Google Expert Help With PPC Campaign

byGail-UK

3.1K followers

6 years ago

I recently set up a small Google (and now BING) PPC campaign to drive traffic to my WA affiliate site.

I thoroughly admit that when I started, I followed the training here at WA but did not really know what I was doing. ("What's new?" I hear you cry!)

What happened at first was that there were a lot of clicks which emptied my bank balance pretty quickly, so I soon learned to reduce my budget and think about targeting traffic more.

I rewrote my landing page and reduced the budget so that I could get a feel for what was happening without my spending going through the roof.

Interestingly last week, I had a call from a Google Account Adviser who offered to help analyse some of my adverts to see if they could help. I also received a call from BING as well to go through the same thing.

So after checking they were genuine, (my brother-in-law's nephew works at Google), I today I have had a very helpful call with an account assistant at Google who talked me through some of the features of the CPC campaigns I was running and advised me of ways in which I could make my campaigns better.

I will try to create a training on this at some point because I did find it very useful.

I know there is training here at WA on all of this, but sometimes, it is really helpful to talk to someone on a one-to-one basis and have the ability to ask questions as you are marking changes to improve things.

So this bog is really just to let people know that I found the call very helpful. I spoke to two people in the end and was able to do the following:

1) Check on my 'Advert Quality Score" which was shown as 10/10 - apparently this is good and relates to 3 things:

1. Expected click through rate
   
2. Advert relevance
3. Landing page experience

I had not heard of this before, but it was interesting to find out.

2) Check my CTR which is apparently 5% for this keyword which the assistant seemed to think was very good, since they say that anything over 1.5% is good.

3) Add in some more adverts to each keyword - she recommended setting up at least 3 adverts for each keyword in the campaign and showed me quickly how to do this, so instead of having only 1 advert per keyword, I now have 3.

4) Add some extensions to some of the adverts - this increases the space available for the advert and hopefully the CTR. I added another specific landing page and some contact details.

5) Check and review the relevance of the keywords and see where my ads were being triggered. As a result of this, I was able to add in some negative keywords so prevent my ad being triggered, for example when people type in "free money"!

6) Link my Google AdWords account to my Google Analytics account so that I can track data about what people clicking on the ads actually do.

7) Add a conversion tracking code to my website so that I can now see the percentage of people who arrive on my landing page and who then click through to WA through one of my call-to-action buttons.

Now I still am no expert on Adwords and PPC by any means, but I can see the benefits to me of making the changes above. Obviously Google are hoping to see a benefit to them as well in terms of increased revenue too, so I'm not naive about that!

However, that said, I think that the call was very helpful and useful for someone like me - a small online business owner, who is just coming to terms with what is possible with PPC.

One of the main benefits that I got from the call, is where to get more help. You can access Google AdWords Help, via the small "?" on the top right-hand side of the screen, which will bring up a global number (mine is relevant to the UK obviously).

All in all, I feel that I have had a very productive day and that when I look on AdWords now, I have a much better feel for the whole dashboard, which I have to say, until now, has been a little like sitting in the front of a Boeing 737, staring blankly at the controls, whilst the engines push the plane to take-off speed!!

Perhaps another thing to note here is that sometimes we need to be a bit cautious and make sure we understand things properly before we jump in - or at least know where you can ask for help (apart from WA of course).

Obviously the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I will be monitoring things closely over the next few weeks and let you know if this interaction has increased my CTR or conversions.

All the best with your own campaigns.

PS. No I did not make this - I'm even less of an expert in the kitchen! :)

Have a great weekend all. It's bank holiday and half term in the UK so off to spend some quality time with my girls!

Gail