🚂 The Location Station Digital Marketing, Online Advertising Tactics & Location Technology for Businesses & Brands   /     💰 8. Localised Google Adwords Campaigns: Steps to ROI with Ilana Wechsler

Ilana Wecshler on how to do effective location-based Google Adwords campaign in 2017 & beyond. (Yes, you can still profit from PPC ads!) In this episode, Ilana gives us a bunch of useful tips on how location based businesses can optimise Google AdWords to reduce their cost-per-lead, increase conversion rates and avoid wasted ad spend.

5 Questions You Can Answer After Listening To This Episode On Google AdWords With Ilana Wechsler:

 

1. How did Ilana get fired from her first job at Woolworths?

2. Is Google AdWords right for my business?

3. Which of these acronyms is the odd one out: ROI, PPC, CPC, CTR, CCR & CV%?

4. How can I optimise Google AdWords to obtain the best ROI for my business?

5. According to Ilana Wechsler, what’s the best thing to put on a bread roll?

 

 

“Loud and proud” data nerd Ilana Wechsler is the founder and director of Green Arrow Digital, A Sydney based data-driven agency specialising in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. She is a former data analyst turned PPC expert who is really passionate about getting measurable, trackable results for her clients.

Today’s topic is all about return on investment (ROI) for localised Google Adwords campaigns and where PPC advertising is headed in the future. In this episode, Ilana gives us a bunch of useful tips on how location based businesses can optimise Google AdWords to reduce their cost-per-lead, increase conversion rates and avoid wasted ad spend.

INTERLUDE! If you’ve just discovered Vicinity Marketing, below is a short video about who we are and what we do. If you just came for the article, you can simply skip past the video and keep reading

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ATTENTION ADWORDS BEGINNERS!

For those of you who don’t know what Google AdWords is or how it can benefit your business, we’ve put together a quick overview below explaining everything you need to know before you consider if Adwords is right for your business.

ALREADY KNOW WHAT ADWORDS IS?

Aren’t you clever? If you’re already well across what Google AdWords is, scroll down to “Step 1: Ask Yourself “Is Google AdWords Right For My Business?” and go from there.

 

Let’s Start At The Beginning: What is Google AdWords?

Google AdWords is how businesses pay for advertising on all Google platforms. Using specific keywords related to your products or services, Google is able to display your ads to the right audience at the ideal time.

Most people think AdWords is just paid results on Google Search, while in fact this is just one of four separate components: Search, Display, Video & Apps. The two most relevant for small to medium sized location based businesses are Search and Display.

Search Ads

These are the paid search results you see at the top, right and bottom of the page when searching for anything on google.com.

Display Ads

The display ad network shows your banner and text ads on websites that your desired audience are visiting, including Gmail.

How Does Pricing Work For Google AdWords?

Pay-Per-Click

AdWords is unlike more traditional forms of advertising such as print, radio or television where businesses pay for the ad space regardless of who sees or hears it. AdWords ads are free until somebody clicks on them, so if it doesn’t generate any clicks, at least you’re not out of pocket.

Bidding for Space

The cost-per-click (CPC) is determined by your budget, but these prices work in the form of an auction, where advertisers bid on keywords. The more you are willing to pay for a keyword, the greater your chances are of being seen at the top of the search page or in your desired space.

Your Quality Score

There is another very important factor which determines premium ad placement and that is your “quality score”. This is determined by how many clicks your ad has previously received, known as the click-through rate (CTR), in addition to how relevant your keywords and landing page are to the user.

If your quality score is high Google rewards you with a cheaper CPC, meaning often the advertiser in the number one spot can often be paying less than the one below, because it is more relevant.

 

Step 1: Ask Yourself “Is Google AdWords Right For My Business?”

To find out if Google AdWords will be a profitable marketing avenue for you, ask yourself these three questions:

Are people looking for me?

First, conduct a Google search for your brand or business’ keyword/s to see if any ads come up. If no ads come up, it’s not a good sign. Seeing existing ads for your keywords means that there is money to be made from AdWords in your industry.

How much is a lead worth to my business?

If you’re selling products for $8 and the CPC rate is $5, AdWords is obviously not worth the HTML it’s written on for you. Calculate how much a new customer is worth in profit for your business and whether your conversion percentage (CV%) is enough to justify the cost of AdWords.

Can I afford to test it out?

There are tools such as Google Keyword Planner which attempt to give you estimates on traffic volume and CPC rates for your chosen keywords. Both Ilana and Dave agree however that these tools are not always the most accurate way to predict budget and CPC volumes, especially in location based campaigns.

If you can afford it, a test period will help you gain a more comprehensive reading of how much AdWords will cost and how much worth it will be to your business.

A great feature of AdWords is that you aren’t locked into a contract, you can set a limit to how much you’re willing to pay. Paying for 100 clicks to begin with will give you a good indication of what your CV% will be and whether it will be worth the spend.

 

Step 2: Choose an Agency or Go Solo

Ilana offers two main services at Green Arrow Digital; managing AdWords accounts for businesses or providing them with the tools and knowledge they need to manage their own accounts in the most cost and time effective way possible.

For many small businesses, hiring a digital marketing agency at around 20% of the marketing budget can be overkill. It depends on your strategy, how much a lead is worth to you and how big the geographical radius is that you are trying to reach.

One very important thing to remember if you do decide to go with an agency, is to make sure you retain your own Google account, in order to keep ownership and be in control of your own data. If you are with an agency that uses their own Google account to manage your advertising, your data will be lost should you ever choose to leave that particular agency and you would have to start again from scratch.

If you choose to manage your own Google AdWords account, but need some help setting it up or even some training on how best to optimise it, you may still benefit from help from an agency-run course, such as those offered by Green Arrow Digital.

 

Step 3: Customise Google AdWords For Local Business

There are countless ways in which location based businesses can optimise AdWords to be specific to their brand and their customers. A few key tips are:

• Dynamic keyword insertion helps optimise your ads for just the customers you want, so less clicks are wasted

• Adjust, turn off or run only on mobile depending on your target audience

• Choose specific keywords or phrases only, or choose a broader topic and allow views for slightly different words still related to your ad

• Customise spend in different areas, depending on which ones are more profitable

• Tools like AdWords Editor help to practically structure and manage your campaigns

 

Step 4: Figure Out What Metrics You Should Aim For

What are the specific metrics you (or your agency) should focus on in order to show improvement over time?

Reduce CPL 

Reducing your cost-per-click will allow you to get more leads for the same amount of money, or spend less for the same amount of leads.

Increase CTR

Depending on how competitive your business is, in the beginning you should aim for a click-through rate of around 2% to 5%.

Increase Conversion Rates

Knowing who to target makes a big difference and the longer you run a campaign, the more you will learn about your ideal audience and their online habits. By ensuring your ads are only shown to the right people, you can increase conversion percentage and reduce wasted ad spend.

 

Step 5: Keep Up-To-Date With New Ad Trends

Mobile is not the future anymore, it’s the present. In 10 countries including the US & Japan, mobile search has overtaken desktop search. With the industry shifting so fast every day, AdWords is far from a set-and-forget network and business owners and marketers have to find a way to keep up.

According to Ilana, the biggest growing opportunity is the display network, where the CPC is lower and the traffic can be significantly higher than on search.

Over 400 changes were made to Google AdWords in the past year. Some were minor, but some could have a big impact on how you run your campaigns. These include:

• Ability to remove desktop completely and just run mobile-only campaigns

• Email ads, you can even target your customers in a competitor’s domain

• Right-hand side ads have been removed and text ads have doubled in size

• A click-to-message extension where customers can SMS a business straight from the ad

• Phone call conversation tracking helps record leads that come over the phone

• Automated budget shifting depending on how certain keywords are tracking

• Bid adjustments depending on the weather

There are even new tools which allow you to spy on your competitors (online of course).

 

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