Ways to plan a campaign that you may not have thought about and hopefully introduce you a new way of thinking about AdWords and its relationship with your business.

1. Planning an effective AdWords Strategy
Diving into 2015 with more of the same with your Google AdWords campaigns? Time to
set 30 minutes aside to think strategy and take a step back from the granular metrics
and goals you have and think big picture.
In this post we will discuss ways to plan a campaign that you may not have thought
about and hopefully introduce you a new way of thinking about AdWords and its
relationship with your business. If you are a business owner that treats Google
AdWords as a directory listing you just pay for (ala yellow pages), then hopefully
this post will get you motivated to set specific outcomes from your AdWords
campaigns, and even better, do it without spending an additional cent more on
AdWords budget.
Below are some points to help you get on the track to planning an effective AdWords
Advertising Strategy.
Define who you are going to advertise to, your target
market
Create a clear picture of the person who is going to end up on your web assets as a
result of your advertising. Ask yourselves questions like, what they do, how much they
earn, what are their web habits and what steps they would have to undertake before
making a favourable decision while on your website. Don’t forget to think about what
devices they will be using, are they on mobiles, tablets or desktops? And at what time of
the day?
One method we introduced to our corporate finance client was to send a quick survey a
few weeks after every enquiry which collected basic details on how they made a
decision to enquire, along with general customer feedback; the data we gained out of
this survey was essential in the next stage of expanding the campaign.
While you may not need to go to these extents, a few questions on the phone with your
existing clients or enquiries can teach you a lot about your customer and website which
you may not have realised.
If your company has multiple sectors or a really generic reach, like retail, try splitting out
the segments into A, B, C, level enquirers for each vertical or product group in your
business.

2. Work out where AdWords fits into your customers
buying cycle
A large majority of AdWords advertisers focus on the direct response aspect of Google
AdWords, which makes sense, target people when they are looking for you. This is an
essential part of your campaign, however, also your competitors campaigns, which is
why your CPC’s will be undoubtedly exorbitant within these types of campaigns. This
direct response part of your campaign undoubtedly will have an acceptable conversion
rate and cost, but it will have a hard ceiling to it, a finite potential where you will
inevitably hit a point where you cannot spend any more budget without driving your cost
per conversions through the roof.
Targeting potential customers outside this ‘direct response’ channel is easy in AdWords
with display advertising, YouTube advertising and remarketing. These channels are
great for getting brand exposure and grabbing impulse shoppers. By being clever with
how you target them, you can make a good cost per conversion while increasing the
amount of people searching your most valuable marketing asset – your brand name.

3. One of our managed superannuation clients was having a really hard time competing in
top positions for direct response terms in search advertising with $40.00 cost per clicks.
However they could drive traffic to his site for $0.50 per click via display advertising.
With a good understanding of his clients online habits the cost per conversion on that
display campaign was less than just 1 click from search advertising. This success was
due to having a good strategy for his AdWords campaign, knowledge of his target
customer and, as we will learn next, a compelling message.
Craft your unique selling proposition and create
consistent messaging
Now you understand your target customers and where you are going to target them,
start working on your messaging. What message do you believe will make your
customers not only want to click your ads, but also decide to convert? This message
should be consistent throughout your websites and ads and different enough from your
competitors to really stand out.
Creating good clear messaging is an often overlooked part of creating an
effective AdWords strategy, and I would recommend doing this before you even look
at keywords. Knowing what your offer / message / unique selling proposition will be
before you even start building your campaign will ensure better results overall.
Often you will find that the perfect message will differ depending on the target person,
stage within the buying cycle or product and vertical. Don’t just create one message but
multiple, which will be useful when moving to testing and optimising down the track or to
cover different seasons, which is very important for ecommerce campaigns.
If your message includes an offer of some type consider how you are going to
effectively convey how great the offer it and be clear as to how it will be of benefit to the
potential advertiser.
Our home building client ended up with multiple messaging that fit into different
demographics and buying stages of their potential clients. There was an e-book offered
to first home builders which would capture email lists, this of course was a young
demographic and their browsing habits would show them to be interested in land sales
of a particular value and area. For their older demographic the campaign was built

4. around getting a quote from a quality company with a focus on knock-down rebuilds,
this was targeting people who had shown an interest in renovations.
Get creative with your web assets
Look over your strategy so far and start deciding upon the design of your landing pages,
banner ads and email templates. So far you have come up with a clear picture of who
you are advertising to, when you are advertising to them, and what you are going to say
to them. Now it is time to start thinking about getting creative with your web assets.
Think about what imaging your potential clients will respond to best, along with how you
can utilise design to clearly convey your message. Having a clear layout that your
potential customers will respond to is also important, small details like phone number
placements and form design (and fields) can play a big part in your overall strategy.
Think about if you want to add your leads to an email list or auto-responder or if you
want to add social features to your assets, for example, sharing an offer they just took
up to their Facebook friends. Also plan what you potential customers will experience
after they have made an enquiry / purchase.
Pull it all together
Now that you have who you advertise to, when and where, what you are going to say
and what they are going to experience it is time to pull it together into a logical
campaign structure.
Perform your keywords and audience research and match these to the structures you
have planned, there is a reason I have put this as one of the last points and that is
that,too often people who are planning AdWords for their business start at the
keyword research stage, this often dilutes their ability to create something great.
If you have a business that is currently running, there is already a demand for your
goods, keyword research tools, whether it is Google’s or other third party tools, may not
tell you much, and the information you get from them is often inaccurate. If you have
information that a keyword will work well and the keyword tools tell you there is no
volume, keep it in. The data you collected from point 1 is real data and better than the
keyword tools.
Set aside budgets for each vertical and split out how much you are going to spend on
direct response vs branding and display. Work out what you can effectively spend per

5. conversion and conversion type for each vertical within your business. These will
become your initial targets for success.
Lastly, check out your competitors and fine tune
Too often business owners remain in a state of paralysis with their AdWords campaigns
because they are spending way too much time looking at their competitors. You do not
want to be a follower with AdWords, you want to favourably represent your own
fantastic business and forget what everyone else is doing. This is the key to
becoming a market leader through Google AdWords.
That being said competitor research should be performed, but do it as a last final check
before handing your strategy over to be built. Check them out and make any fine
adjustments your campaign needs to stand out.
Start your AdWords build, and good luck!
Now that you have fully prepared your campaign get started on your build, or send it to
your SEM team to start working on it. The great thing about creating a strategy is you
will have a good understanding of what is going on along with pre-defined goals for
yourself or others to work towards.
Hopefully the above has helped you understand how to put together and effective
AdWords strategy and gets you on the way to being better, more creative and ultimately
growing your business through the power of AdWords.
Have you got any great ideas for putting together an AdWords strategy? Or do you have
any questions? Let us know in the comments below!