Google Adwords, it's just a click...NOT, part II
Other things you can do with Google Adwords
Pay-per-action advertising: This is used on the Google content network, a large group of websites, email programs and blogs which have partnered with Google to display Adwords ads. You can bid to pay only if an action is fulfilled, be it a purchase, sign-up or completion of a desired process. You still compete to appear with cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand impression ads.
Cost-Per-Thousand advertising: This is known as CPM as M is the Roman numeral for 1,000. It's the means of fixing a price for an ad that appears on the content network per 1,000 times that advert appears. You will pay the same price for those 1,000 impressions whether you get 500 clicks or none. The bid price for the CPM will be factored into where your advert appears but Google will intelligently work out the minimum amount to charge in order to keep your ad's position on that page.
Getting your adverts to appear
If you are running adverts on both Google's search page and its content network you can define a different bid rate
for each area. So if you know you get more conversions through the content network you might want to raise the bid rate to increase your presence.
Adverts can also be shown in two ways: Standard delivery, which will make your advert appear at intervals throughout the day, and accelerated delivery, which will make your advert appear as often as possible until your budget runs out. So if you run a low budget you can get your advert to appear once every 1,000 searches throughout the day or every search until 10am for example.
You can geographically target your adverts and even schedule the times for the delivery of your adverts to ensure your budget is not being spent at times when no one is looking for your advert.
What are you missing still?
Well, Google has many areas in which to advertise other than the standard search results. You have Google's search partners. AOL, Compuserve, Ask and AT&T to mention a few. There are the content network partners: About, Lycos, NYTimes, Reed Business etc. Google's Gmail is also part of the content network as well as many individual websites signed up to the Google Adsense program.
Adverts that can appear on these networks contain quite a variety that goes beyond the standard four-line text adverts. You can place banner adverts of all sizes, video adverts and mobile adverts which can include a click to call link.
You can also now place advert on Google maps so if you want to be found as the local Chinese takeaway or the closest tyre repair centre, Local Business Ads are great.
In summary
- As you can see, just sticking a single bid price on a bunch of keywords is not going to give you the best ROI. At AGI we have improved clients' campaigns by substantial amounts. We have increased inquiry rates by 200%, reduced cost per click by 40% and on one campaign we got the cost per acquisition down from £30 to £10!
- So if you are setting up a campaign yourself, take advice, learn about it and cover the main bases - otherwise get a professional to do it and make sure your investment pays off.
- Four more points to consider:
- Is the keyword relevant to the landing page?
- Does the advert feature the keyword?
- Have you thought of the negative keywords (words you don't want an advert to appear for) ?
- Is there a final page in a process to track the conversions?
For part one of this series click here
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