Starting a Google Adwords campaign is a great start on getting the leads you need for your business to succeed. Adwords will also provide you key performance indicators on what is most effective on getting a favourable return-on-investment, but it’s not always a simple process. You want to make sure you avoid scenarios where you over spend while not obtaining the web traffic you are looking for. Here are some necessary metrics to analyze when monitoring your campaign.
Budget
Budget is the first and most critical thing to consider when creating your Adwords budget. Even with the most minimal budget, your campaign can still make a low cost/high margin impact. It’s important to know that keywords have a dollar figure next to them, and you want to make sure your campaign is not encouraging irrelevant or ‘wasted’ clicks. A first step to take is doing an analysis on Google’s keyword planner while getting an indication on how much each keyword costs.
Keywords
It’s essential to use the keywords that matter most to your business, but it’s important to not use keywords that don’t bring you relevant traffic. Determining keywords might have you over thinking on what could be used by your target market. For instance, if you’re a dentist, you might want to avoid such keywords as:
♦ Great Dentist
♦ The Best Dentist
♦ Number 1 Dentist
Although some search activity could resonate from these keywords, you could be over inflating your allocated Adwords budget. Also, keep in mind that whatever keywords worked the previous year may not work again this year since consumer behaviours are constantly changing.
It’s also important to determine what keyword match system works well with your budget. Having a broad keyword can allow you to get significant impressions, however keep in mind that those keywords could cost greater than average. Also keep in mind that broad keywords does not guarantee website traffic who is looking to hire a specialist in your field.
Geo-Targeting
Google’s Adwords is also sophisticated for you to target geographical locations by country, province, city, and postal code. It’s important to utilize the utmost correct locations which cater to your business. For example, if your storefront is located in the Etobicoke region of Toronto, it’s best to segment your geographic criteria very specifically. Your storefront will probably perform better within the surrounding areas as opposed to other areas in the Greater Toronto Region (North York, Downtown, Scarborough, etc). Would a paid click from Scarborough benefit a storefront in Etobicoke?
As a rule of thumb, always remember that you’re getting billed by the click. It might sound like a low cost strategy, it’s important to consider the three performance indicators to see if you’re getting the right return-on-investment.