Saturday, August 2, 2008

Four Easy Way To Manage Your AdWords Campaign

By Maxine Stirling


As an increasing number of businesses and individuals are learning the merits of online PPC advertising, there may be some inclination that the potential effectiveness of an AdWords campaign is diminishing with such a saturated market. But this simply isn't true. You can still run a very effective and profitable AdWords campaign if you know what you're doing. Here are four useful techniques to bear in mind.

Before you can even start to run an effective campaign, you need to carefully choose relevant keywords. These, after all, will form the backbone of your campaign. Don't just arbitrarily add keywords to create a broader potential consumer base. And, don't use a relevant keyword generator unless it really is generating effective keywords. Remember that you only want clicks that will turn into sales. Empty clicks just means money down the drain.

The second thing you should consider is the position of your bid. Many inexperienced PPC campaign mangers think that it is better to bid for the top spot. However, this is rarely the case. Unless you are the undisputed leader of your industry, this is not a good idea. The top spot is a very wasteful place to be. You will get many clicks that have no chance of resulting in sales. Instead, try to bid for the first page, but not the first spot. Use your text ad to sell yourself, not your positional ranking. A higher ranking will mean more clicks, but a lower conversion rating on the backend.

One of the AdWords management strategies that goes without saying (but still can't be said enough) is to test all of your keywords, and then test some more. You need to remember that PPC marketing is like the stock market - it can fluctuate greatly on a daily basis. Ignoring your keyword results or click through rates or conversion rates for too long can spell doom for your PPC advertising campaign. It is vital that you continually monitor your campaign, and make the necessary changes.

The final AdWords management strategy you may want to consider is placing ads on relevant websites instead of just on SERPs. These bids can be priced by the click or as gross impressions. Paying by the impression is a great way to get bargain deals on ad listings. And since users are already browsing for products or services relevant to your own, they will still be targeted customers.

Try using these four simple strategies the next time you manage a PPC campaign. Doing so can increase efficiency and profitability.

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