Posts Tagged ‘Pay-Per-Click Advertising’

Imagine you’ve walked into a department store and said to a member of staff near the door that you want to buy a duvet cover. Instead of giving you directions to the second floor where the bedding department is, they send you off to the fourth floor where the electrical goods are. That would be quite irritating and would reduce the chances of you buying the bed linen that you came into the shop for.

And what has this got to do with AdWords?

Well, if you are sending potential customers to your website you need to make life as easy as possible for them. You need to help them find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. You certainly don’t want to end up annoying them by sending them to the wrong “department” on your site.

In other words, once you have convinced someone to click on your AdWords ad, you have to make sure you send them to the most appropriate landing page on your website. That way, they’ll immediately find what they are looking for and that increases the chances that they will buy from you or contact you instead of clicking the dreaded Back button and going to one of your competitors instead.

Most of the time, sending people to the correct landing page is not hard to do. The potential customer has usually given you a very good idea of what they are looking for by virtue of the search phrase they entered into Google in the first place. So all you then need to do is set the destination URL for your AdWords ad so as it sends people to the most relevant page of your website based on what they searched for on Google.

Doing this will mean you get more sales or enquiries and will also reduce your costs because the relevance of your landing page is one of the things that helps increase your AdWords Quality Score.

Related articles

• Google Quality Score Update (epiphanysolutions.co.uk)

Google has announced that over the coming weeks they will be changing the way they handle phone numbers that appear in Google AdWords text ads.

At the moment, if you choose to include your phone number in an AdWords ad, it is just another bit of text. If someone is viewing your ad on their mobile phone browser they can’t click on the number to call you directly. If you want people to be able to click your number to call you then you have to set this up using an AdWords feature called Call Extensions.

But with this latest change that Google has just announced, all phone numbers that are included in AdWords ads will now automatically be converted to be click-to-call links when viewed on a mobile phone. Of course, this means that if someone clicks on your phone number you will incur a click charge from Google, whereas previously advertisers who included phone numbers in their ads might have received some manually dialled calls without it costing them anything in click charges.

Here’s the full text of the announcement we received from Google earlier today about this:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

If you currently have a phone number in your ad text or have plans to start adding your phone number in an ad, this is an important notice that in the coming weeks, we will be launching a new enhancement to AdWords ads that will impact charges on clicks to these numbers.

To help our mobile users connect more easily with advertisers, all non-clickable phone numbers displayed in AdWords ad text will be automatically converted into a Click-to-call number.  Currently when advertisers enter a phone number directly into their ad text instead of using Call Extensions, the phone number is not clickable and will not generate a call. This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users who attempt to initiate a call to this phone number.

The new Click-to-call enhancement ensures that all phone numbers shown in AdWords ads are clickable and allows users to easily place calls from their mobile device. If your ad text includes a phone number, you will begin to receive clicks and calls on this number once the enhancement is enabled in your account. As with phone calls placed via a Call Extension, you will be charged for clicks on your phone number that result in a call.

Please note that AdWords policy does not allow for phone numbers to be inserted into ad headlines. As with all Click-to-call ads, advertisers will be charged when a user either clicks on the headline or the phone number listed in the ad. Please see below for additional information regarding this change.

Which phone number shows?

If you are currently using both Call Extensions and a phone number in your ad creative, only the newly clickable phone number in your ad creative will show. This is designed to help reduce user confusion from seeing two potentially different numbers.  If you would like your Call Extension number to display, simply delete all phone numbers from your existing ad text by following these steps. You’ll also receive an additional line of ad text displaying your phone number if the Call Extension is used.

Measuring results

You’ll be able to review how many calls you receive on the clickable phone number listed in your ad text for each campaign, ad group, keyword and ad on the ‘Campaigns’ tab in your AdWords account. Just select the ‘Click-type’ option under the ‘Segment’ drop down and view your report.  Please note that since these are not calls generated from a Call Extension, they will not be reported in the Extensions tab reports.

Recommendations for featuring a phone number

You can simply leave your phone number in your ad text and benefit from this change which will automatically make your phone numbers clickable and enable users to call you. However, to get the most value from click-to-call, we recommend that you remove your phone number from your ad creative and create a Call Extension with your phone number directly.  This has several benefits. With a manually created Call Extension your number will appear as an additional line of ad text which frees up space in your ad creative for other promotion. In addition, when you create a Call Extension, your phone number appears on a separate line in the ad, and you’re able to take advantage of other powerful enhancements such as Vanity Numbers, Call-only and Call Metrics reporting.

We are committed to providing our users with the best mobile web experience and encourage you to learn more about Call Extensions by visiting our Help Center.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Are you including phone numbers in your ads at the moment? If so, do you approve of this change on the grounds that it’ll help make life easier for mobile users? Or do you think it is simply a ploy by Google to increase the amount of money you end up spending with them?

Leave us a comment below. We’d love to hear what you think of this latest enhancement to the AdWords system.

If you want to avoid having your fingers burnt and running up a huge advertising bill on Google AdWords in a very short space of time, you need to make sure you don’t bid on keywords that are too broad or too competitive (for example – toner cartridges).

When you use Google AdWords you are taking part in what is basically an auction and, as with any auction, the more bidders there are chasing after top positions for a particular keyword the higher this will push the average cost per click that you have to pay.

That’s one reason why you need to shy away from broad keywords and focus instead on more specific niche terms that your competitors won’t necessarily have thought of using in their AdWords campaigns.

Another good reason to look for less obvious search terms to bid on is because, generally speaking, the more precise someone is when they search for something on Google the more likely it is that they are close to the point of being ready to make a purchase.

So, sticking with the toner cartridges example, someone who searches on Google for “Brother HL-1850 toner cartridge” is probably going to be a warmer potential prospect for you than someone who searches for “toner cartridges”.

By putting some thought into which keywords you bid on, you’ll find you spend less per click and also get a better quality of visitor coming to your website. It’s a win-win!

 

We had a full house for our AdWords training course at Business Training Made Simple last week, with a mix of AdWords newbies and more experienced AdWords users attending to learn how to improve their return on investment from Google AdWords.

It was great to see some familiar faces in the room, such as Alice from Coco Fashion, Jonathan from Wild Stoves, Andrew from Midas Corporate Consulting and Adele from Naked Divorce. And it was particularly nice to finally meet our client Jo Parker who has been getting great results from the AdWords campaign that we set up for her last year.

Throughout the day we covered everything from what AdWords is all about, through to how to select the right keywords, how to write better ads, what Quality Score is and why it is so important, and how to structure an AdWords account.

We also found time to cover some more advanced topics like Ad Extensions and Remarketing, and we had some fun critiquing each others websites as part of a discussion about landing page optimisation.

We’re running this course again on 10 August and there are still a few places left if you want to book a place. If you’re not sure whether you’ll find it beneficial, just check out this video testimonial from one of the people who attended last week’s course.

 

 

Do you want to get the most out of Google AdWords without it costing you an arm and a leg?

If so, you’ll need to understand:

• how to select keywords that cost pence not pounds
• what to include in your Google ads to make people click through to your site
• when to use negative keywords to avoid throwing money down the drain
• the dangers of broad matching
• the seven essential things to include on every landing page
• how to track and improve your AdWords return on investment

This training course that David Miles is presenting on 18 May will teach you all this and more, and will show you how to get  great results from your pay per click advertising.

Where: Farringdon, London
When: 18 May 2011
Time: 9.00 am to 5.00 pm (full day course includes lunch and refreshments)
Cost: £99 + VAT with early bird offer of £79 + VAT if you book quickly

Master Adwords to ensure you’re not wasting money and learn how to maximise your pay per click advertising to get the results you want.

Click Here to Book Your Place Now!

On the day:

• Review Adwords accounts to see what’s working and what’s not
• Live case studies: hear how others are maximising potential
• Finding the right keywords: our experts share their tactics
• Tracking conversions and measuring return on investment
• Setting up a campaign for maximum impact
• PLUS so much more …tips, hints, tricks and bags of advice

Delivered by industry experts, you’ll come away fully equipped to maximise your Adwords account and get the results you want from your pay per click advertising.

“Since using David my enquiries are up 300% since he did AdWords work for me and my catering business.”
- Jo Parker, www.joannaparker.co.uk

Book your place now!