Week 9 - MKTG - Overview of Search Advertising

Google alone sees over 100 billion searches each month. Why? Because when people want or need something, it is becoming an instinct to turn to search engines. People search when they want to know something, when they want to go somewhere, when they want to do something, and more. every search represents an opportunity for marketers looking to influence the decisions of the consumer. This type of advertising uses a pay-per-click format in which advertisers pay for each user that clicks on their ad. You can also bid on keywords that relate to what you are offering to get a better ad position.

If you want to be successful with you ads, you need to conduct some type of research so you know who your target market is and what they are searching. Knowing what the consumer wants and how they go about searching for it is huge in terms of getting your brand out there. Some of my older posts go into more detail about this, but this is an overview to get ready to take the Search Advertising exam for Google Adwords.

Week 8 - MKGT 349 - AdWords Fundamentals Exam Tips

So you are having trouble passing the Fundamentals exam for AdWords. Don't worry, you are not alone. Personally, it took me 3 attempts to pass it. Well, my first attempt I took it without studying or having any background with working in AdWords so I wouldn't really count that. But in all honesty, it is going to take time to study for the exam. It will not be uncommon for you to study at least 8 hours a week in preparation for the exam. For me, a big help was to actually work with AdWords through a Google Grant at my school, I am more of a hands on learner so that experience and background really helped me with the certification. If you cannot get access to this, the exam study guides will do fine. You just have to be prepared with reading the same components over and over again. There are some good videos out there that I have linked in one of my older blogs that can help, but you are going to want to read through the following study guides:

• Introduction to AdWords
• Campaign Management
• Measurement and Optimization
• AdWords Fundamentals PDF Download-Help With Offline Studying

Another tip I have for you is to take the test multiple times, the more you are familiar with the questions, the more you know what you need to study. If you always seem to struggle with certain questions, you can go to the study guides and individually pick out what you need to study. 

Week 7 - MKTG 349 - Campaign Optimization

So you created a campaign for your website using Google AdWords and you notice that the campaign is not meeting your expectations. What do you do now? You may have to make some minor changes that can boost your campaign in a big way. This is known as optimization. The first step is to use a landing page that best represents your ad. Your ad should display or explain to the customer exactly what your webpage contains. If a customer finds that your webpage does not contain exactly what your ad shows or states, then they are more likely to leave your site. This may not only loose you that customer, but possibly future customers if they recommend to others to not use your website. If an ad states that you are offering a discount or sale, then your landing page should demonstrate that promotion.

For an example, let's search "baseball bats" and see if an ad effectively demonstrates what a customer will find on the landing page.

Ad

Landing Page (click to view)

Looking at the ad, we see some keywords that we expect to find in the webpage. These include: "free shipping," "free returns," "24/7 customer service."  Now notice the first thing a customer will see at the top of the page is that there is free shipping everyday. For many customers, free shipping is going to catch their attention and give them a good reason to do business with this company. In to top right, there is a link for returns for customers that already bought a product but need to send it back. Customer service is a big deal for many consumers, and in several areas on the landing page, there are different ways for which a customer can contact the company with any questions or issues. On many websites, a customer may have to go through several pages to find this information. For them to have all of this on their landing page makes them seem like a company someone would want to do business with.

Week 6 - MKTG 349 - Ad Performance Update

It all starts with keywords. I ended up deleting keywords that were not performing well just to clean up my ad group a bit. I saw an increase in clicks over the week, netting around a 20% increase in clicks overall. However, I still am not fully satisfied with this, so I need to find another way to increase my traffic. What I chose to do was to make another ad. I can collectively use information from both ads to figure out what is actually working. I chose to create an ad for a different tiger because I did not want my ads to compete against one another. All of these actions are intended to further my knowledge with Google AdWords and how to optimize a campaign.

New Ad

For this ad, the only keywords I used were the ones that were getting results. This way, I can easily compare not only the keywords, but the ad itself. People may be more likely click on an ad that speaks to them, meaning that if what the ad says satisfies what they are looking for or interested in, then they would be more likely to click on it. In just two days and on a tight budget, the new ad has already been clicked on six times. It has netted more clicks than my original ad in that same time frame.

Week 5 - MKTG 349 - Campaign Performance

I have recently been working with my ad for The National Tiger Sanctuary in order to generate more clicks. First, I went through my keywords and deleted the ones that were not generating anything. Then I wanted to compare my keywords to my colleagues. I looked at their ads and saw what was working and what was not. Sometimes knowing what keywords not to use is just as important as knowing which ones to use. 

Here are my current keywords

I have had some of these running for just a couple days now and they are doing well. Within the next week I should see in increase in clicks and overall impressions. As you can see, I may also decide to delete some keywords if they continue not to get results. I will give them a few more days before making that change. 

Good keywords do not only make the difference in generating clicks, the ad itself must look good enough for people to want to click on it. Overall, my ad has been doing well, but not exceeding my expectations, so depending on how it does within the next week, I might run another ad to compare my strategies.

(current ad)

Week 4 - MKTG 349 - Keyword Planner Exploration

This week, I have been trying to optimize my advertisement with Google AdWords. I am currently running an ad for the National Tiger Sanctuary, specifically, Kora the tiger. I am attempting to bring in more traffic to their website and one tool I am using is Keyword Planner. By using this, I can simply input a keyword and get feedback as to how many times that has been searched as well as how many times per month. This too is effective because it gives you a sense of what keywords you want to use as well as estimates what your bid should be.

(Click image to view)

Budgeting is important when it comes to AdWords. You do not want to spend more per click then you have to. To do this, as advertisers we must think like the customer and how they search what we are selling. Out keywords can be general to attract a big population, or it can be very specific to try to target selected consumers. For my ad, "tiger" has been the best keyword so far for generating clicks. The monthly searches average 1.5 million and it has a fairly low competition rating. Going forward, this is an excellent tool to use to help optimize you ad.

Week 3 - MKTG349 - AdWords Fundamentals

Recently, I took my first attempt at passing AdWords Fundamentals and working on my certification with AdWords. Going into the exam, I thought that it may be easier than expected. But what did I know? Until taking this class, I never heard of Google AdWords or how I can use it. Basically, I went in blind during the exam. Overall, I did not get a great score, but it was definitely better than what I thought I might earn based on my little knowledge of AdWords. 

Going into the future, I am ready to study and put the effort in to receive at least 80 out of 100 on the test. To accomplish this, a key tool that I will use has to be the exam study guides given by Google. There are three main sections for the study guide. They include: introduction to AdWords, campaign management, and measurement and optimization. Additionally, there are several videos on YouTube that can help study as well.

Check out these links for exam prep videos:

·         AdWords Certification Fundamentals Exam Prep

·         Refresher Hangout: AdWords Fundamentals