You have decided to invest in keyword advertising on the Google search network. Like us here at Finnish digital marketing, you also see advertising as an investment that should pay off. Preferably immediately.

In an ideal world, you really know your customers and products and know how to choose the products and related keywords that people will search for and buy. What if your product is a generic product made by an unknown brand, like a skin cream? An unknown brand is difficult to advertise because it is not known and therefore not sought after.

With just the word cream, you can drive traffic to your site, but most of it probably won’t lead to a purchase. Or if it does, after too many costly clicks. So how should you use AdWords in a situation like this?

Below is a simplified example of the life cycle of an AdWords campaign.

Steps for keyword advertising

PPC is a marathon, not a long run

There are basically three stages to paid keyword advertising:

  • Search
  • Optimizing
  • Extension

1. Search

Let’s use our skin cream example. Because our brand is not well known, we created an ad group with the word “skin cream” at a high level and an ad that is very descriptive of our product. So this shows up on Google and clicks on searches like “cream experience”, “cream allergy”, “sensitive skin”, etc. These don’t sound like searches that a person is willing to buy, but they are mostly looking for information.

However, there are also items like “skin cream online”, “skin cream online store”, “skin cream sold”. The second set is clearly better for us, since these applicants have already received enough information and are more willing to buy.

The case above is a simplified example of a search phase (typically lasting one to three months) where we collect information about the “genuine” search combinations used and monitor their sales. We’ll keep your ads running throughout the day at the best value for money (3-6, not above search results all the time) and strike the right balance between budget and impressions. At this point, the sale is just a bonus: the real reward is the data used in the optimization phase.

2. Optimization

In the optimization phase, we interpret the search query data we collect to eliminate completely irrelevant keyword combinations and invest in those that we believe have sales potential (or, at best, actual sales).

So we’re targeting more closely at words that people have actually used with little competition (meaning cheaper clicks), and we’re constantly monitoring that we’re getting enough impressions and clicks.

At this point, negative keywords will be added to your campaign; we know they will generate unproductive clicks. When there are enough search phrases to sell and sales are consistent (this is ad hoc, of course), we can start excluding keywords that are expensive, too general, or short of a single word (like a lotion) to increase the profitability of your search engine. campaign

3. Expansion

Once the campaign reaches profitability, it’s time to expand. As long as your campaign generates more than you spend, you can increase your budget and improve your ad positions; the goal is to get all the clicks that could lead to sales.

Finally

These three steps are repeated for each new campaign or product group that goes on sale. Of these steps, optimization never really ends, rather it is an ongoing process of reducing costs and increasing the sales and profitability of your advertising campaign.

In addition to this, Google also assigns a score to your account’s performance (called a Quality Score) based on the search data it accumulates, which largely determines how much your advertising costs. Therefore, keyword advertising cannot simply be left on “autopilot”, but all its components must be constantly monitored, tested and developed.

If you have your own AdWords account and would like a free performance review, please contact us.