How to Optimize Your Google AdWords Campaign

Have you been wondering why your Campaign seems to get more and more expensive? Have you been experiencing less conversion rates although click-through is still high, or even higher?

Sometimes its easy to get carried away trying to get your product into view, so much so that people bid unreasonable amounts to get top positions on the search engine, get more clicks, and still have poor sales. One thing to keep in mind is that sometimes Keyword ads are not as effective as Placement ads.

For those unfamiliar, a Keyword ad is an ad on the search engine itself, whereas a Placement ad is an ad in a specific, hand-picked, high traffic website, that has some connection to your product.

The advantage of using Placement ads instead of Keywords is that people who are already viewing something related to your product are much more likely to click and actually buy something rather than just take a look and move away (which makes your Cost-per-Click go through the roof).

One thing to keep in mind is that people on the search engine are looking for sites, not products necessarily. Placing a ringtone ad on a Keyword search might work, but placing this same ad on 5 or 6 chose, high-traffic Lyrics sites tends to pay off a hell of a lot more and with a lower cost, since conversion rises and click-throughs aren't empty. In this same sense, placing an ad for a weight-loss product on a fitness website is much more likely to reap good money with a lower cost than simply spamming an ad all over google for no specific reason.

Also, since you dont pay for impressions but for actual clicks, choosing a 500,000+ visitor/day website wont cost a fortune, and guarantees a greater crowd interested on your product, since more people out of the total will be inclined to buy what you sell than a random crowd of searchers.

If your ads are good, your bid is decent and you're not making those sales, you might be placing your ads in the wrong place. Consider looking at the Placement ads and filtering out your demographics by age, income and area, and choosing well-structured, consistent, high-traffic sites that match your niche, and focusing on the customers who are actually looking for your product, as that is much more effective than trying to convince someone they need something they didn't want to begin with.

Also be mindful of the limitations of your product. If they sell exclusively to certain States for example, making the campaign national will greatly increase costs and reduce conversion rates, as all clicks from the states which are not covered will cost you money and will not make you dime.

On the other hand, if you're marketing a product for English speaking countries and you leave out the UK or Canada, you may be losing a lot of potential customers by restricting a campaign to US only. Sometimes sales for such products are actually better elsewhere than in the US, in which case you're actually losing money by including the US. A campaign must be reviewed frequently to sort out such issues and make it as cost-effective as possible in order to maximize your gains.

A good strategy will no doubt ensure your campaign gives you the return you expect with a much cheaper CPC.