.”

When AdWords campaigns are set up properly and maintained by seasoned professionals they are among the most affordable and profitable advertising vehicles on the planet! Even better, “well-oiled” PPC campaigns are “gifts that keep on giving” – that is, with just a little bit of ongoing tweaking, they can be regular sources of profitable traffic for years and years. However, as with all worthwhile endeavors, a considerable amount of groundwork must be accomplished first.

• Consistently delivers a positive return on the Adwords investment
• Incrementally increases qualified traffic to your website
• Uses the your resources to achieve the best possible outcome – i.e. get the most for the least
• Improves your chances for converting strangers into website visitors, and website visitors into profitable sales

• Conduct comprehensive keyword (and other) research
• Finalize initial ad groups & keywords (using broad, phrased, exact, and negative matching as appropriate) to ensure that we’re inviting qualified prospects (e.g. searchers actively seeking your products) and filtering out unwanted – and costly – impressions and traffic
• Set campaign parameters
• Ensure that account’s quality scores are as high as possible
• Develop ad copy and headlines
• Activate campaign and enter testing phase
• Track (begins day 1) and refine