Ask me any questions! - Be specific

Hello - I am a Google certified Adwords and Analytics expert. By no means is this an ad about myself or services. I am posting this to offer free advice to new adwords and existing adwords users.

I have been dealing with Adwords for the past 8 years and know almost everything there is to know. I have test, implemented, optimized marketing strategies for over 200 companies from a lot of different industries. I was even selling zombie apocalyps kits at one point!

Best way to get a quick response to your questions:
- Be specific as possible.
- Don't post about a question that was already answered (make sure you check the post thread)
- Be honest about your experience with Adwords.

Any experts - please feel free to post as well.

 

I have no experience with adwords. I have been reading online a lot about it, but nothing seems to tell me what or where would be a good place to start learning about it. How did you start learning and makings sense of adwords?

 

I ran my own campaigns for a couple of my site's and learned along the way. Then I decided to do the Google exams and test my knowledge there. I think this might help you!

- Go to google certified exams (https://support.google.com/partners/answer/3153810?hl=en) and start studying for the Fundamentals exam to start.
- Once you are done studying for the Fundamentals exam. Go to ipassexam (its a site) and register for a sample Google Adwords fundamentals test. Its basically a longer test, but they will tell you what answers you got wrong. Keep doing this until you are comfortable with the material.
- Then move on to the next test

It will take some time, but that is how you can learn yourself without spending a lot of money like I did.

 

No one has any questions?

 

What in your experience is the best strategy for startup companies with limited budget of using Adwords? We all know that it can be a real money hog when it comes to highly competitive niches, like web hosting for example. How can this be tackled?

 

What would you suggest for someone who is using adwords for the first time?
I mean what I need to be careful about so that I don't end up draining my marketing dollar?

 

Yup - Google wants your $$ so you have to be careful. The steps below should help:

1. Research keywords that get high traffic volumes (related to your site)
2. Go through the list and remove all keywords with "review" or "compare" or anything like that because people are looking to compare, etc.. so they will cost you $$
3. Once you know what keywords you want to target, seperate them into ad groups based on which keywords are similar to each other
4. Now using the same list from step 1 - find all the keywords that don't make sense
5. Read about match types here (https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836?hl=en). Then add the irrelevant keywords are Negatives (preferably phrase match)
6. Make sure you set your campaign location to places you think need your service/product. The more specific the better
7. Make sure you are targeting the correct devices. If you don't have mobile friendly site, then put -100% on mobile bid adjustments

Obviously, there is a lot more but these should help you get started.

 

Thanks! Which would you find better for a newbe? Google adwords, or Facebook ads?

 

can you give me example clickbank, CPA, Jvzoo affiliate who advertise on adword which is have good landing page or website who got high quality score?

 

Depends on your niche and competition level. If the CPC is high and you will not be making your ROI then I would not do it obviously.

I personally hate Facebook ads, because they keep changing their guidelines all the time. Its very time consuming and they have been accused of click fraud lately.

There are a lot. I am not going to do the research for you!

 

Many thanks! Your inputs have been very valuable

 

What are your tips for a complete novice starting out with a website? What's a good budget?

 

My pleasure!

K. You will need 1 thing. What is your conversion rate? This should tell you how many visitors it take before you get a conversion/sale.

Once you know what your conversion rate is, then:
Do your keyword research -> Check what CPC's are -> Do the math with the conv. rate you found!

Example:
My conversion rate is 10%. That mean 1 person out of 10 will purchase. If I make $30 off each sale, then the sale should cost me less than that to acquire!

Assuming that the CPC is $2. That means for every 10 people I will have to pay $20. One should convert, so I can make $10. That will probably work for me, until I can either increase conversions or drop the CPC.

 

Thank you! I will try and get my head around that over the next few days! It's all so complicated to me at the moment.

 

Also, is that only if your site sells something? So there's no use in doing it unless you have products for sale?

 

Don't pay for clicks unless you know you will get some $$ in return.

 

What is the best way to bid on competitor brands? For example. I own Brand1.com. My website Brand1.com is a widget maker site. Allows people to make widgets and then gives them the option to purchase the widget after they are done creating them. Brand2.com is a long time player that does the same exact thing for 8 years, a leader in the industry and their name "brand2" is synonymous with "widget maker" so it gets a lot of searches in google because of how popular that name is. Nobody bids on this term because most sites in this industry dont charge for their widgets, but their users are highly relevant to my brand so it would be smart to get some of those searchers to my website.

However, when I bid on "Brand2" I have a low quality score because the term "Brand2" is nowhere to be found on my page, adwords sets the bid to $4 per click...despite there being 0 competition.

How can I get a the CPC down to a reasonable amount since this term has no competition?

 

You can't really use your competitor name on your landing page because it may risk you getting penalized or even worse! You can however compare your competitors products to yours.

There isn't a method to drop your CPC cost since the QS is going to stay high since you are targeting another Brand name.

 

Hello
You state you are an expert and I would like to give you a question which needs an expert to answer it.

I work as a PPC Manager for a middleware software company who create drivers for data access to lots of different databases. My question is this; our visitors have to register, download, activate and trial the driver - then buy it if they like it, however the company or individual who buys it may not be the person or company who trialed it. It may be as an example a bank who pass the driver on to one of their other offices or partnerships, it may be that the Technical engineer installed it but it goes to somewhere else to be paid for or it may be that the tech guy trialed it on his mobile or tablet on the bus then came into work.

The issue is tying up the ip to a sale right through the funnel register, download, activate and trial the driver, it may take 30 days (the trial is 14 days) from coming to the website to buying the driver.

How can I positively identify the whole journey from landing on our website to becoming a customer and identifying the individual as well as the company who is the end user?

Please any suggestions will be brilliant.

Thank You

Easywiz

 

Hello Kingofthewiki,

I am new to adwords and our ads bumping into adwords policies I cannot advertiser our website properly but our competitors are doing it without any problems. I also noticed that they have been using many other domains that lead to there website. I was wondering if I should do what they are doing and how are they doing it? Or is it even legal to do that? They're using inaccurate landing pages.

Warm Regards,