3 Lessons To Learn From An Adwords Screw Up

Google Adwords can be a complicated mythical beast to conquer for the small business owner to expert digital marketing agencies. There has been a recent “incident” that has left the NT Tourism and media agency MPG a little embarrassed, so here are 3 Adword techniques you can learn from their screw up.

• Limited Keywords
  Don’t have an excessive amount of keyword phrases in your online campaigns; keep your campaigns and ad groups nice and tight around a common theme. It was reported that they had 128,000 keywords (source).

  For example, if you an accommodation provider in Maleny you may structure your campaigns and ad groups in this manner:
  Campaign – Maleny Accommodation
  Ad Group – Maleny Accommodation
  Keywords – “Maleny accommodation”, “Maleny accommodation QLD”, “Maleny accommodation Queensland”, “Maleny accommodation specials”, “book Maleny accommodation”.

  I would also recommend using the the above keywords again in the same ad group with exact match to gain better understanding of search data for my Search Engine Optimisation campaigns.

• Avoid Broad Match
  Using broad match can burn your Google Adwords budget real quick before you have even had the chance to show one of your killer ads to a real potential purchaser. It also avoids your ads being showed for incomplete word searches, go and do a search for toyot and you will be presented with ads for Toyota.
  Using the keyword phrases from point 1 you will notice that I have enclosed each keyword phrase with “ ”, this is known as phrase match. Without using “phrase march” the keyword phrase, Maleny Accommodation, can be trigged by any search that uses the keyword, Maleny, or, Accommodation.

  For example, if someone searched for, Mt Tamborine Accommodation, or, Maleny Coffee Shops, both these search could trigger my ad because they contain, Accommodation, or, Maleny. However both these searches are not relevant to me and therefore can waste money.

• Build Negative Keyword Lists
  A negative keyword list can be added to either an Ad group or the entire campaign and is one of the most overlooked aspects of Google Adwords for beginners. Using a negative keyword list will tell Google if a search that contains part of your keyword phase but a word that is on your negative keyword list, your ad will not be shown.

  For example, let’s use the Maleny Accommodation Adwords scenario again. If I had a negative keyword list that contained the term, photos, and someone searched for, Maleny accommodation photos, my ad would not be shown. This would not giving them the opportunity to click on my ad and spend my budget.

Hope you can use these 3 basic lessons in your Google Adword campaigns, if you require more help with Adwords or other Pay Per Click Advertising and Managment, feel free to contact us

Related posts:

1. The Ultimate Business Card & What You Can Learn From It
2. 2 New Super Adwords Functions
3. New Google Adword Tool

Tagged as: Google, Google Advertising, google adwords, Online Marketing, Pay Per Click, SEM