Stop Burning Through Cash on Google Pay Per Click – Top 5 Tips

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Stop Burning Through Cash on Google Pay Per Click – Top 5 Tips

The Google AdWords is not a playground. This is a serious battle field where people fight over keywords, page rank/position, increased quality scores, a better click through rate, and conversions. If you’re going to participate, you must have the right “weapons” loaded and ready to go. Say you are just getting started with AdWords or maybe you’re frustrated because you continue to lose money in the Google game, pay attention to these 5 tips that will save you from burning through serious ad dollars (and bring qualified prospects to your landing page).

1) Have Relevant Ads: The last thing you want to do is have your ad copy writing checks your landing page can’t cash. When someone reads your ad, you have just created an expectation. When that person clicks your ad, your landing page must deliver. You don’t want people just clicking your ad (although that is very exciting), you want customers ready to buy or engage in what you have to offer. A simple solution is to qualify people before they click your ad. This could be a monetary qualifier, for example “Affordable Tool Set, Sears 24 Piece Set With Warranty, Never Been Used 9″. When someone clicks on this ad, they know exactly what will be on the other side of the ad…a 24 piece Sears tool set that has never been used for 9. If someone doesn’t have 9 to spend, they will not click on you ad. See how valuable this can be for your bottom line? Take the time to write quality Ad Copy. Don’t try to trick people into clicking on your ad, this will only waste your hard earned money and leave you spending more than you earn.

2) Split Test Ads: This is the easiest way to improve your ROI and the concept is pretty black and white. Make sure you have 2 Ads running for each of your ad-groups. One is called the “control” and the other is the “test”. All you want to do is beat the control. Some people split test completely different ads and some people only make simple changes. When you are split testing completely different ads that means the ad copy for your headline and description lines are different from the control. Or you can keep the description the same but test a different headline. No matter what you decide to do, just make sure you are split testing ads and watching to see which ad has the higher conversion rate. That higher converting ad becomes your control and you can start the game all over again. This is a full proof way to decrease cost. You are finding the ad that converts the best and continually improving upon that ad.

3) Check Out Your Competition: I can guarantee if some one is on the first page of Google (paid advertising) they are making money. Why would someone pay to be on the first page if they weren’t making money? They wouldn’t, hence, study what’s happening on the first page of the keywords you’re looking at. There is a disclaimer, the keyword must be a competitive keyword. If you type in a keyword and there are no paid advertisements you probably want to say away. It is possible that you found a diamond in the rough, but it is more likely that the reason no one is bidding on those keywords is because they do not produce lead or sales (they are a drain). Just remember, a person found in position 1 is doing something right. You want to look at all of the ads on the first page of a keyword that you are looking to bid on. If you are going to compete on that keyword you are going to have to beat out that first page competition. So know your competition!

4) Stay Within Your Budget: If you know you can only spend a maximum of .50 per click on search and .95 on content, don’t go over that amount. Sometimes Google can become this strange addition, like gambling. Be sure to set a budget and don’t go over that amount. Even if you are in “Lead Poverty” and you’re feeling desperate for leads; Don’t make any exceptions and don’t get emotional. If your ad-groups and keywords aren’t getting traffic, or the cost is too high for you to compete, that just means its time to get off your butt and find new keywords.

5) Perform daily maintenance on what is not working: I like to just pause ad-groups or keywords that are not working (aka costing too much and producing too little). I do this every day, sometimes I check multiple times a day depending on what I’ve got going on. This is my maintenance during the week, and then I run my reports on the weekend and take a few hours that day to clean things out and add new keywords. If you are serious about competing on Google AdWords, this will be part of your weekly schedule too.

Always remember the 80/20 rule – Pareto’s Law that reminds us only 20% of our keywords will actually work. You might even error on the side of 90/10 to be on the safe side. You need to accept this fact and realize that much of your time, especially in the beginning will be spent on testing keywords, getting rid of what is not working, and adding more keywords to test. And remember these 5 simple tips to help you save more ad dollars and make more on the back end.

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