RightSpot Media | Digital Performance Marketing

Setting up your AdWords campaign for improved ROI

Posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 12:53 AM by Jebadiah Roberts  |  Comments (0)

When setting up your first AdWords campaign, you’ll more than likely be overwhelmed with the countless options that Google offers. Before you even see any results or have any data to analyze, you’re given the opportunity to customize such factors as:

• Delivery method—pacing your ads throughout the day or burning through your daily budget as quickly as possible
• Keyword bidding—the amount you’re willing to pay for ad placement per keyword
• Ad scheduling—determining when during the day or week you want your ads to show
• Position preference—designating a position range for each of your keywords
• Ad serving—deciding whether you want your ads to rotate evenly or be automatically optimized
• Networks—showing ads on Google’s search pages, partner pages or content network
• Locations—choosing geographic targets ranging from countries and territories down to precise coordinates

Now if all that complexity doesn’t scare you off, you may notice that none of it is necessary. In its infinite wisdom, Google offers an autopilot mode that lets you skip the customizable factors mentioned above. But while you may be tempted to stick with AdWords’ default settings, assuming Google knows more than you about how your ads could best be delivered, you’d be passing up some serious opportunities to continuously maximize your long-term return on investment.

So to avoid autopilot stagnation and give your search marketing wiggle room for improvement, follow these tips when setting up your AdWords campaigns.

Deliver your ads according to your reach

If you’re targeting or selling to a global market, you’ll want to make sure your ad appearances aren’t limited by time zones. So “standard” delivery, which spaces your ads evenly over the course of each day, is your best bet.

But if you’re staying local, you’ll want to round up conversions at whatever time your target market is most click happy, meaning “accelerated” delivery is the way to go. Keep in mind, however, that once your daily budget has been eaten up, your ads won’t show.

That said, once you’ve developed a funnel that guarantees returns on every click (i.e., the average value of your conversions outweighs their average cost), there’s no sense in limiting your daily budget. After all, why turn down guaranteed profits?

Avoid automatically optimizing your ad rotation

This one’s simple: by choosing “Optimize” in the Ad Serving section, you give Google the authority to give preference to the ads that it designates as your top performers. It seems like a solid plan, until you realize that a few initial fluke successes can snowball into a suboptimal ad ruling the heap without ever having been put to the test.

Instead, make sure your ad placement is set to “Rotate” so that all of your ads appear in equal measure. Only then will you gather sufficient data to determine the real winners.

Use bidding, not position preference, to choose ad positions

Everyone wants their ads to show in the top spot. Depending on your category, that might not be an option, but Google lets you enable position preferences that guarantee your ad will be shown only if it fits within your preferred range. Your quality score, as well as your keyword bids, will determine when and whether this happens.

But because AdWords is essentially a game of money in vs. money out (making sure your investments are always exceeded by the value of your conversions), it’s best to monitor and designate ad positions according to customized bidding instead of setting parameters from a placement frame of mind. Both options offer the same control, but in the interest of minimizing complexity, it’s best to focus on the money you’re spending and what you’re getting in return.

Create a separate campaign for each network

Google offers three distinct locations for ad placement: its search result pages, partner pages and content network. Your campaign’s default setting will encourage you to take advantage of all three at once, but you’ll find that your prospects respond differently to ads that show in different places. And even worse, ads that appear on different networks may require different bid prices, preventing you from truly targeting your bids according to keyword performance.

To skip this mess, assign one campaign exclusively to each network when setting them up, and keep them separate. The quality of the data you collect, along with the added intricacy of optimization, will be worth the effort.

Target locations according to your business

Don’t make the rookie mistake of running ads worldwide if you’re business is location-specific or requires foot traffic as its economic driver. If you’re a ski resort in Whistler, displaying ads in Singapore won’t do much good unless you expect enough oversees tourism from that region to justify the expense.

Over time, careful analytics monitoring will tell you which regions will be your most successful targets (again, depending on the nature of your business), but if you’re just getting started with search marketing, you’ll need to make some cost-saving assumptions about how far people will come or what regions are worth your while.

These simple tips might mean more complexity, more monitoring and, ultimately, more work. But by exploring these options from the start, you’ll find it far easier to optimize your campaigns and increase your returns according to the data you’ll gather over the coming months.