How to Save Money with Google AdWords
The Five Things you Need to Know
It is often thought that the ultimate aim with Google AdWords is to have as many people as possible visit your website. However, this is not necessarily true as you pay Google every time someone clicks onto your website. This become expensive very quickly.
What is more important than total number of visitors to your website is the number of visitors who become customers. This is called the ‘conversion rate’. A rate of 2%-3% is considered good – ie for every 100 people who visit your website 2 to 3 of become customers. This conversion rate varies between different types of businesses.
Here are some ideas on how to increase your conversion rate, increase sales and lower your Google AdWords costs:
1. Have a Targeted Google AdWords Campaign
You need to make your Google AdWords campaign as targeted as possible, so that the people who click onto your website are actually interested in the types of services and products you offer. For example, if you are a high end online fashion retailer, you would not use a phrase such as ‘cheap online fashion’ as one of your keywords. It would be much more appropriate to use terms such as ‘designer brands online’.
2. Home Page
The Home Page is the most important page of any website. With seconds to engage a potential customer you need to have a Home Page that has a ‘wow factor’. It needs to provide content on the services / products you provide – but not too much or too detail. Quite a few websites make their home page too cluttered with information and photos making it difficult for customers to find what they want.
Other websites provide very little information, which leaves a potential customer wondering ifyou really do provide the products or services they are looking for. Both these circumstances result in potential customers leaving your website after only a few seconds – but you still pay Google as the person clicked on the website – even if it was only for a short time.
3. Relevant Landing Pages
For businesses that provide a range of services and have larger websites it usually more appropriate for the person who has clicked on your website to be directed to a particular page. For example, you might be a fencing business that offers many types of fences. For your Google AdWords campaign to be successful you need to make sure that the potential customer is directed to the page of your website for the particular type of fence they are looking for. A potential customer will become quickly frustrated if you direct them to a page describing colorbond fencing if in fact they are looking for a new picket fence. It is important to remember that you literally only have a few seconds to engage a customer on your website.
4. Ongoing Management of Google AdWords Campaign
To keep costs to a minimum it is essential that the campaign is managed on a continuous basis. It is a mistake to think you can have a campaign designed and then forget it and just add more money every month to cover the cost of the clicks. The effectiveness of keywords needs to be reviewed at regular intervals – some words may gain or lose popularity over time. New keywords need to be added from time to time (especially if they are low cost keywords) and their effectiveness monitored carefully.
5. Negative Keywords
Negative keywords is one of the most effective ways to achieve a targetted Google AdWords campaign but it is often overlooked. By using negative keywords you can increase the likelihood of people clicki
ng onto your website really being interested in your products or services. For example, if you provide painting services then you may decide to have phrases like ‘painting jobs’ and ‘painting apprenticeships’ as negative keywords. This will eliminate people looking for jobs clicking onto your adverts and costing you money.
With these simple tips you can have a very effective a Google AdWords campaign that will bring customers to your website, whilst minimizing the cost to do so.
Dynamic Websites specialise in small business web design. We are based in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn and provide services throughout Australia. We understand what it takes to get a small business online at an affordable price and with the minimum of fuss. Along with designing websites for small business, tradies and NDIS service providers we provide online marketing services. Our online marketing for small business extends to Google Ads, Google My Business, Microsoft Advertising, search engine optimisation (SEO), content writing and, blog writing.
