Successful Google Adwords Campaign: The Must-Have Features

Google AdWords is a terrifying platform. Misuse it, and you’d be better off throwing money in the bin and yelling “work, Google, work!”
Of course, you don’t want that. You want your ads served to qualified leads that convert, that drive revenue to your business.
A winning AdWords campaign requires planning, and in this article, we’ll show you the necessary features of a successful campaign.

Know Your Targets and Goals

This might seem like Marketing 101, but a great Google AdWords campaign demands knowing your targets and your goals. Who is your audience, and what do you want them to do?
Building a target audience starts with a customer profile. You need to know their likes and dislikes, what they are searching for, and how they need help. This will help you build a strong pool of keywords related to your business.
Think “user intent.” What does your ideal customer look like and look for when soliciting your business?
Whilst developing a keyword pool, pick from the full spectrum—broad to focused. Get exact matches, phrase matches, and broad matches in your pool.
Also, plan for what you want your audience to do. Once they click on your ad, what action should they take?
The highest value actions are conversions, like completing a form or making a purchase. Unlike trying to figure out if your visitors have “learned” about your business, these actions are easily measured.
Having clear measurements for your goals helps you understand your costs.

Understand Your Costs

Keywords get a cost-per-click value. And whilst you can set a daily budget hoping to get enough clicks for your money, you want to generate revenue and not just clicks.
Start by assessing the cost per lead. Once a user clicks on your page and makes a purchase, how much revenue do they generate? Or if they fill out a form, what is the average revenue you’ll see from their full conversion?
Then assess how many leads it takes to generate a single sale. A single click might cost a few cents, but if it takes 10 clicks to see a qualified lead, and 10 leads to realising a sale, that cost starts to stack up.
This will also help you target the best keywords. Neither the most nor the least expensive keywords are best. The right keywords convert, plain and simple.
You can track costs from the start, but these will adjust as you test and hone your campaign over time.

Test and Tweak Your AdWords Campaign

Whilst the legwork to get the campaign running matters, testing is a crucial part of AdWords campaign management. Testing should account for your whole funnel, from the first click to sale completion.
One great way to test is to run low daily-budget campaigns to see which keywords perform best. You can also run A/B tests to compare one campaign strategy to another.
Please don’t sit back and hope you got it right. Keep an eye on every stage and tweak your campaigns—run more than one at a time—often.

Get Clicked

Clicks are great. Sales are even better. Use these strategies to plan and monitor your AdWords campaign, and you’ll see substantial growth and success in time.
And in truth, knowing your targets, goals, and costs will help you evaluate all of your marketing and sales processes beyond AdWords, too.
For more information on AdWords campaign strategies, or improving other aspects of your marketing, contact us here.