When you’re in digital marketing, focusing your pay-per-click advertising efforts mostly on Google AdWords makes sense. After all, Google gets more than 3.5 billion searches per day, meaning you have a chance of reaching a lot of people when their search queries are relevant to your ads. If you’re not yet using Google AdWords–or suspect you’re not using it correctly–here’s what you need to know to improve your PPC success.
1. Use Negative Keywords for Improved Targeting
As you figure out which keywords to target in your campaign, it’s equally important to determine which ones you don’t want to allow. And since AdWords offers the negative keywords option, it’s easy for you to get rid of the keywords that might sound related but actually aren’t. For instance, if you sell desk calendars, you’ll want to include the obvious terms people will use to search for the type of calendar you sell. These would include “desk calendar” and “calendar,” of course. But people might also search for “free calendar” or “printable calendar,” and they’re probably not looking to buy the type of calendar you have. If you don’t add these terms to the negative keywords list, these search queries could take people to your ads, and you’ll be paying for each click even though these leads likely aren’t interested in buying your desk calendars. In this way, the negative keywords tool can help you save money on your AdWords campaign while getting better qualified leads.
2. Offer More Information with Extensions
AdWords gives you the option of putting extensions on your ads. This typically means you can add a little more information, including your business address, phone number, rates, and helpful links. One of the reasons to use extensions on your ads is that you’ll make it easier for customers to learn more about you or even contact you through the ad. Plus, your ad will take up more room on the page, giving you an edge over competitors. Note that it’s free to add extensions, though you’ll be charged a click when people click the links to call you or visit your site.
3. Let AdWords Help with Remarketing
AdWords makes it easy to target people who have already looked at your app or website, since you can run ads targeting them depending on the products they were looking at. You can even tailor your ads to where they were in the buying process. For example, you can create an ad to show people who abandoned their shopping cart on your site, and then make a different ad to show people who were simply browsing for a specific product. AdWords also offers time delays on your remarketing efforts, so you can show ads to people a few days after they left your website, or a month or two later.
As you can see, one of the best things about using Google AdWords for digital marketing is the amount of control you have over your campaign. The platform lets you make changes as needed, all without leaving your computer to get help with your digital marketing plans. Of course, if you’d rather leave it to someone else to handle the details of your AdWords campaign, most digital marketing agencies are adept at working with this program and would be happy to guide you through the process.
