Now I am sure most of you are familiar with Google Adwords and some of you might even being using it to draw in traffic to your site and hopefully get some leads from it. For those of you who have already go started, GREAT! You have already taken a huge proactive step to increasing your exposure to potential buyers. For those of you haven’t used Adwords or don’t really understand the big picture please read the next paragraph (if you are familiar with it then skip below).
Google Adwords is an advertising platform in which you create an ad, bid on specific keywords that you designate and then every time someone clicks on your ad, Google charges you a certain amount (no more than your max bid). Now that is Google Adwords explained in the most simple way possible. It is a lot more complex and takes a lot attention to detail and analysis to create an efficient campaign that does not waste your money and still produces results.
(Here is example of an ad being displayed when some searches for “artificial turf san diego”)
The 3 Biggest Mistakes Dealers Make When Using Google Adwords:
Mistake #1
Running Content Ads: This is by far one of the most costly and ineffective results of using Adwords. What happens is when you sign up for an account and input your 50-100 keywords you thought up and created your ad or two is Google automatically starts dispersing your ad on the content networks. (A content network is when your ad is placed on a random website that might be relevant to your ad or website.) This can be detrimental to your ad budget. The reason being is because most clicks from content networks are click fraud and are only clicked to drive revenue to that particular site. That means people who don’t care about your service or ad are costing you money. The worst part is you ad appears on hundreds of thousands of sites and lots of people are fraudently clicking your ads.
I have spoken to many turf dealers that are using Adwords and majority of their budget is spent on content ads and they are not producing any leads. It is just flat out costing you money.
Solution:
Login to your Adwords account, click on your campaign settings and disable content networks. This will save you tons of money and I recommend leaving it off until you get a better understanding of how to use content networks or if you hire a professional.
Mistake #2
Not using negative keywords. Negative keywords are keywords that you put in ad that you do not want to show up. For example if you are bidding on the keyword “putting green” that will produce a lot of impressions if you select a broad match. It also means that people might be typing in “putting green sod” or “sod for putting greens” and your ad will show up and they will click on only to find out that you sell artificial putting greens and not sod for real grass putting greens. Not only is this frustrating to the visitor but it also cost you money and is a complete waste. By using negative keywords in your ad campaigns this problem will be eliminated.
Solution:
Researching negative keywords can be difficult and I recommend doing some research before using them. Here are some good links to get you started:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/senews/004980.html
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=63235
Mistake #3: The Biggest One
Not sending your visitors to an optimize landing page that is user friendly and is optimized for conversions. I know several turf dealers that are using Adwords, but are just wasting their money because the keywords they are bidding on are not relevant to the ad and website they send visitors to. Or even worst, they send visitors to a site that does not visibly display your phone number and a contact form on every page.
(Here is an example of a really poor site that a client of ours was sending visitors to before he signed up with us)
As you can see there is no contact info and is not very user friendly for visitors to guide through your site. Our client had a 0.5% conversion rate with this site (That is horrible).
Solution:
Put your phone number on every page in the top right so it is visible (try to make it big). From there add a small form on every page or at least your contact page because forms are easier to fill out rather than copy and pasting an email and then having your visitors not know what to put in the email. With a form asking for their contact info only it is very easy for a visitor to submit and just wait for you to contact them.
Another solution would be to make a landing page. A single page website that a visitor, after clicking you ad, lands on and finds all the information they will need and then have a big form and your phone number clearly displayed. This has proven to be extremely effective for many turf dealers. It is also a lot easier than redoing your whole website.
This is a landing page we creating for the client I mentioned above. (His conversion rate is now above 4.0%, that is an 800% increase)
Conclusion
Adwords is a wonderful resource only if used properly and is optimized to produce you results. I highly recommend doing your research before investing in Adwords or hire someone else to do it for you. However, if you know what you are doing then I hope this post has been useful for you and will save you some advertising money.
Please leave a comment telling everyone about your Adwords experience and if you have maybe one of these mistakes.
