10 Very Simple Tips to Get More out of Your Google Marketing $$

I wrote this article on marketing for cleaners on Google Ads after we achieved some tremendous results for a customer & friend in California. Using the below tips, we could manage to take Mark’s cleaning business from 0 Jobs/mo in Jan 2010 when we started to 12 Jobs/month in Jul 2010.

Mark was not sure how we exactly could get more out of Google Ads which appears to be so easy to use so we took the challenge and worked on 50% of budget & applying these 10 Simple Tips got Mark 12 Jobs in July 2010, the highest ever in 6 months.

Hope this helps your business too!
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10 Very Simple Tips to Get More out of Your Google Marketing $$

A vast majority of cleaning businesses use Google Pay Per Click to market their services on search engines. A Google Pay Per click program can help you get instant traffic to your site and jump start your sales and marketing activity. Though Google Ads is a very easy to use tool to manage Ads on Google, running an effective marketing program and more importantly a good ROI is what everyone hopes to achieve. 6/10 business owners feel that Google Pay Per Click simply doesn’t work or delivers very modest results. According to them, clicks and traffic is delivered but this fails to convert into sales.

We explore possible reasons for getting better results out of the supposedly simple to manage Google Pay Per Click program. A well managed Pay Per Click campaign is one that not only gets clicks but also converts the clicks into sales at a lower cost per click and delivers a higher conversion rate or ROI.

Here are 10 very simple tips to improve the effectiveness of your Pay Per Click program and ensure a better conversion rate at a lower cost per click.

1)Number of Keywords – Don’t be greedy and choose hundreds of keywords for your campaign. Not only does it make it difficult to find out which keywords work and deliver targeted traffic,but it also makes it difficult to track and manage the campaign. Instead start with 10-15 keywords per campaign and test them thoroughly by running the campaign for couple of weeks or more. Based on the results, try to add more or remove existing keywords.

2)Keyword Match Criteria – Broad, Phrase or Exact Match which one to choose? Let’s take an example. If we choose a keyword “quality carpet cleaning” and apply a broad match, it means that someone searching for “buy quality carpet” will see your Ad listing since it’s a broad match. Using the same keyword as a phrase match will show your Ad listing when someone searches for “quality carpet cleaning riverside” for instance. An exact match only shows your Ad listing, when there is an exact match or someone searches for “quality carpet cleaning” in the example. So take this example into consideration when you choose the keyword match type.

One more thing to take a note is that one keyword chosen with wrong match criteria can spoil the entire campaign. For e.g. if you choose “carpet cleaning”, “upholstery cleaning”, “tile cleaning” etc. as phrase match type and choose “carpet” as a broad match type, then your Ads will start to show even if “carpet repairs” is searched defeating the purpose of choosing the other phrase/exact match keywords.

3)Using Relevant, Traffic Oriented and Targeted Keyword – Using keywords that are too generic or using keywords that may not be popularly searched, both will decline the performance of the campaign. The non-targeted keywords will waste your marketing dollars by attracting irrelevant traffic while the low traffic keywords will get you too little clicks. A better option would be to check the traffic on the keywords using Google Tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal while choosing the keywords.

4)Improve Keyword Quality Score – A higher keyword quality score means that your Ad is more relevant to your campaign keywords and that Google is most likely going to rank your listing higher and at a lower cost per click. To improve quality score, improve landing page quality by using more targeted content, use keywords in the Ad copy, set the appropriate bid amounts on keywords, and try to maintain a good Click through Rate (CTR). A CTR above 1% is considered good. For the campaigns which have a good CTR historically, Google tends to shows the Ads high enough on the paid listings at a lower Cost Per Click (CPC).

5)Writing Targeted Ad Copy – Writing a simple, effective Ad copy with a clear message and a call to action text works much better than including too many technical details in the Ad. If it’s a regionally targeted Ad, which most often cleaning companies do, try to add the region/city name in the Ad. Also try to make use of your campaign keywords in the Ad copy. This will improve the relevancy and quality score of a keyword ultimately giving you a lower cost per click and higher ranking on Google.

6)Writing Multiple Ad copies – Writing multiple Ad copies will allow Google to rotate the Ads and automatically show Ads which work better than the other. A simple trick may be to just change the title of the Ad and re-use the 2 line description Ad text. By running multiple Ads, you can find out which Ad copy generates more clicks & retain it and remove Ads which are not performing well.

7)Choosing the Right Geography – Be it 50 miles service area around your office, one city, multiple cities or states or countries, Google allows you to choose the exact geography where you would like to show your Ad listing. Without choosing the right geography, you will end up wasting your marketing dollars. So consider researching your service area on Google and select the geographical location where you want to target the Ads.

8)Using Search vs. Content Network – Google provides an option to run your Ads on search network and content network. Search networks include Google and Google partner sites like aol.com etc. Content networks consist of websites that have chosen to show Google Ad listing. If your target prospects/customers visit a particular website abc.com then you can choose to show your Ad listing on abc.com. Considering the Pay Per Click model, it may not harm to add some content sites. Try to keep the number not too high as irrelevant content sites lower down the overall CTR of the campaign & raise the bid amount on keywords. But certainly consider experimenting with some sites and add sites that you think your target customers would shop on.

9)Choosing a Budget – This depends on your marketing budget. Start with a smaller budget sufficient to test out your campaign and see what works. Sometimes campaigns may not give you instant return on your investment. So avoid overspending without running a test campaign and knowing what works.

10)Landing Page Design – The landing page or the page which the prospects see when they click on your Ad listing should have enough information to be able to catch the prospects attention and make up their mind to contact you. The landing page should use relevant keywords that you have chosen in the campaign so that keyword Quality score is higher and the page should have vital bits for e.g. call to action bits (phone/email or contact form), work samples/customer testimonials, about section etc all packed into a single page or just a click away.

The above 10 Simple Tips will help you get more out of your Google Marketing dollars by driving more targeted traffic to your site, generating more leads, improving the conversion rate of the website & getting a consistent ROI.

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