AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

5 Steps to Building an Effective AdWords Campaign

It doesn’t matter what type of business or organization you work for, it is likely that your website is receiving more traffic than your entire organization. As you immerse more and more into the Internet of Things, if you are not fully utilizing AdWords campaigns, you may be missing traffic that is actively looking for your products and services.

Here are 5 key performance metrics that will help lead you to a successful AdWords marketing campaign.

1. Micro- or Macro-Conversions = Micro- or Macro-Goals

Conversion is the new word for goals or objectives. We all want more customers, more patients, more students, more members, more donors, etc. These are goals we all tend to understand, and they are all macro-goals or macro-conversions.

There are usually only a few large-scale macro-goals, but there are myriad micro-goals that help move customers through the buying path and into a macro-goal. Few come to your site ready to buy or buy into your organization. They still need to be sold. Determining these key micro-goals usually defines the success or failure of an AdWords campaign. Some examples of micro-goals or conversions might be having landing page visitors download a white paper, register for a blog or e-newsletter or view a video.

These micro-conversions can all be easily tracked and reported back with frequency. If the conversions are not occurring, it’s time to adjust some of the landing page dynamics and user experiences. You can also set expected revenue for each macro-conversion area so you’re able to determine ROI for your campaign.

2. Don’t Hurry Pre-Launch Basics

Remember, Google AdWords are just like any campaign—frequency and long-term investing pay greater dividends. Be sure to set an effective budget. We recommend that your digital budget be 25% of your total marketing budget (which matches the national averages for all marketing budgets, but that percentage is rapidly growing).

You need to take the time to carefully examine search volumes to make sure there are fish in the pond where you want to fish.

3. Relevant and Specific Keywords

Keywords must be specific and relevant to your organization and the type of customer you’re trying to attract. The keywords for a B2B organization will be vastly different than the keywords for a B2C organization. You need to be sure that your campaign is focused on the keywords that your target market is searching, not industry jargon that may or may not be relevant to what consumers are entering into their Google search bar.

Your keywords should also sync with the words in your ads and should match the words you use on your landing pages or website. Using a geographic tag also helps you compete less with national, brand-name businesses and organizations; you should also identify negative keywords to prevent wasted clicks.

4. A-B Testing (text, video, headlines, graphics)

We would all like to think we are experts at what consumers want, but there is nothing more humbling than testing our assumptions against actual use.

A/B testing allows you to gain insight into customers’ actual actions and allows you to determine price sensitivity, service enhancements, risk tolerance or quality. You can test different ads to see which marker pulls better or tweak the offer in order to see which is more enticing.

5. Quality Score: It’s Just Like a Credit Score

A credit score will tell a lender if you qualify for a loan and what interest rate to charge. Your Google Quality Score works the same way: It is based on how relevant your keywords, ads and landing page are to each other. A Quality Score from Google not only impacts your ad rank, but also what you pay per click. Simply put, a higher Quality Score provides a higher position on the search screen and lower cost-per-clicks.

If implemented correctly, a Google AdWords campaign can reap huge rewards. There is no better way to get your organization in front of the millions of internet searchers every day. Your virtual office is your busiest office—it’s open 24 hours a day, and it never closes for holidays. Make sure you populate it with new people—especially people who you know are actively searching for you and your products and services.