So, you want to get found by customers who are searching right now for your product or service? And you want to show up on the first page of a Google search? Then Google AdWords is the tool for you— it delivers fast results at a known price.

Here’s five tips to help you maximize the potential of AdWords on a limited budget.

  1. Stick to BMM and exact match keywords— Broad match keywords are expensive and often result in unnecessary clicks and costs for smaller businesses. Using Broad Match Modifier (BMM) and exact match keywords will increase your traffic relevancy, click-through rates and conversion rates. All of these factors are important because they’ll lower your cost per click— meaning you get a higher position for a lower price.

    Learn more about keyword options here.
     
  2. Direct traffic to a specific place on your site, NOT your homepage— You want customers to quickly locate what they’re looking for. Match their query (ie: uniform embroidery Atlanta) with the page on your site that lists embroidery options and pricing. Linking customers to a more generic homepage will actually decrease your traffic relevancy, which you’ll see in tip number four, is a bad thing. 

    How to Create the Best Landing Pages for Your Google AdWords Account
     
  3. Use Google Analytics or something similar to handle baseline tracking— AdWords doesn’t tell you much about what viewers are doing after they click on your ad. Link your AdWords account to Analytics or a similar service (Clicky Mint, etc.) so you can see metrics like average visit duration, pages per visit, percentage of new visits and bounce rates. Then you’ll be able to make data-driven decisions about your web content and your ads.

    4 Tips for Using Google Analytics to Measure AdWords Performance
     
  4. Be mindful of quality scores— In other words, never stop optimizing for a higher score. Your quality score can change quickly and the score you see on your dashboard isn’t necessarily the number Google uses to calculate your ad rank. Confusing, we know. Ignoring your quality score is the most harmful thing you can do to your AdWords campaign.

    Here’s a cool infographic that explains quality scores and how to improve them in more detail.
     
  5. Good ad copy is key— Creative, well-written ad copy that is tailored to your keywords will improve your quality score, click-through rates and relevancy rates. The challenge? You only get a small amount of space to do this in. As Johnathan Dane writes on Unbounce, you want to write ads that address “the end goal: what people ultimately want to accomplish with the help of your product or service.”

    Dane’s How to Write the Highest-Performing AdWords Ads, is full of amazing insider tips— don’t miss it.

There are numerous online advertising options out there, but we think AdWords is one of the better ones. It offers the targeting, tracking, scalability and flexibility most small businesses can’t afford not to take advantage of.