There’s a reason AdWords is Google’s biggest money maker. Well there are a lot of reasons. But one big one is that they’ve packaged an incredibly sophisticated piece of pay-per-click (PPC) keyword bidding software in a reasonably simple user interface. But don’t let that interface fool you – there’s much more to it than initially meets the eye…and it can be overwhelming when you start digging in for the first time. I was recently reminded how difficult it can be for new users to look past all the bells and whistles and just get their campaign launched. Here are a few tips to help you know what to spend your time on (and what to put off until after the campaign launches) so you can get up and running.
To make the most efficient use of your time, don’t try to over-think your keyword bids and ad variations before you have activated the campaign. It’s an exercise in futility to try to predict how users will react to your campaign (assuming you haven’t run a similar campaign previously). You could spend a ton of valuable time asking questions like “is this the right bid amount for this keyword?”, “is this keyword really right for this campaign?”, “should I use quotes or brackets on these keywords?”, and “which ad variation is better?” – but all that time is often much better spent, at least initially, growing your keyword list or actually creating ad variations. You can answer all your detailed questions later, by analyzing the numbers that the AdWords system (and your web Analytics system) provide.
In the beginning you should just throw it all out there and see what sticks. Then you can spend your time analyzing and tweaking the keywords and ad variations that generate interest (impressions, clicks or conversions). That way, if you have 15 keywords (out of 1,000) and 2 ads (out of 20) that are generating interest, you only have to spend your time tweaking and tracking those those 15 keywords and 2 ads (creating additional related keywords and ad variations, of course). Otherwise, answering all the questions from the paragraph above before you launch your campaign (for all the hundreds or thousands of keywords and dozens of ads in your campaign) could mean you’d be doing too much analysis on parts of the campaign that will ultimately net zero results anyway.
Take it easy on yourself, and worry about the big things first (growing your keyword list and creating ad variations) – then hone your campaign with the information you get from AdWords and analytics. It may take a day, a week, or a month to get the data you need (depending on the volume of your campaign). But an approach like this will save you loads of work. And since time is money, you’ll be one step closer to getting a positive return on your AdWords investment!
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