Google Adwords can be a very powerful tool in your arsenal of weapons fighting to get your website ranking on page 1 of the Google search results. But if you’re a start up or SME you may have a small marketing budget and simply don’t have the cash flow to spend thousands of pounds each month on Adwords campaigns.
So here are 5 great tips to help you make Google Adwords work on a small budget.
1. Avoid High Competition Keywords
If you’re in a highly competitive market, the keywords that you’re thinking of including in your Google Adwords campaigns will be already in use by thousands of other companies. Yes you may have reliable, ladies’ watches, but so do many others. And if you choose high competition keywords the bigger brands with the big marketing budgets will out bid you every time. Result – either your adverts never get seen on page 1 of the results, or if they do on occasion, your budget is quickly gobbled up by a couple of clicks on your ads.
By using the free Google Adwords Keyword planner – “Find new keywords and get search volume data” you can do some serious research into keywords that are low competition and won’t cost a fortune.
Let’s stay with the theme of watches as a simple example. Keyword ideas for watches include the following. Note how all of these keywords have high competition.
By trawling through the suggestions, you will find low competition keywords:
The keywords above are low competition and the suggested bid is nice and low. These would be great keywords to include in an Adwords campaign to promote online watch sales.
A word of warning – including brands (such as Steinhart and Invicta) will work best if you actually stock these kinds of watches! Otherwise people looking specifically for these brands will feel a little peeved if they click on your advert and find you don’t sell what they want – and that equates to a click that was a waste of money.
Also note that ‘watch shop’ and ‘watch world’ are company names. However you can still include these keywords in your campaign. Google’s advertising policy states: “Google will not investigate or restrict the use of trademark terms in keywords, even if a trademark complaint is received.” The issue is with Ad text: “Google will investigate and may restrict the use of a trademark within ad text.”
But of course such keywords have to be relevant to your adverts and whole campaign or you could fall foul of Google’s policy on misrepresentation of self, product or service. But as the examples above are generic words, this would be simple eg. an advert line including “buy at our online watch shop” would be fine.
2. Use Negative Keywords
You don’t want your adverts to show to people who are looking for something you simply don’t offer. For example, perhaps you sell only top-of-the-range watches. Then no point in your adverts showing to those looking for “cheap watches”, “replica watches”, “discount watches”, “fake watches” etc.
It couldn’t be simpler to add negative keywords at the campaign or adgroup level. Just head to keywords, click on negative keywords and start typing…. cheap, replica, discount, fake. Then anyone using these negative keywords in their search won’t be shown your advert, they won’t be able to click on it and you won’t waste your precious budget.
3. Create Accurate Adverts
It’s easy to get carried away when writing your advert text. But be careful what you say – your advert must match your keywords; you advert must match your landing page AND most importantly it must accurately portray what you offer!
Say you have merrily skipped over the advice laid out above in points 1) and 2) and have decided that everyone is tempted to purchase something described as cheap. The keyword planner shows that there are an average of 5,400 monthly searches for ‘cheap watches’ – and boy do you want a share of that market!
So you include ‘cheap watches’ in your keywords and incorporate the keyword in your adverts.
If these adverts get passed Google’s Policy on misrepresentation of self, product or service (and that’s a big if), what will the person think when they click on your ad, and find that you sell only expensive watches.
Annoyed – that’s what.
So they’ll bounce off your landing page quickly – and that will have a negative impact on your overall campaign. Google likes to see that your ads are relevant to the searcher – and a high bounce rate suggests something isn’t right. This will then lower your Ad Rank which is calculated by a number of factors – landing page experience being one of them.
A low Ad Rank means your adverts will show lower in the results, or not at all, and you’ll have wasted budget encouraging the wrong type of customer to click on your advert.
4. Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are so easy to use but many people overlook them. They can improve your ad visibility and click through rate – a great way to make each impression of your advert count. And the more clicks your adverts get, the higher their Ad Rank – Google sees them as being highly relevant to the search terms used.
Here are a couple of Ads displaying their ad extensions:
Timex watches includes site link extensions – the four options in blue below the main advert take the searcher to a specific page on the Timex website.
The Watch Shop also includes site link extensions (in blue at the bottom) plus callout extensions – more great reasons to shop with Watch Shop!
5% Off with Sign Up │0% Finance │Feefo Reviewed Service │Price Matching
There are a range of other ad extensions that you can use. Go to the Ad extensions button and choose which you want to add to your ad.
Google Help provides clear details on the different Google Adwords ad extensions options and how to set them up.
5. Create a Stand Alone Landing Page
When you have optimised your Google Adwords campaign as per the guidance above, your adverts will be showing on page 1 of the results for relevant search terms. People will be impressed by your advert and will believe you are the company they are looking for.
So they click on your advert………. to find what?
That they’re on a page of your website with a whole range of information that isn’t necessarily tailored to the search term they used? In this instance they may have to navigate around a bit to find what they are looking for. They may have to hop over to the Contact Us page to send an enquiry.
In short, they have to do a bit of work.
Compare this to landing on a stand alone page which gives the precise information they were searching for. It is consistent with their search term and your advert. And better still, with a single button they can click to request more information.
Whilst a bespoke landing page for an ecommerce website, such as selling watches online, may not always be the best option – as in fact you want them to search around to find their perfect watch – the searcher should be directed to the most appropriate page of the website.
The example below is a little irritating – the Google Adwords Ad offers online purchasers a 5% discount. But the advert links to this web page. Look carefully to see if you can find how to get 5% off (hint -it’s hidden in the footer!).
For other businesses a stand alone landing page wins hands down every time. Careful construction of the landing page means the visitor can’t resist clicking on that one simple call to action button – and signing up for a free demo / requesting more information / or whatever it is you’re offering.
We created a simple landing page for our own Google Adwords campaign promoting our bespoke WordPress website design service.
We believe it’s clear, it’s simple and the Contact Us button couldn’t be more visible. You can view the full page here.
For full guidance on creating effective landing pages and the tools to create them easily, we recommend Unbounce – probably one of the most well known and loved landing page creation software tools around today.
In summary, Google Adwords campaigns on a tight budget need to be very carefully set up – and then of course their performance monitored regularly. If you want to run Google Adwords campaigns to get more qualified traffic to your business quickly, but have a limited budget, then follow the tips above.
Alternatively if you don’t feel you have the skills or resources to do so, Blinkered offers a Google Adwords service. Just contact us for a free consultation and we’ll let you know what we can do – all within budgetary constraints of course!
