AdWords - day 1. We are a non-profit trying to stimulate some event/meeting/wedding bookings for our "hall". My keywords are: Houston banquet hall meetings reception venue wedding receptions weddings My settings are Regional, 300 mile radius of Houston and 0.20/click. I rarely can get our Ad to show even when there are maybe only three on the whole page. You pro's have a suggestion to get more visibility?
If I do a Google search like Houston weddings .... hits show up and to the right there are the Ads... where I am looking on the right side.
Well first of all 'houston weddings' isn't one of your keywords. But yes, if you are using adwords you will show up on the right side. Keep in minf if your account is new it may take a while before your ads are active. I can't really check for you because 1. I don't know what your site URL is and 2. I am now withing a 300 mile radious of houston.
Are you using broad match for those keywords without any negative match terms? If so, some of those selections are very, very untargeted and I imagine most of the traffic will be as well.
I agree with GuyFromChicago that it's too untargeted. May I suggest you also combine the keywords. As I see it from your list, right now you are targeting "weddings" and "Houston" seperately. Change that to Houston Weddings instead. You will get fewer but more targeted searches. Compensate the lost by adding more search terms. "Venue" is also an extremely broad word (as are most of the others). You'll definately waste a lot of money on it.