“I tried Adwords and paid a fortune for a few words. It did nothing to increase my business at all.” – Sound familiar?

Google AdWords is one step in a process. One link in a chain. And no matter how strong that link might be, any chain is broken by its weakest link.

Common areas of waste:

  1. Bidding on words like car, bicycle or computer. Generic terms that have lots of search traffic, but little relevance – these will burn a budget in no time and the clicks you pay for aren’t likely to turn in to sales.
  2. Bidding on a few keywords that generate lots of clicks. This is costly – better to have lots of low-cost keywords that generate a few clicks, or do both if your budget permits.
  3. Ads and landing pages don’t include the keywords that are being bid on. Google will charge you less if you address this.
  4. Poor ad copy; customers are only interested in their problem. Use copy that demonstrates that you can solve it.
  5. Visitors land on the home page for your site – you’re making the visitor search AGAIN for what they need. The keywords you bid on already told you what they are looking for, take them to the relevant page on your site.
  6. Not measuring results. If success or failure isn’t measured, money is wasted on the same mistakes rather than invested in the keywords and ads that make you the most money. In simple terms, if the 50% waste was spent on the 50% that worked, you’d double your profits.

Creating a Google AdWords campaign is just one piece of your marketing mix. You need a good marketing story, some good, relevant content on your landing page, clear calls to action and a very good understanding of your (potential) customer.