Last week, one of our clients here at Rex Software sent me an email asking me how to get her website in “the little yellow box at the top of a Google search page”. This of course got me thinking “Wouldn’t a blog post on Google AdWords be great to send to my customer right now?” And it would have been too – if only I had one pre-published I could have sent to her. Obviously, no such Rex blog existed, but it did give me a topic for today’s post!AdWords is Google’s online advertising platform that can help you drive interested people to your website. You know those ads that appear in “the little yellow box at the top of a Google search page” and also to the right hand side of search results? They are all the result of AdWords marketing.While not exactly “Social Media”, I’m including AdWords in the Rex Software blog series on social media because it ties in with a lot of the concepts we have discussed throughout the blog series.I recommend a comfortable chair, some popcorn and maybe a nice glass of wine for this blog, as there’s going to be few videos to watch today!
Before getting started with AdWords
Before you get started with AdWords, you should ensure that you have good quality content on your website. One of the major themes of this blog series has been the importance of creating and sharing useful content and how that can help build your brand online and subsequently get you more appraisals, listings and sales.The same principle applies to the use of paid advertising through AdWords. Getting people to your website is easy – especially when you utilise AdWords – keeping them engaged with your website long enough for their visit to make an impression is the hard part. To keep someone on your website, you need to have information available to them that is relevant to their needs.If you haven’t already started blogging and putting up useful articles to your website, you really should spend a month doing so before spending your money on AdWords campaigns. You want the money spent to be an investment and not a cost!
You need to have a plan!
There’s no point just “doing” AdWords for the sake of it – you need to have a marketing plan in place.
Some key AdWords concepts before setting up your account
It is important to understand the basic structure and terminology used in AdWords before setting up your account:In the video above, the examples they used for Campaigns were “Shirts” and “Shoes” – for a real estate agency, each campaign could represent the divisions within your business like “Sales” and “Property Management”. By ensuring you set up the structure of your AdWords account properly, you make it easier for you to run and manage successful AdWords campaigns.
Setting up you AdWords account
Getting started with AdWords is a quick and easy process. The video below walks you through setting up your AdWords account as well how to set up your first campaign. There are some more videos following this one that will go into some of the items discussed in greater detail so don’t worry that it seems to go over things pretty quickly.
How to set up your budget for Adwords
You want to make sure you know how to set up the money side of AdWords so that you don’t blow your entire marketing budget in one hit (with little success). How much is a click worth, and how much do you want to spend in a day? They’re both good questions that this video will help to answer for you.
Choosing the right Keywords
The words and phrases people use to search online are called keywords, and are what cause your ads to appear. It is important to choose the right keywords for your ad to ensure it is appearing to the right people!
Writing ads that attract customers
You need to stand out amongst the organic and paid search results on a Google search results page. Make it easy for people to find your agency by writing ads that grab their interest.
Make sure people “land” on the right page
The “Landing Page” is the page visitors arrive at after clicking on your ad.It may seem not seem like such an important thing to do, but ensuring the landing page is relevant to the search your visitor has performed is very important. You don’t want to make them have to search for the content twice – once on Google and once again on your page. If, for example, your ad relates to the Sales Department and the offering of a free appraisal, then you should have a page on your website that relates to this specifically, and your ad should direct people straight to this page, and not your homepage.
Reviewing and Tracking AdWords Results
Setting up a campaign on AdWords isn’t the only step involved in the whole process. You should be reviewing and tracking your campaign results and if necessary, adjusting the settings to ensure you are getting the most out of the campaign.You should be spending just 10 minutes a month reviewing your AdWords campaign.
The 5 Pillars of AdWords Success
The video below brings everything above into one short video on the five key ares of AdWords you need to keep in mind when managing your account.
