I have a question. first off i'm a newbie to adwords, but not a newbie to internet marketing It seems like a lot of people struggle with adwords. what are the main mistakes of newbies and adwords? what do they do wrong? because I'm sitting here scratching my figuring out how you can not make money with adwords.
A good place to start would be to read the Definitive Guide to Google Adwords by Perry Marshal. It is a ridiculously thorough book. Expensive but worth it
I've written a guide to Adwords which may be useful to you: http://www.epiphanysolutions.co.uk/google-adwords/ Also read this article from GuyFromChicago: http://www.ppcdiscussions.com/2007/03/things-you-shouldnt-care-about-in-ppc.html And this one from Cianuro: http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/adwords-ppc-management-mistakes/
It's not aimed exclusivley at "newbies" per-say, but another great source of some very in depth AdWords information is Will Halliburton's "AdWords Killer". It's structured a bit more towards intermediate to advanced adwords users, but it includes some very good newbie info as well. It's helped me out alot with my campaigns, maybe it can get you going in the right direction. Good luck with it. A.J.
When you are starting out is is vital not to jump in there like a man possessed... 1. Market Research - Firstly... have you found a hungry market spending money already? Secondly, do you know WHY they are spending money to fix that specific problem? 2. Keyword Research - Have you found a list of highly targeted keywords that will bring you traffic that is qualified to see your offer instead of general, browsing traffic? 3. Ad Grouping - Have you split your keywords into ad groups determined by the common keyword? Doing so will allow you to build highly specific landing pages and adverts that will in turn abide you by the Adwords Quality Score conundrum. 4. Ads/Landing Pages - Have you made separate landing pages for each ad group and optimized them for the common keyword in each ad group? Have you written an ad that contains the common keyword for each ad group and an ad that will encourage searchers to click it? Those are the main three problems people come across in my experience... follow those and everything else will eventually fall in place for you.. and you wont lose your shirt either. Cheers Stewart
There are a ton of mistakes you could list, but there's one general one I can give. Unrealistic expectations of time spent, budget and ROI.
You can check the Perry and Marshal e-book for clarifying a decent number of things from there. Is a helpful book indeed.
Experiment with new ideas and then refine the ideas so that the ROI is high. Do not be afraid to try something new this is best done through experience!