Tips on using Google Adwords to promote your business

AN important part of any business starting up in France is its website and online presence, regardless of whether you run a holiday home, property company, village bar or any other enterprise.

However, you can have the best website in the world but if no one is visiting it then you are likely to wonder if it was money well spent and as more companies move online the competition is only likely to get tougher.

Ultimately there are two ways to draw people to your website, the first is by so-called natural search, the other is to place text based advertisements on search engine results pages and content driven websites.

Here internet marketing specialist Sam McArthur, who also has a love of all things France, offers a two-part introduction into the use of Google Adwords and starts by explaining what pay per click advertising is:

Pay per Click (or PPC) advertising has become big business over the last few years, and not surprisingly, highly competitive in many sectors. However, for many businesses, it’s their first step into online marketing and actually getting their website found online to attract new visitors, enquiries and sales.

So, what is pay per click advertising?

Pay per click is advertising in the search engines and literally means what it says - every time anyone clicks on your link in a PPC ad, you pay a sum to the PPC provider (e.g Google Adwords).

You bid on key phrases relevant to the products or services you sell on your website, but the more competitive the key phrases are, the more you will have to pay per click.

Campaigns can be set up almost immediately and they can complement traditional search engine optimisation efforts as you can gain traffic to your website whilst you are waiting for natural search engine results to kick in, which can take several months.

There are three main pay per click providers which are Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter.

Since Google has the biggest reach in the UK, we will concentrate on using the Google Adwords advertising option.

Google Adwords is probably the best known pay per click advertising service, which allows you to advertise on Google, its search network and its content network.

The best thing about Google Adwords is that the ads can be set up within a very short space of time and you can edit ads and keywords at any time.

Google Ads appear on Google and Ask.co.uk search results as well as on a whole host of other sites in their content network.

To set up a Google Adwords campaign, you firstly need to write some ad text - you have two description lines 35 characters each and a title containing 25 characters.

You therefore need to be very specific about your offering. Google has a keyword suggestion tool to help you target your key phrases for the best return.

You need to choose a daily budget amount and a maximum amount for all your key phrases, or for individual key phrases.

This is where it can start to get expensive, particularly if your keywords are quite competitive and you want them served every time a search is made.

The daily budget means that once you meet your budget, your ads will be stopped until the next day, which is a good way of spreading your budget out evenly over a month. Google do monitor ads and will stop them if they do not adhere to their guidelines.

When setting up PPC advertising campaigns, it's important you track your clicks and conversions to make sure it’s worthwhile and your money is being spent in the right way.

You may find that you’ll need to edit and tweak your campaigns by changing key phrases and descriptions quite frequently as you go along to maximise on the click through rate and conversions.

After a month of so of advertising, it’s worthwhile going through your campaign stats and website’s log files to ensure your money is well spent. The return on investment varies greatly from one campaign to another and I would strongly recommend comparing cost per click and sales or leads achieved.

Getting Started with Pay per Click Advertising

Here are my top tips for setting up a pay per click campaign with the major search advertising platforms.

1. Don’t be phased
Firstly and foremost, don’t be phased by the management interface that Google Adwords provides. For really basic campaigns and for those of you who don’t want to get too involved in complicated campaigns, Google Adwords offer a starter program, which is very easy to use.

If your campaign grows or you want more advanced settings, you can go on to transfer to their standard program.

2. What are you advertising?This may sound obvious, but the next step in the process is to work out exactly what you’re going to advertise.

You’re going to need to structure your campaign so it’s probably easier to put pen to paper first. Decide which products or services you want to advertise, then group them into common themes.

A good example of this is from a campaign I’ve done for one of my clients who sells home accessories. It also ties up quite nicely with the categories of the website.

Each of the product areas was categorised into ‘dining accessories’, ‘kitchen accessories’, ‘bathroom accessories’, ‘garden accessories’ etc. You can do this with your products and services if there are common themes.

Then categorise your products/services further. For example ‘dining accessories’ could be broken down into ‘glassware’, ‘dinner services’, ‘table linen’ etc.

Then include all the possible keywords that relate to these sub-categories. When you set up your campaign, you’ll be using ‘campaigns’ and ‘ad groups’ so use your categories and sub categories in the same way.

3. Research your Keywords
After working out your categories and sub categories (if appropriate), then you need to do some keyword research.

Google Adwords provides an excellent keyword suggestion tool to help advertisers identify appropriate keywords.

The most important thing to remember is not to sponsor keywords that are too general e.g ‘french holidays’.

If you do, you’ll probably find that these keywords will generate few clicks and either be expensive to sponsor, or your ad will be so far down the list that hardly anyone will ever see it.

Be as specific and targeted as you can to keep costs down and to generate clicks from targeted customers.

4. Who are you targeting?
You can’t be too exacting as to who you’re targeting with search advertising (e.g gender, age etc) but Adwords gives you the option to choose which locations you want to advertise in.

You can target as many countries as you want, and also at regional level if you want to target more specific areas. You can set customized areas to show your ads in, particularly if you target customers within an area, e.g 50 miles radius from your business address.

5. How much do you want to spend?
Next, you need to work out how much you can actually afford to spend on clicks per month.

Your budget probably depends on what you’re promoting and what kind of return you could expect from the campaign.

If you’re in the financial services sector then you’ll need deep pockets as sponsoring anything to do with loans, mortgages & pensions is highly competitive and very expensive.

Google Adwords will give you an estimate as to how much you may need to spend each day to show your ads continually, but often their estimate can be quite high.

Once you’ve decided on your budget for the month, divide this figure by 30 to work out your daily budget.

Once you reach this daily budget in clicks, your ads will stop until the next day, so you don’t need to worry about it being used up at once.

Your budget isn’t set in stone by any means, so you can change your mind whenever you want. You’ll need to allocate a daily budget to each ‘campaign’ that you set up, so if you have several campaigns in your account, divide your budget between them. Google charge a £5 fee when the ads go live.

6. Target your Ads
When writing your ad text you need to be as precise as possible. The more precise, the more targeted your clicks will be.

Unless you’re a well known brand, it’s not worth including your company name. Use the keywords you’re sponsoring as headlines, e.g. ‘Gite to Rent in Normandy’, and with the limited descriptions you get with Google, you’ll have to be specific.

You get 35 characters per line including spaces and 25 characters for the ad title, so no waffle allowed! Don’t just write one ad per campaign or ad group.

Try out several different ads to test as some will no doubt perform better than others. You can add and edit ads whenever you want.

7. Where are you going to send your visitors?
As a final part of setting up your campaign, work out where you’re going to send your visitors from your ad.

It’s important that you don’t just send everyone to your home page – if you’re targeting specific products or services then send them to that page of your site.

If everyone goes to the home page and then has to find what they’re after, they’re not going to hang around for long.

If your visitors are presented with a page featuring exactly what they’re looking for, then they’re more likely to convert into leads and sales.

You don’t just have to rely on your existing web pages either – you could create specific landing pages for your campaign, particularly if you have special offers or are promoting products for those arriving specifically from the pay per click campaign.

You can be as imaginative as you want. Remember, once you get the traffic to your website, it’s your website’s job to convert those prospects into customers.

This is just the beginning of handling your pay per click campaign. I’ve covered the most basic features to help you get going, and next week I’ll look at the more advanced features offered by Google Adwords.

On a final note, before I forget, make sure you have a valid credit card to get the campaign started!

Related article: Getting the best out of online advertising

Sam helps small and medium sized businesses to promote their websites with search engine optimisation & pay per click advertising campaigns. She is a qualified Google Adwords Professional, and also offers general website consultancy, blogging for business & and a Step by Step E-Marketing programme for small businesses who want to learn how to promote their websites themselves. You can find out more about Sam’s services on her website, www.forty-first.co.uk and also find online marketing tips and resources on her newsletter website, Marketing Karma.