I'm new to PPC, but am committed to figuring it out. I have an account opened and have analytics installed on my site. I sell online learning. I rank pretty well organically for a few of my terms (internet continuing education, insurance continuing education, securities continuing education, etc.), but I am doing nothing with PPC and I want to. Thus far i have: - collected close to 400 keywords, but they aren't sorted in any particular order.. - spent $50 to see how it worked and was so unfocused I was receiving clicks from all over the park - learned about Quality Score and understand its importance - am prepared to build focused landing pages for specific keywords I suppose I just fele that I'm missing something. It seems there are so many variables, that without them all being spot on, I am apt to not see any results. I have searched high and low at resources and really haven't had my appetite met. I went through the Google Adwords online courses, paid for a subscription with wordtracker, researched a few tools like ppcbully, seomoz, & ppccoach...but nothing seems to really jump at me.. Am I on the right track or is there something I should read? Many thanks for everyones help!!
First, I'm biased because I'm trying to sell a book. I know of and am familiar with some of these resources you mentioned (you left out Perry Marshall as the major one). But that's why I wrote the book, because like you, I not only feel something is missing, I *know* something is missing. This from years of managing many client accounts, some of which used some of these resources. A major problem with almost all accounts I've taken over is poor keywords. Poor understanding of the relationship between the search query, how people search for things, and their keywords. So this is the first thing I address. The most important is your ad. Let's face it, not many of us have an understanding of advertisement and the PPC ads you see only prove it. There is a right way and a wrong way to write an ad, especially when you are limited to just a couple of lines of text. It's not an exact science but applying a few principles can turn a losing campaign into a winning one.
How To Master Adwords Build a squeeze page targeting your niche offering a free incentive. Use your head to think up of keywords that are super relevant. Then email market offering support,content and products. This is how all the seasoned ppc-ers operate. Adwords is not about numbers it's about people. Good luck!
Try to remember that Google and especially Adwords is all about relevance, make sure your keywords are highly relevant to your Adtext, make sure your Adtext is highly relevant to your Landing Page copy and make sure your landing page copy is highly relevant to your product or service. Don't worry about cramming as many keywords into an Adgroup as possible, simply make sure that the keywords you place in that Adgroup describe the product perfectly.