“UnPublished Secret #12” – Step One To AdWords Success

Better than newspaper, direct mail or yellow page advertising, Google AdWords is the direct marketing engine for our generation. It is one of the fastest and best ways to create web traffic and increase your online business presence. AdWords rewards those who are on top of their game and penalizes everyone else. It's easy to outperform the amateurs -- if you know the secrets -- and if you know what you’re doing!

When I help other small business owners and home business entrepreneurs, I am constantly amazed with the haphazardness by which they initially set-up their Google AdWords Campaigns. Done wrong and AdWords will quickly eat up your advertising budget. And believe me, there are thousands of small business owners losing money everyday on AdWords.

Since I've seen so many AdWords Campaigns set-up incorrectly, I want share another “UnPublished Secret”.

Budget – When most people establish their AdWords budget, they typically think about what they have available to spend or how much their willing to lose. The trick to establishing your budget is to think in a totally different way. I typically use $2,000 - $3,000 per campaign per day and usually budget $20,000 - $50,000 per day in total. This might seem like ridiculous amount of money for a small business owner like me to risk. Yet I do this, not because I have a spare $50k, but rather because I truly believe that my business is designed to help others. How else could I reach as many people as I do? By using the laws of attraction, I am positioning myself for the loads of customers that I plan to bring into my website. This “Be-Do-Have” approach nets me tons of daily traffic, and rarely, do I ever, even come close to my budget. Google likes the fact that I’m putting all my chips into the game and rewards me generously. I simply monitor my campaigns, and if I see that I am attracting more business than I can handle, I simply pause my AdWords until later. I find that there’s about a 30% lag from what Google says I’ve spent at that current time, until it’s all tallied at the end of the day. For example, if Google tells me that I’ve spent $100 on AdWords up until a certain point in the day, and I pause a campaign, I would expect to spend approximately $130 in total, when everything is said and done. Still, it’s the mindset of an entrepreneur that Google is looking for. If you are playing it safe with $50 or $100 budgets, I suggest that you play to win with $1,000 - $5,000 daily budgets and your results will demonstrate your commitment.

Delivery Method – There are two possible selections that Google gives you. The default selection is “Standard: Show ads evenly over time”. Again, I believe this default selection is playing the game safe. By taking your AdWords campaign to the next level and selecting “Accelerated: Show ads as quickly as possible”, you are now stepping up the plate. Fail fast and you will quickly learn what works. Then, make modifications to your campaigns and move onwards to success more rapidly.

Position Preference – To the surprise of many people, research tells us that the best position in Google AdWords is not #1. Eye studies confirm that the best positions to showcase your ads are really #4 through #6. If your ads are still languishing in positions beyond #10 or #12, I suggest that you change your ad, increase your bid or drop your campaign. Most people don’t go beyond the first page and you’re just kidding yourself to think that a lot people will find you buried deep in the bowels of Google.

Ad Serving – Google gives us two options again. While the default option, “Optimize: Show better-performing ads more often” may sound good, it does not follow important direct marketing principles or enable us to develop a statistically valid split-test. By selecting “Rotate: Show ads more evenly”, you can accurately and effectively split-test two ads without skewing your results. After each ad has been clicked at least 30 times, you’ll have a statistically valid “winner” at a 95% confidence level. Drop the losing ad and keep trying to beat your control ad. This is the essence of direct marketing and a key to improving your AdWords results.

The principles outlined here provide you with a solid foundation to continuously bring "cash-in-hand prospects" to the front door of your website. By simply using Google AdWords and my other "tricks of the trade", you can build effective pay-per-click advertising campaigns for your business today. Here’s to your immediate success!

“UnPublished Secret #32” – One Keyword Can Run Your Business

After reading several eBooks on AdWords, listening to the “Google AdWords Professionals”, and hiring ad agencies to run my AdWords account, I found these “experts” were using a predictable and flawed approach to AdWords Campaign set-up. Many will advise you to create a list of hundreds or thousands of keywords, group them together by likeness into several AdGroups, and place them under a handful of major Campaign categories. One company that I hired created over 18,000 keywords for me and achieved terrible results. I believe this traditional approach to setting up AdWords Campaigns is laborious, wasteful, and unfocused. With my proven methodologies, you can reduce your costs, increase your click-through rates, and drive more traffic to your website while spending less time managing your AdWords Campaigns. In fact, I am so confident with my approach, that even today, I am able to get 200-300 clicks per day and run one of my businesses from a single keyword! (It doesn’t get much better than that).

So how do I do it? Here’s how.

Keyword Selection – If you haven’t done so already, I suggest that you develop a starting list of 25-50 keywords for your business. Use Google Keyword Tool and Google Suggest (found under the Google Labs section) to compare popularity and relevancy. These keywords should be included in your current or future website and define the value proposition of your business in the eyes of your customer. Put yourself in the customers’ shoes when developing this list and ask yourself, “What would I type into a search engine if I wanted to buy something from my company?” Place your keywords into the Google search engine and see if you find your competitors. If you do, then you’re on the right path. Review your list and go to the root of a word whenever possible. For instance, if you sell “china dolls”, I would test the keywords, “doll” and “dolls”. Though this may seem too broad and you may be concerned about a high expense, you can just place “china doll” or “china dolls” in the headline and body text of your Google Ad to ward off anyone looking for a “Barbie”.

Ad Group Set-Up – This is one of the most critical “UnPublished Secrets” about AdWords. When setting up your Campaigns, only use one keyword under one Ad Group per each Campaign. Let me repeat – one Keyword per one Ad Group per one Campaign. Place that one keyword as keyword = broad match, [keyword] = exact match, and "keyword" = phrase match. This gives each Campaign an extremely high relevancy factor in the eyes of Google and does not dilute your Campaigns with multiple keywords.

Finally, I recommend that you start by testing up to 30 keywords across 30 Campaigns. Place your bids high and lower or raise the cost of each Campaign by $.05 each day until you’ve optimized each keyword cost. Statistically speaking, once you reach 30 clicks on a particular Campaign, you can determine, with a 95% confidence level, whether or not to replace a keyword. Swap out any underperforming keywords that are not converting well and those whose cost per conversion is too high to generate any profits.

Using these “UnPublished Secrets”, you can focus on a handful of keywords and eventually test your way to success. In my business, I tested over 100 keywords before I realized that 6-7 keywords were converting the best. Even better, I found a single keyword bringing in 75% of my business. Talk about a time saver. Now, that my friends, is another holy grail for AdWords advertisers.

"UnPublished Secret #24" - Beating AdWords With Junk Mail Copy

As you probably know, one of the keys to being successful with Google AdWords is “relevancy”. But I find that many small business owners are only trying to outbid others while writing “cute” ads with the hopes that someone will click on their link. When surfing past my various competitors, I am constantly amazed with the poor copy writing skills and the money they are wasting with AdWords. One of my most important tricks to being so successful with AdWords is that I write my ads like the junk mail I receive every day.

Direct marketing copywriting is much more different than brand copywriting or general business advertising. In direct marketing, you have things like “calls to action” to persuade the reader to take some sort of action step (i.e. click on your AdWords ad). Most ads that I review on AdWords are either missing a call to action or are written in the traditional brand advertising method. What do I mean by this? While using the word “you” and “your” makes sense in most advertising, the user experience while surfing the internet is totally different than any other media. I believe this experience is so personal and interactive that the computer actually becomes an extension of the individual.

When people read content on websites, I am convinced that the individual and computer join together. Thus, when information is presented in a “you” or “your” fashion, it is not as well recognized with the user’s subconscious mind as “I” and “me”. When considering whether or not to respond to an AdWords ad, a person will better relate if the headline and body copy contain these aforementioned personalized words "I" or "Me". Why? Because the ad is talking to them and not someone else (i.e. "you" or "your").

In direct mail or junk mail copywriting, it’s called the response devise portion of the mailing. The headline and copy are written in the first person so the reader relates to the information and says “yes” to the offer. A call to action is important as well as the key benefit which best relates to your customers. This key benefit should also include your keyword and thus help satisfy Google’s desire for relevancy.

So, what’s the best way to learn how to write better AdWords ads? Read your junk mail. Especially review the portion which you fill-out, tear-off, and send back to the company. This is called the reply devise. The headline and body copy will most likely include things like “Yes! Sign Me Up” or “Send Me More Information”. As you read more and more junk mail, you’ll get good ideas and start to write better AdWords ads. And as you continue to write better ads and test which ones pull better, you can eventually lower your cost per click because your quality score will improved. And this, my friends, is the holy grail for AdWords advertisers.