Read this if Adwords is no longer working

HOW TO FIX YOUR ADWORDS

GUEST POST BY MARTHA ORLOCI FROM DIGITALBISON

Adwords just isnt working for us as it used to, costs are higher, and sales are lower.Chances are youve said this yourself and youre not alone. We hear it every day from advertisers of all sizes. Diminishing returns seems to be the new reality with pay-per-click. Heres what you need to know to turn around your Adwords.

ADWORDS GROWS UP

The Adwords cost-per-click (CPC) model of today has only been around for 10 years. Yet total advertising revenue at Google topped $43 billion last year. Thats billion with a B. With that kind of growth, its not surprising that your results have fluctuated. As the popularity of ecommerce grows and internet usage expands, this puts the squeeze on organic listings. With hundreds of millions of websites now online (plus Googles constantly changing algorithms), ranking organically for any keyword has become a superhuman task! As a result, more advertisers are shifting to paid search (PPC). Whereas small businesses helped to make the Adwords platform flourish, today its larger, national retailers who tend to dominate the listings. These advertisers have the budgets to compete aggressively on Adwords.

GOOD NEWS

Even with limited budgets smaller advertisers can still successfully compete. Your Adwords may be performing poorly because you are not implementing the new cost-effective features of Adwords. The name of the game is relevance. As long as your product is relevant to a customers search query, you have an equal chance of competing with any other retailer, provided you use the same approaches. Heres an overview of some vital tools you should be using:

PRODUCT LISTING ADS

Last year, Google revamped its shopping service, eliminating free listings and making it paid-only. Though controversial at the time, today Product Listing Ads (PLAs) have become a huge hit with consumers and advertisers alike. Some retailers are spending up to 30% of their budgets on PLAs, which can provide higher click-through rates (CTRs) with lower costs per clicks (CPCs). If you havent tried PLAs yet, you should definitely check it out. RETARGETING Abandoned carts remain one of the industrys biggest concerns. Retargeting can be used to get a customer back to your website. The way it works is you serve them with targeted ads as they move around the web. Often a small incentive (like an immediate 5% discount) can be enough to nudge a customer to purchase. Retailers know it can be a lot cheaper to re-activate a customer who almost purchased than it is to acquire a brand new shopper from the web.

DYNAMIC KEYWORDS

DKI is one of the most powerful, yet underused, tools in the Adwords toolbox. The more specific and relevant you can make the ad, the greater the odds of attracting a serious buyer. Before DKI, if you wanted the ad to match the search query, youd have to create many, many ads. Dynamic keyword insertion allows you to place the exact keyword from the search query right into your ad text. Dynamic keywords will give you a higher click-through rates and better quality visitors. When used properly, DKI can greatly boost your campaigns cost effectiveness.

MATCH TYPES

Most advertisers know that Google offers several keyword match types, but many dont have the time to use them efficiently. There are four types: broad, phrase, exact and broad modified. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, all work together to provide options for targeting. Another type of keywords is called negative keywords. These are keywords that you dont want to trigger your ads. We had a client, Jason, in the printer Inkjet business. When he first came to us, he boasted about all the traffic he was getting from Adwords. We noticed, cartridges (broad match) was his most popular keyword, generating thousands of clicks a week. Yet Jasons sales didnt positively reflect his ads spend. When we examined his search query report, we noticed that most of his inbound searches were, in fact, for shotgun cartridges. Jason had been paying for traffic that never had any chance of converting. We immediately added shotgun to his negative keyword list, and his costs fell dramatically.

LEVELING UP

Online retailers of all sizes are trying to figure out how to make Adwords work. The platform can be just as valuable today (and tomorrow!) As it was last year. The key to success is staying up-to-date with the important features that Google releases, and using them effectively. Like any other technology, as Adwords becomes more sophisticated, the time and effort involved in keeping pace with it increases. Eventually, there comes a point when the cost of learning and managing the technology is greater than the cost of giving it to an expert who specializes in it. If your Adwords performance has declined, you could be at that point. Now is the moment to take a fresh look at the latest options offered by Adwords.

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