Plan a successful AdWords Campaign?

Before you embark on your AdWords journey we would strongly recommend reading the following page. Planning your AdWords campaign and understanding the campaigns objectives is a crucial element of any successful AdWords campaign.

The following sections are designed to make you think about your campaign before you start an highlight some of the mistakes that are easily made when people jump into Google AdWords without planning.

What are your websites objectives?

Analyse the final page on your website, the page that contains your call to action. Working backwards from this page it is possible to look at the steps a customer needs to take to navigate to this page and ultimately convert.

At each stage look at what quality and individual objectives each page has if the page does not add any value look at the rational for having this step within the process.

Once you have completed this analysis you will have a better idea of your websites objectives and also the route a potential customer must take in order to convert.

AdWords objectives.

Once you have a clear understanding of your websites objectives and the objectives of individual pages it is possible to translate these within a Google AdWords account.

The account should be themed with individual campaigns and adgroups providing support to relevant objectives and pages.

For example if your websites objective is to sell Widgets, a generic campaign can promote the advantages of buying Widgets from you and direct users to your Widget home page.

However, if an individual web pages objective is to sell blue Widgets, a more specific campaign should be created targeting blue Widget keywords and direct users to the blue Widget page of your website and not the Widget home page.

How to measure success?

Measurements should reflect the objectives of your website, web pages and the AdWords campaigns, providing relevant information to support the performance of individual elements.

For example if the AdWords objectives were to direct more visitors interested in blue widgets to your website, a measure of success could be the number of additional visitors blue widget themed keywords generated.

Test and improve you campaign.

Google AdWords offers a range of tools designed to test your campaigns performance, here are some examples;

Multiple Adverts: create a minimum of two adverts for each group of keywords and measure the click through rates and the conversion rates. Over a period of time edit the adverts that produce the poorest results and continuously improve your copy.

Search query report: look at the actual keywords users type into Google to trigger your adverts, you may come across some surprises and highlight negative keywords that can be included.

A B testing: Google AdWords and Analytics provide you with the ability to test elements of your website, changing an image, the tone of your copy or the layout of your page could have a dramatic effect on your performance.