Mint Digital

The Click #007

Google’s revenue has increased by 437,115% over the last 5 years. The reason? AdWords are a great way to advertise.

What are AdWords?
AdWords are the sponsored links that display down the right hand side when you Google. The bottom of this article explains how to get started, but first a few tips:

1. Lead with need
We are just starting a website redesign and AdWords campaign for bed makers Litvinoff & Fawcett

I’ll bet my laptop that ads shown to people searching for ‘back pain’ and ‘insomnia’ will be more effective than ‘beds’, ‘mattresses’ or ‘teak finish’. Watch this space.

2. Match your headline to the search term
The easiest way to get a good response is to make the headline of the ad match the term that the user has searched for. Better still, squeeze in some geographic information.

It’s not exciting but it works, as this old campaign for Mint Digital shows. (The ad with title ‘Web Design - London’ has a significantly higher CTR - Click Through Rate.)

3. Use AdWords to discover why people want you
AdWords lets you run a number of ads and see which resonates best with your target market.

The first campaign I ever ran was for Scoles Manor holiday cottages.
As this report shows, the left ad gets better responses than the other two - 1.3% CTR compared with 1.1% CTR.

The main difference is that the line ‘Sleeps up to 20′ has been replaced by ‘2 miles Corfe Castle’. In retrospect that is clearly a better appeal - it’s more evocative and more specific.

As we are paying £2/day, I can leave it at that. If we were paying £2000/day, there is lots of scope for improvement. I’d make three new variations on the ‘2 miles Corfe Castle’ theme. I’d check them a few weeks later, see which variation was working best and then make new variations based on that. I’d also rejig the relevant page of the website to reflect the most successful advert.

4. Get started
The best way to understand AdWords is to start a campaign:
http://www.google.co.uk/adwords.

Within 5 minutes you’ll be cost-effectively advertising your business and learning about your market.

My pal Matt Weston has £20 AdWords vouchers to give away - no strings attached! Send him an email (matt@businessbricks.co.uk) and start today.