At Trilogi, a certified Google Partner, we strongly back Google Adwords as a traffic and sales channel for our clients.
Google’s advertising tools have great potential, but it’s very important that they’re created, managed and supervised by a qualified team or specialist. Otherwise, costs can skyrocket.
With that said, and with the second sales season ahead, we believe Google advertising, and SEM campaigns in particular, can help with our online business strategy.
How is my campaign doing?
The first step is to remember that a well-optimized SEM campaign will pay off. So review the results you’ve had so far. Whether or not you’ve hit your targets, optimize what you’ve done to keep improving. If it isn’t working, it’s a good time to consider a change and create a new campaign with a new strategy, or even switch advertising type.
Google Adwords optimization
Campaigns need to be well structured for better performance. That means getting a series of steps properly set up. They may seem very basic, but they’re factors that will help us achieve the success we want.
Link Google Adwords and Google Analytics
Analytics’ power is useless if we don’t use its data to study user behavior in our online store. Linking the two is very simple and gives us key data such as bounce rate and average session duration, right in our Adwords account. Understanding our users will help us improve campaign performance
Set up SEM conversions
In advertising campaigns we can set different goals or conversions. A conversion isn’t just a sale: it can be a sign-up, a page visit, etc.
You need to set them up from the start to collect data and know when and how your active campaigns convert. The more conversions a campaign gets, the better enhanced CPC and CPA bidding work, and they are optimized to make the most of your budget.
Keywords for your ad campaign
With its latest updates, Google Adwords is crying out for more segmented campaigns to improve ROI. Grouping keywords and creating more specific, relevant ad groups improves keyword quality, so Google likes us more and we get better positions.
Don’t forget to review negative keywords: terms that don’t bring quality clicks and are making the campaign less effective.
Tip: in the opportunities section you can see recommendations for better optimization
Ad extensions in Adwords
Extensions let us add extra information to ads. There are currently 6 types:
- Sitelink extensions: these let you add text with a link pointing to a different landing page from the main ad. Very useful for highlighting similar categories that may interest users.
- Location extensions: you can add the company’s physical address and a map pin to the ad text.
- Call extensions: these add the advertiser’s phone number.
- App extensions: shown on mobile devices, they let users download the advertiser’s mobile app, if there is one.
- Review extensions: these show reviews of the advertiser’s products and/or services published on other sites. An example would be a restaurant’s reviews on Tripadvisor.
- Callout extensions: you can add an extra description to give the ad more value.
Segment locations
Locations in an Adwords campaign let us decide in which geographic area the campaign ads will run. It used to be thought that targeting the whole country was enough and that targeting by region wasn’t needed. But after running several campaigns, segmenting by region and even by city has shown us where our ads convert best and, in the long run, delivered better performance. It also lets us raise or lower bids based on conversions, or create campaigns exclusively for a region or country.
Tracking results in Google Adwords
A campaign needs monitoring and follow-up to be 100% effective. You need to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t lose effectiveness and, above all, so you don’t waste the money invested. Google is constantly changing, so we need to stay on top of it at all times.
With these steps we can optimize an SEM campaign to make it more effective.
Don’t have an SEM campaign? Get in touch with Trilogi and we’ll create a campaign perfectly tailored to your online business to get more out of it.
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