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One-Minute Marketer5 Steps to Building an Effective AdWords Campaign

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5 Steps to Building an Effective AdWords Campaign

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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.