More than often we speak to prospects about the benefits of online presence and inbound marketing, refer ppc advertising as an avenue, and the clients response is that they’ve traveled that road and were robbed in the bushes by Google. I quietly laugh to my self every time I hear it. The problem isn’t Google, the problem is you!

We are in a volatile time were simple decisions will make or break your business. You have to ask yourself, can you afford the time it takes to learn how to optimize your ad campaigns as a business owner? You really have 2 options so the answer should be easy. Either you’re gonna learn to optimize your campaigns or hire a marketer. Simple.

Well for those that want to learn, I’m about to drop a couple knowledge bombs you might want to take note of. This isn’t “EVERYTHING” you need to know and I do advise passing the AdWords exams before advertising. You can learn a lot from the scenarios/examples given, and the study material surrounding the bidding/quality score portion of the exam, is priceless. Check it out below.

I remember this video helping me understand more about the optimization of my ads than any other piece of study material Google released.

What Goes Wrong

Now, that video above is just the basics and I highly recommend learning the basic to further understand what I am going to display.

Here’s the usual scenario:

My name’s Eric and I’m a business owner who has utilized more traditional methods of advertising in the past and my main source of business is word of mouth/reputation. I realize the future of the web will monopolize every industry imaginable and I want to solidify my competitive positioning in my market. So I’ll attempt to throw a little money into PPC and see what works on my own.

This situation is bad………….really bad and the business owner loses 99% of the time and ultimately misses out on improving their online presence, meeting their inevitable demise.

So what should I do if I can’t pay an agency?

Learn from the information Google has provided and take the exams. Within a couple week you can be certified and one step closer to not throwing you’re money away! Oh and follow the tips below.

Optimizing Your Ad Campaign

After you’ve learned about ad score, quality score, ad extensions, landing page relevance, negative keywords and so on (the basics), you’re gonna need to know a few tricks. These are sure to get you a high quality score that achieves a lower CPC over your competitors.

1. The biggest mistake I see amongst advertisers/companies/small businesses in an ad campaign is that they create ad groups full of keywords. This is a big no-no for multiple reasons, but the main being that your ad will not be as specific to the keyword and will lower your quality score. What is the remedy? SKAG’s or better known as “single keyword ad groups”. Yes thats right. You’re gonna have campaigns separated by category/topic, and within the campaigns create an ad group for EVERY keyword you target.
2. Keywords! Their only the core driving element of the entire indexed web. For the keywords you need to understand your match types. Google really goes in depth into 3 of the match types and vaguely addresses the most important. The typical match types are:
   • Broad Match
   • Phrase Match
   • Exact Match

   And the least mentioned match type would be the Broad Modifier. This match type pushes more conversions across the board and allows me to customize and control the queries my ads trigger much more effectively.

   For instance I have an inventor of blue suede shoes that I want to sell. Using the typical match types it will look like this:

   buy blue suede shoes – This is a broad match and will show all relevant queries your ad, and probably waste your money.

   “buy blue suede shoes” – Phrase match works well but sometimes receives a lower number of impressions. Usually improves quality score because the query can have other words but the phrase must be exact.

   [buy blue suede shoes] – Exact match will see lower impressions but make sure the query is exact and conversion rates are typically higher and CPA is lower

   BUT, the broad modifier allows you to do so much more. I would run ads for phrase and exact match, completely exclude the broad match, and run these broad modifiers:

   buy +blue +suede +shoes
   +buy +blue +suede +shoes
   +buy blue +sued +shoes

   The + sign tells Google that the word must be in the query and the words without the plus sign will show for relevant queries. So in the 1st keywords where “buy” doesn’t have a + sign, that’s communicating to Google that “buy” can be shown for anything relevant as long as the words “blue”, “suede”, and “shoes” is in the query. So queries could be:

   “where to purchase blue suede shoes”
   “cheap blue suede shoes”
   “premium blue new in the box suede beautiful shoes”

   Get the point? Your exact match and phrase match won’t show for these combinations. Pay attention to the usage of “buying” keywords. I like to use keywords that are less general and indicate the visitor is interested in converting. Queries can tell you a ton about the mentality of the visitor and help you maximize your budget in the areas that will produce an ROI.

3. Ad Copy. Your landing page needs to be super relevant to the query, and your ad copy needs to be super duper relevant to all components. I see advertisers consistently making the mistake, of having one landing page, for targeting a multitude of keywords. Bad idea again.Your ad copy has to be relevant to the query and landing page. So in the example above, with the blue suede shoes, your ad would need to look like this:
   

   Not the most compelling copy but, this ad would get a high quality score if it lead to a page with blue suede shoes, or even suede shoes. Could just change the title a bit and apply it to all shoes.

   Also, on broad modifiers I nearly always use dynamic keyword insertion or DKI. This will dynamically insert keywords/query into the title. With broad modifiers, because the query that triggers the ad can vary, so it only makes sense to dynamically insert that query as the title to improve relevancy.

Will This Help?

If you follow the guidelines that Google has already laid out and make the simple tweaks displayed above, then absolutely! Yes this will make your campaigns perform better, increse conversions, and improve all key performance indicators. Just try it and see what happens. I have to say this though, if you haven’t mastered the basics, then it won’t work as well but will improve your current campaigns!

Hope this helped! Drop us a few lines and tell us what you think!