Google Adwords and natural search are the power pack for leads. Google Adwords is an investment, but if properly managed, can bring you your ideal customer.
I know a guy who blew through a few thousand dollars in a few hours, because he didn’t have the right measurements in place. I thought to myself, “Better learn from his mistake mistake than my own.” I was determined to never waste one cent of my Google Adwords budget.
The post will include the following:
- Your set Google Adwords budget
- Automatic or Manual bid
- Using match type and negative keywords
Your set budget
Before you run your first star ad, you need to indicate an average daily budget. The key is to remember average, as this amount is the average that Google can spend a day over one month. I’ve seen Google spend twice as much as the average daily budget in a day, but no worries, it will still adhere to the total spend in the month. You set this budget at the campaign level.
Automatic or Manual bid
Next, you’ll need to choose your bid strategy. When I first started using Adwords, I once spent days trying to outrank a competitor by manually offering the first position cost per click (cpc) on what were my best keywords. Every morning, I would go in and change the bid price, but whenever I went to check how the words were doing, I’d find that though the first position cpc was about the same, my offering always dropped. I realized that my automated bidding settings did not allow for manual override.
I recommend to always use manual bidding for your top keywords. Automated bidding is easier to maintain, as you only need to tell Adwords your goal and whether you want to be in the first position or first page. However, manual bidding allows you to control being in first place and to save money too since you can adjust your bid as you see fit. The best solution is to create two campaigns. Put your best keywords in one campaign, set it for manual bidding and take a few minutes twice a day to maintain this. Put your other keywords in another campaign, set it for automatic bidding and for first page. This will save you time and money with the other keywords.
Using match type and negative keywords
As you pick out your keywords, you will need to select their match type. Match types include broad match (your ads may match searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations), broad match modifier (your ads may show on searches that include modified broad match keywords or close variations, but not synonyms, in any order), phrase match (your ads may show on searches that match a phrase, or are close variations of that phrase, with additional words before or after), and exact match (your ads may show on searches that match the exact term or are close variations of that exact term).
Best practice is to start with broad match, monitor for a few weeks and narrow down and you discover what your audience is searching for. However, I believe that the previous strategy is not complete without introducing the importance of using negative match (your ads may only show on searches without the term). I once worked on a campaign whether out team did a great job creatively coming up with hundred of popular keyword phrases to market our product. We put all of our keyword phrases on broad match and got numerous clicks. Yet the reports showed many of the clicks coming from people searching for other products including cars and computers (nothing related to our product). I realized that our ads were matching searches that shared one keyword with our phrase, but had otherwise nothing to do with our phrase, leading to two frustrated parties. I ended up coming up with hundreds of negative keywords, most of them car and computer brands, and our click relevancy greatly, not to mention that we saved a ton of money.
Learn more about Google Adwords Budgeting
WordStream is a good resource for Google Adwords and WordPress trends. Allen Finn recently wrote an easy-to-read post called The Complete, Digestible Guide to AdWords Budgets.
Also, see Digital Marketing Techie’s page on Google Adwords and Analytics.