What’s the secret to using Google AdWords?
The Google team is constantly updating the platform to deliver new functions, ad formats and improve the algorithm. That makes keeping up with the latest strategies, beta tests and offerings difficult as marketers try to stay ahead of the market.
Four online marketers share their tips on how to target, optimise and best utilise the AdWords platform.
Utilise your remarketing list on your search campaigns
Patrick Fitzgerald runs paid search at Appliances Online
As well as display remarketing, you can now isolate your past site visitors on the search results, creating many opportunities to improve the ROI of your current search campaigns.
Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) will allow you to customise ad text based on users’ behaviour or alter your bids to maximise the position and exposure of your ads to either new or returning users, depending on your objective.
For highly competitive phrases we often chose to exclude users who have already visited our site. We let our site do the selling, and only spend money getting in front of new users that haven’t yet visited Appliances Online.
Register and retain your users to get more for your dollar
Jason Hill is general manager at MXStore.com.au, an online motocross retailer.
Just like pinching hotel shampoos and bath towels, there are strategies for gaining ‘more for you dollar’ in search marketing: Relevancy, Registration, Re-marketing, and Retention.
Getting all of the four Rs in line is essential in the quest for maximum ROI. Some businesses nail relevancy and remarketing, but let themselves down registering users and then retaining them. They focus on their converting 5% and forget about the 95%. If you can’t convert them this time, get something from them, anything, then try and try again.
And for those that have converted, it doesn’t end there. In many industries, ours included, AOV (Average Order Value)goes up with every succeeding purchase and days between purchases go down, so your most reliable source of sales might actually be your current sales themselves.
Look to dynamic, long-tail campaigns for ROI
Morris Bryant runs Sparro, a Sydney online marketing agency.
Generic keywords are getting more expensive and converting lower, while searchers are maturing and trusting the search engines with more complex, longer-tail keywords. In e-commerce, you now need to go wide to beat your competitors on reach and ROI.
If you’re not showing an ad for every product, brand, category and brand-category combination in your store, you’re missing out. You don’t need a third party tool, either: build an integration with AdWords Scripts and you’ll be online with dynamic ads with live pricing for every product you own, even when your inventory changes. That’s hard to beat.
Build your ads and ad extensions around your objective
Rich Flanagan is head of SMB marketing at Google Australia
To get the most out of your campaigns, you should decide on a specific goal at the outset (for instance, ‘increasing foot traffic to my store’). Then, to make sure your ads are as relevant as possible to your goal, you should ensure each of your Ad Groups are tightly themed. You want people looking at your ads to think ‘that’s exactly what I was looking for!’
To give your ads an extra boost, you can make use of Google’s many ad extensions and new ad formats. For example, if your goal is to drive calls, add Call Extensions to show a call button in your ad. If your goal is to drive footfall, add a location extension to show your store address. Or if you want to drive e-commerce sales, try Google Product Listing Ads to show pictures of your products.
You’ll get the best return on your investment if you check your account frequently, look at what is working well or where there are issues, and adjust your bids and budgets accordingly.
