So, you’ve been running a Pay-Per-Click marketing campaign on Google Adwords for some time now. The CPC cost tends to fluctuate, competition is on the rise, and you’re wondering how to squeeze the most bang for the buck from your Adwords campaign. Typically I advise advertisers with novice experience against a DIY method. Unless you’ve had seasoned experience with Adwords chances are Google will squeeze out more money out of you than initially planned. 

Getting Started with Your Adwords Campaign

Structure in an Adwords campaign serves of utmost importance. Think of it like building a house. It’s sequential and a multi-step process. When it comes to getting your Adwords campaign off the ground, here’s a few simple steps to follow.

• Sign up for a Gmail account or use an existing one if you’d like by visiting the Google Adwords starting page
• Follow the step-by-step instructions on setting up a new Adwords account
• Double-check timezone settings before confirming. You won’t be able to change these later and will reflect upon the way you track performance inside the account
• Configure billing profile and payment method. Have to feed Google somehow for those clicks your ads will accumulate

Chances are if you’ve moved past the account creation process then things are going in the right direction. Next, let’s get to working on the campaign. Consider the above as a foundation for a home that you’re building. Now that you’ve got a foundation the next step in the process is to create a campaign, adgroups, and perform keyword research around the specific products or services being offered.

Theming the Campaign

As you’re building up the campaign it’s important to develop a theme. The adgroups created within your campaign serve as individual subsidiaries. For example,  you own a bicycle shop that sells a variety of bikes. Bikes are broken into various categories based on their usage. There’s “road bikes”, “mountain bikes”, “racing bikes”, etc. Considering building out individual adgroups based on the categories of products or services being advertised. Taking such approach helps Google and potential customers find the right information when searching and essentially a better chance for a conversion.

Identifying Profitable Keyword Terms

I would recommend running a brand-new Adwords campaign for two to four weeks before diving in deep into specific data. In most instances it can take up to three months before a new campaign properly acclimates to Google. At which point not only it will experience an improvement in traffic quality but also in the individual CPC costs and overall performance. Identifying profitable keyword terms from an Adwords PPC campaign can be accomplished with the help of Google Analytics. Ensure a native account exists that’s associated with the same Gmail account used for the PPC campaign.

• Sign in to the Google Analytics account using the same Gmail account. If this is your first time using GA you’ll need to create a new profile for the website domain and follow the steps for installation of the necessary javascript code for tracking purposes. Seek help from a website develop if this presents a technical challenge
• Navigation to the “Conversions” section in the left-panel of GA and then select “Overview”. Check for a previously setup goal. Here’s a quick video on Google Analytics Goals and another one on how to set them up
• Browse over to the “Admin” section in the upper right-hand corner of window. Ensure you’ve selected the proper website profile first and then click on “Adwords Linking” in the “Account” column
• Configure the one or more profiles using the drop-down menu option

The intent behind the exercise above is to grant GA access to the Adwords campaign. By doing so keyword performance data will be channeled inside the designated Analytics account. In conjunction with a goal funnel, a direct correlation can be established between goal completions and specific keyword terms from an Adwords advertising campaign. Google Analytics provides the ability to mine most profitable keyword terms which are generating the highest goals completions. Any intelligent marketer using Adwords for advertising should be entitled to mining keyword data and have the ability to make smarter campaign decisions.