For a beginner, Google AdWords can be a little daunting to start with, so below I list some tips and tricks that have served and continue to serve me well whenever I setup and manage a campaign.

1. Don’t use broad keyword matching — At least not to start off with. What’s broad matching? “If you include general keyword or keyword phrases-such as tennis shoes-in your keyword list, your adverts will appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms.” With expanded matching it becomes even harder to know when your keywords will show, because Google will pick them algorithmically. Broad match is usually used by experienced advertisers looking to save time (usually with a long list of negative keywords) or by lazy advertisers, who may not have the time or the inclination to target their campaigns. Broad matching can also be the right way to go for parts of certain kinds of campaign, but wading straight into it can be dangerous.
2. Use dynamic titles in your adverts — Dynamic titles are easy, they don’t cost anything and they usually have a good effect on CTR and conversion rates. The phrase that the searcher uses in their search will come up as the the title of your advert. This saves you having to create an individual advert for each keyword and means that your ad will be more targeted. In the title field of your ad simply put {keyword:your default title here}. The default title is in case the search phrase is too long for the title field or if AdWords can’t display the search for some other reason.
3. Use global negatives to prevent advert duplication — If you’re selling something, you don’t want people finding your advert if they’re searching for free stuff. This sounds obvious, but do some searches and you’ll see it happening. Use the word ‘free’ in your campaign global negatives. You can also use this for other words you don’t want to turn up for. Using negative keywords is especially important if you’re using broad matching.
4. Turn off content targeting and search network — Do you know where to look at these adverts? If the answer is a resounding “no”, leave them alone until you feel confident that you know where they’ll be showing and that you can make them work — get comfortable with Google SERPs first. Conversion rates and CTR‘s change dramatically for each search property, not to mention content targeted adverts. Get acquainted with Google before you move on to the others.
5. Test different advert-copy and positions — How much of a difference will being in the first position, as opposed to the second, third or sixth position make, for your net profit? The answer is that it depends on your creative, industry and who else is bidding on your keywords. The bottom line is that you should know. Test your creative in each position and work out where it will be most effective, from an ROI point of view. Remember also that the AdWords ranking algo works on a CPC x CTR basis (it’s actually more complicated than that, but that gives an idea as to why out of two adverts with similar CPC‘s, one will be higher because of a higher CTR.) You can also test your creatives. Write several different adverts and set them to run evenly (Google will run the one which preforms best by default, but you can set them to run evenly in your campaign settings). The creative which gives you the highest ROI is the one you should go with. You should probably run this kind of test for more than just a day.
6. Optimise your destination URLs and landing pages — The landing page is the page which the person who clicked on your advert will see when they come through to your site. Don’t use your homepage as your landing page unless it deals only with selling the product you’re advertising. For example, if you’re selling widgets, optimise a page on your website with information regarding that widget, this could be a product page on your website, or a specific page for the advertising campaign.
7. Track conversion and ROI — Track everything. Google will track impressions, clicks and click through rate. Just because an advert has a high CTR doesn’t mean that it is making you money. Use Google’s own conversion tracking codes and link AdWords with Analytics. If you don’t know how each keyword is preforming, then you won’t be able to optimise your campaigns. Turn off the keywords that aren’t working well and invest more in the keywords which are.
8. Work out your CPA — How much is each sale costing you? Are your Google AdWords listings preforming as well as your Yahoo! listings? Your Bing listings? Your offline marketing? You should know how much you’re paying for each order, sale, download or enquiry on each channel — only then will you be able to set CPA targets to work towards and know which channel is best for you.
9. Don’t enter into bidding wars with your competitors, find a niche — It is easy to get into bidding wars with your competitors. You want to be number one and so does your competitor. The best thing to do is to take a step back, ten deep breaths and consider how important it really is to be in the number one spot. If you can justify it, fine but otherwise: let your competitor be number one, slot into the number two slot and wait. If you have a better product, your click-through rate will get you to the top – and you’ll still be paying the same as you were in the second position. More and more people are using automated bidding software. This software will update at a set interval to keep the ad in the desired position. Doing battle with this kind of software is even more frustrating and less rewarding than trying to outbid a competitor.
10. Set a weekly budget and stick to it — When you’re first starting out this is really important. AdWords is addictive, and like anything else addictive, it can quickly get out of hand. A keyword may convert like nobody’s business one day and die the next. Make sure you know a keyword is working — more importantly, know why it is working — before you invest more.
11. Geo-target your adverts — Geo-target your adverts to the relevant audience. It can be done when you set up a new campaign and in your campaign settings. If you want to show on google.com that’s fine, but remember that you can geo-target to individual countries and even cities (you can target regions in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the Netherlands). The more targeted users feels that your ad is, the more likely they are to click on it.
12. Organise your adverts into logical groups — This will make it easier for you to know what is doing well and what isn’t — especially a year later. If you’re selling widgets have a campaign not just for widgets, but for each brand of widget, and then an ad-group for each widget model.
13. Keep a close eye on what your competitors are doing — Is your competitor doing something better than you? What keywords do you share with your competitors? Can you discern their strategy? Do they use automated bidding software? Do their landing pages have some magic which you should be emulating? This is the sort of information you can find out and the kind of information that you need to know.

If there are inaccuracies in the above list, just give me a shout, otherwise, I’m happy to hear your own tips and experiences.

In the last two parts of this series, I discussed publicising yourself and networking, both of which are great ways to advertise your wares. There are, however, more traditional routes to advertising and finding work.

Advertise Your Business

Once you’ve built up a portfolio of work and contacts, it’ll become increasingly easier to advertise yourself. But intially, finding work is a case of advertising yourself. This can be achieved in a number of ways.

You can create adverts on search engines such as Google via their Adwords service, or on Yahoo! Small Business via their equivalent search marketing service.

You could also go down the slightly more traditional route and add free or paid listings to online business directories such as Yell.com and Thomson Local.

I see little value in using the paper-based business directories, since you’re likely to be operating in the digital arena, however, niche publications or magazines may be a credible option to consider.

Find Work

You’ve got the skill and experience, you’ve built an online brand and you have advertised yourself. But still you need to find paid-for work.

Essentially there are two ways to do this, via your network or via the bane-of-everyones-life, agencies. Always prefer your network over agencies; you won’t be locked into rigid contracts and you could potentially earn more money for yourself as there won’t be a cut for the agent.

Of course, if you go through an agency, you don’t necessarily need to set up a company or do any of the complicated accounting and they have a ready-built network of contacts.

I tend to mix-and-match based upon demand. There is also the point that the agency can introduce you to a client and after a period of time has lapsed, you can go to that client directly, assuming you have maintained a good relationship.

You could also do your own research into companies carrying out work in your field and cold-call or email them. If they don’t have work available immediately, you have alerted them to your presence. They are also more likely to contact you directly at a later date, as this will save them money, rather than sourcing contractors through an agency.

There is a final area of consideration; joining networks and services such as the Lemon Foundation and 99Designs. These services effectively connect designers and developers to clients needing work to be carried out. This work could be anything from logo designs and business cards to branding and websites.

Lemon Foundation is more like an umbrella company that bids for and farms out work; they do all the client facing work — winning bids, project plans and scoping etc — whilst you do the ‘actual’ work. 99Designs on the other hand is a marketplace where you have to compete on price and reputation. It is in effect an eBay or Amazon of the designer-developer world and is brought to you buy the guys who created SitePoint (a great web development resource).

Final Thoughts

Someone cheesy wrote…

Twenty first century people aren’t afraid of challenges, of stepping outside their comfort zones, of swapping lives. No more forty years with the same organisation, here’s my gold watch to prove my loyalty – it’s all about building up a portfolio of skills, identifying strengths, capitalising on opportunities and transferring the package to the next best place. Sometimes that place is you.