Getting Full Value Out of Google Adwords

While processing an article for the Linknet Marketing Resource Library I actually took the time to carefully read the article. It is called How to Save a Bundle on Google Adwords and describes how the author, David Jackson of ImageLink Incorporated changed his Google Adwords strategy, and in the process increased his traffic by 400% while spending the same money.

This sounds like another one of those shameless promotions for some get-rich-quick ebook that affiliate marketers are noted for. But in his article David refers to Perry Marshall whose strategies and ideas I have a good deal of respect for. So I thought it was worth having a careful look at our own Adwords strategy in light of the recommendations made in Jackson's article.

The three main suggestions are:

1. Focus on more obscure keywords and key phrases (especially key phrases) and take the focus off the keywords that get the most hits (and are therefore expensive).

2. Enter hundreds of these more obscure keywords. One or two clicks on a hundred search terms is still a couple of hundred clicks.

3. Cut your maximum bid down drastically. You can usually get the number one spot for obscure key words for about $.10 (Yes, that's 10 cents) rather than the $2 or $3 you have to spend for high traffic keywords.

I must admit I am a bit skeptical of this process of bidding on low traffic keywords. My experience is inconsistent. Nevertheless, our Adwords campaigns are getting too expensive, so I thought I would follow these recommendations for at least a one week test.

The result of applying these tactics to two of our campaigns was surprising, and can be summarized as follows:

For one campaign I was able to cut my projected click thru costs down to about 25% of the original figure and still get the same projected click-thrus(according to the Google keyword tools). That means, there should be a savings of about $1000 per month for this campaign.

For another campaign I was able to increase my projected click thrus by about 200% while cutting the projected costs to about 25%. That is a potential increase in ROI of 800%.

These are still just projections based on Google's campaign tools. Since the new campaigns just started last night it will take a few days to see what sort of results I get. The big questions are:

- Will I still get the click thrus?
- Will I still get the same (or better) level of 2nd level inquiries?

We'll see. I will keep you posted.

The David Jackson article is also published here: How To Save A Bundle on Google Adwords.