7 Strategies for Small Business Google Adwords Campaigns
If you are a mid to large-sized company that has a healthy budget for your Google Adwords account, you have a lot of freedom within your campaign strategy. You can bid aggressively for high-converting keywords and advertise far and wide.
But what happens when you have an Adwords account for a small mom and pop shop that has a very limited budget? Shouldn’t you get just as much for your advertising dollar as the big guys? The answer is yes, but you’ll need to use a different strategy in order to achieve this.
Imagine that you—a small bakery called Grand-Ma-Ma’s Goodies—have only $5 a day to spend, and you take orders from people within a ten mile radius. And you’re closed on Tuesdays.
Here are 7 things to consider for Grand-Ma-Ma’s Adwords campaign:
1. Use Only Longtail Keywords – Yes, I mean only. ‘Bakery’ and ‘pies’ are great keywords, but they’ll eat up the $5 pretty quickly.
However, if Grand-Ma-Ma is famous for her Cream Cheese Pie (It’s a Philly thing), then use the longtail term “cream cheese pies,” which comes at a cheaper cost per click and is more likely to result in a conversion.
Sure, the term “cream cheese pies” will rarely be searched compared to ‘pies,’ but if you’re only spending $5 a day, and you have enough longtail keywords—peach cobbler pies, banana cream pies, etc—you’ll probably fill your budget out pretty well while attracting highly targeted customers in the process.
2. Get Granular – Segment ad groups down to the finest detail. Cost per click is a serious concern with a small budget campaign. How do you keep costs under control and gain quality clicks? The best way to do this by maximizing your quality score.
If Grand-Ma-Ma sells 10 different kinds of cookies, create 10 different adgroups for cookies. Put the scrapple-related cookies in a scrapple cookie adgroup. Write a scrapple cookie ad and send Web visitors to a scrapple cookie landing page. If there is no page dedicated to scrapple cookies, send it to a page that is the best match, or at least has some scrapple cookie text on it. Better still, create a landing page for scrapple cookies.
This will increase the quality score and allow ads to achieve higher ranks with lower bids since ad rank is based on the bid and the quality score.
3. Match Types and Use of Negative Keywords – With a small campaign, broad match shouldn’t even be considered. If utilized correctly, and with the appropriate negatives, broad match can be used for larger clients, but with a client the size of Grand-Ma-Ma’s, rather focus on other matching options—with few exceptions.
Exact match is a no-brainer, and phrase match can be utilized as well. However, when using phrase match, negatives keywords are essential. You don’t want someone clicking on your ad if they’re searching for ‘free chocolate cheese steak cake.’ Grand-Ma-Ma sells chocolate cheese steak cake, but it sure ain’t free.
4. Choose Ad Running Times Carefully – Grand-Ma-Ma receives orders via her Web site, which forwards them directly to her BlueBerry. She immediately calls the customer to confirm—and hopefully upsell. So she doesn’t want orders coming in at 3am from drunks with a craving for scrapple cookies!
Adjusting running times for ads ensures Grand-Ma-Ma’s ads run when she’s available to respond. Potential late-night customers will be lost, but if the conversion rate is higher during operating hours, then that’s the time to maximize her small budget. So run Grand-Ma-Ma’s ads during store hours only and turn them off on Tuesdays. That’s her day to spend at Rocky’s Boxing Gym.
5. Tighten Your Geographic Parameters – Grand-Ma-Ma doesn’t serve anyone farther than ten miles away, so the radius setting should be ten miles.
Small-budget companies that do accept clients from across the country should not be tempted to run a campaign nationwide at first. If you live in Philadelphia and you convert more clients with face-to-face meetings, spend your budget in areas where you can have face-to-face meetings. Only when you have maximized in that high-converting area should you expand your location to include other areas.
6. Test the Positions of Your Ads – Google allows you to select ad positions. While this isn’t an exact science, it’s worth playing with.
If Grand-Ma-Ma’s new Phillies doughnuts catch on when the Phillies win the World Series (oh wait, they did) and every bakery in America starts making them, the price for this keyword will rise like yeast. Grand-Ma-Ma’s budget will no longer easily accommodate the keyword ‘Phillies doughnut’. But by setting a position preference combined with a low bid, her Phillies doughnut ad will still show up on page one—just less frequently. Keep in mind that even if you have a position preference, you may not ever show if the bid is too low.
7. Bid According to Budget and Data – Get out your calculator, crunch some numbers, and adjust your bids according to positions, ROI, and performance.
You may find a $5.01 bid for ‘glazed soft pretzels’ would work since the conversion rate was 50% and Grand-Ma-Ma made an average of $20 profit per order, but you can’t spend your entire budget on one term and ignore the others. Scrapple cookies, chocolate, and Phillies doughnuts need their fair share of impressions, too. They all convert well and generate profits, and Grand-Ma-Ma shouldn’t depend on one product for her business.
As with most Internet marketing efforts, none of this is set in stone—it should be tested. These are suggestions. If you were to utilize all of them from the start, you could limit traffic too much. Alter them until you maximize your budget and your ROI. If you don’t have enough longtails, you may have to experiment with broader terms, like ‘bakery.’ If you don’t get enough traffic from phrase match and exact match, you may have to test broad match (with negatives).
The goal is to get as much quality traffic as you can with a limited budget and prove that the campaign works. Then, getting Grand-Ma-Ma to increase her small business search engine marketing budget will be as easy as winning the World Series. For the Phillies, at least.
But what happens when you have an Adwords account for a small mom and pop shop that has a very limited budget? Shouldn’t you get just as much for your advertising dollar as the big guys? The answer is yes, but you’ll need to use a different strategy in order to achieve this.
Imagine that you—a small bakery called Grand-Ma-Ma’s Goodies—have only $5 a day to spend, and you take orders from people within a ten mile radius. And you’re closed on Tuesdays.
Here are 7 things to consider for Grand-Ma-Ma’s Adwords campaign:
1. Use Only Longtail Keywords – Yes, I mean only. ‘Bakery’ and ‘pies’ are great keywords, but they’ll eat up the $5 pretty quickly.
However, if Grand-Ma-Ma is famous for her Cream Cheese Pie (It’s a Philly thing), then use the longtail term “cream cheese pies,” which comes at a cheaper cost per click and is more likely to result in a conversion.
Sure, the term “cream cheese pies” will rarely be searched compared to ‘pies,’ but if you’re only spending $5 a day, and you have enough longtail keywords—peach cobbler pies, banana cream pies, etc—you’ll probably fill your budget out pretty well while attracting highly targeted customers in the process.
2. Get Granular – Segment ad groups down to the finest detail. Cost per click is a serious concern with a small budget campaign. How do you keep costs under control and gain quality clicks? The best way to do this by maximizing your quality score.
If Grand-Ma-Ma sells 10 different kinds of cookies, create 10 different adgroups for cookies. Put the scrapple-related cookies in a scrapple cookie adgroup. Write a scrapple cookie ad and send Web visitors to a scrapple cookie landing page. If there is no page dedicated to scrapple cookies, send it to a page that is the best match, or at least has some scrapple cookie text on it. Better still, create a landing page for scrapple cookies.
This will increase the quality score and allow ads to achieve higher ranks with lower bids since ad rank is based on the bid and the quality score.
3. Match Types and Use of Negative Keywords – With a small campaign, broad match shouldn’t even be considered. If utilized correctly, and with the appropriate negatives, broad match can be used for larger clients, but with a client the size of Grand-Ma-Ma’s, rather focus on other matching options—with few exceptions.
Exact match is a no-brainer, and phrase match can be utilized as well. However, when using phrase match, negatives keywords are essential. You don’t want someone clicking on your ad if they’re searching for ‘free chocolate cheese steak cake.’ Grand-Ma-Ma sells chocolate cheese steak cake, but it sure ain’t free.
4. Choose Ad Running Times Carefully – Grand-Ma-Ma receives orders via her Web site, which forwards them directly to her BlueBerry. She immediately calls the customer to confirm—and hopefully upsell. So she doesn’t want orders coming in at 3am from drunks with a craving for scrapple cookies!
Adjusting running times for ads ensures Grand-Ma-Ma’s ads run when she’s available to respond. Potential late-night customers will be lost, but if the conversion rate is higher during operating hours, then that’s the time to maximize her small budget. So run Grand-Ma-Ma’s ads during store hours only and turn them off on Tuesdays. That’s her day to spend at Rocky’s Boxing Gym.
5. Tighten Your Geographic Parameters – Grand-Ma-Ma doesn’t serve anyone farther than ten miles away, so the radius setting should be ten miles.
Small-budget companies that do accept clients from across the country should not be tempted to run a campaign nationwide at first. If you live in Philadelphia and you convert more clients with face-to-face meetings, spend your budget in areas where you can have face-to-face meetings. Only when you have maximized in that high-converting area should you expand your location to include other areas.
6. Test the Positions of Your Ads – Google allows you to select ad positions. While this isn’t an exact science, it’s worth playing with.
If Grand-Ma-Ma’s new Phillies doughnuts catch on when the Phillies win the World Series (oh wait, they did) and every bakery in America starts making them, the price for this keyword will rise like yeast. Grand-Ma-Ma’s budget will no longer easily accommodate the keyword ‘Phillies doughnut’. But by setting a position preference combined with a low bid, her Phillies doughnut ad will still show up on page one—just less frequently. Keep in mind that even if you have a position preference, you may not ever show if the bid is too low.
7. Bid According to Budget and Data – Get out your calculator, crunch some numbers, and adjust your bids according to positions, ROI, and performance.
You may find a $5.01 bid for ‘glazed soft pretzels’ would work since the conversion rate was 50% and Grand-Ma-Ma made an average of $20 profit per order, but you can’t spend your entire budget on one term and ignore the others. Scrapple cookies, chocolate, and Phillies doughnuts need their fair share of impressions, too. They all convert well and generate profits, and Grand-Ma-Ma shouldn’t depend on one product for her business.
As with most Internet marketing efforts, none of this is set in stone—it should be tested. These are suggestions. If you were to utilize all of them from the start, you could limit traffic too much. Alter them until you maximize your budget and your ROI. If you don’t have enough longtails, you may have to experiment with broader terms, like ‘bakery.’ If you don’t get enough traffic from phrase match and exact match, you may have to test broad match (with negatives).
The goal is to get as much quality traffic as you can with a limited budget and prove that the campaign works. Then, getting Grand-Ma-Ma to increase her small business search engine marketing budget will be as easy as winning the World Series. For the Phillies, at least.
Labels: google ads, google adwords, google adwords settings, google sponsored links, keyword research, keywords, negative keywords, pay per click, ppc, ppc ads, roi, search engine marketing, sem
posted by Mark at
10:55 AM
1 Comments:
Nice post. i learned many more about internet marketing strategies with this post. thanks for posting.
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