The Worst Advice We've Ever Heard About Adwords

Adwords can be a difficult terrain to navigate, even for the most seasoned of digital marketers among us. So it definitely doesn’t help when you hear inaccurate -or worse, damaging- advice being dished out, and unwittingly accepted and implemented by amateur online strategists, or SEO agency rookies. We’ve heard a few ‘tips’ which have raised eyebrows, and have taken it upon ourselves to set the record straight. If you’re new to SEO and Adwords, or you feel like you’re going off-course and need some clarification, take some time out to read our article, otherwise you could be following poor practises, and undermining your campaign without even realising.

“Keywords with a high search volume are the best, so start with them.”

This is an easy trap to fall into if you don’t see it coming, because the logic seems foolproof. Lots of searches means lots of potential customers, right? Well, it’s not quite as straightforward as that, especially if you’re working with a narrow budget. With competition for the broader keyword phrases, you might find that it’s chewing into more of your marketing funds than you’d expected, without the anticipated ROI. Instead you should find a mid-volume, highly targeted keyword, which relates directly back to your product or service. This might have less searches, but these searches will be more valuable as the specificity would indicate someone who is intent on purchasing within, or researching, your niche.

“Just set it up and walk away- it’s that easy!”

With head in hands, we heartily discourage the set-and-forget. While it may not need a constant surveillance, Adwords is an ongoing advertising campaign, not a poster. Even if you might be busy with other facets of your business, there should be some time set aside at least once a week, where you familiarise yourself with your campaign and the results, and once this becomes a habit, it will be easier to spot tweaks and adjustments, giving you far more results. Adwords can offer you various methods of understanding your target market, and how your business should be behaving online in order to see returns, so abandoning it after set-up is a massive waste of valuable resources. You could be compiling your most powerful slogans, and dropping your weak ones. You could be honing in on new suburbs, or new demographics, or conjuring up new promotions to see what hits the right buttons; without using these amazing and helpful tools, you might as well be investing in bumper stickers instead of Adwords.

“All your information is on your business homepage; so link your campaign there.”

Again, this advice is well intentioned, but is based on assumption more than progressive planning and information gathering. For example, maybe you use Adwords, Facebook, and Twitter, with links back to your homepage. In the first day you receive 200 clicks- great! But where are the conversions? If you sell dive gear, and a user had searched for ‘cheap quality snorkel set’, maybe your Adwords is displayed. But once they arrive on your homepage, they might find it difficult to navigate around, and back to their initial purpose. While the user might become more acquainted with your brand, they really arrived to check out your product which was promoted, so you run the risk of paying for the clicks, only to lose their attention at the last minute. Instead, customise your landing page to match your campaign, to create a streamlined experience for the user.

“Your brand is displayed with the search results anyway, why would you want to bid on that?”

Bidding on your brand is a preventative measure, and could save you a whole lot of money. For example, if I own an ice-cream parlour named Dilate Digital Perth Delights, and my main competitor is Chubby Chreats, then I can easily target their brand name as a keyword. Now, whenever someone thinks, “let’s find out about Chubby Chreats”, and enters into Google, Dilate Digital Perth Delights will pop up at the top, probably with a slogan about how awful Chubby Chreats are, and who in their right mind would name a place Chubby Chreats anyway. With a highly specialised keyword, you will usually have much less competition so the costs can be kept to a minimum, while adding to the ad score of your overall Adwords account.

“You’ve got the returns, you don’t need anything else.”

Adwords is so pivotal to your online campaign, because of how valuable all the data is that surrounds your actual returns. Before you begin your campaign, prepare your template of conversion tracking and analysis, so that you can map out your conversions. This is helped by the customised landing pages, as you can trace every click back to a certain campaign or promotion, and gain a deeper understanding of what your customers are looking for- helping you further down the track.

“Go for it, just wing it!”

You don’t hear neurologists advising each other to ‘wing it’, so save the spontaneity for the weekend. Without clear goals, you’ll never really grasp the magnitude of what Adwords can offer, or you may find yourself at a loss of how to take your campaign strategies to the next level. You need to find out what it is you’re really looking for, and make a clear beeline for it. It’s okay to adjust or change your goals, but you will need them to carve out the campaign that your brand needs.

While the above ‘hints’ may seem to make common sense, they show a lack of understanding about the true scope of Adwords and can really damage your overall efforts. If you’re struggling to make sense of it, or to assemble your own campaign, then you can always find a reliable agency with SEO services, who can help you. Here at Dilate, we’re Perth’s leading digital marketing agency, with specialists in SEO and Adwords boosting your online visibility with successful campaigns and thorough results analysis. Contact our team to find out about how we can help you and your brand, with personal expert guidance and a comprehensive web strategy.