Adwords and Web Marketing

[Danny]

Anyone have experience using adwords? I have been considering using google adwords for a couple years now. Any tips or tricks would be appreciated.

Paul, if you could chime in that would be great (i belive u use adowrds on IA). Also if anyone has any other suggestions for targeted web marketing that would be very much appreciated.

[Paul]

I have experience w/ both buying/selling google Adwords. What exactly are you planning on doing and what market?

[Danny]

architecture and engineering services, not only in atlanta but the southeast and midwest. I really dont even know the basics of how adwords works, i wasnt aware you could buy and sell them. Looks like i have lots of research to do.

[Paul]

well what i mean by buy/sell...

sell - IA.com sells ads on our site basically we post up adword space to make $

buy - basically you buy clicks

here are a few tips:



do research on your market find out what keywords are most searchable... put a simple google search in like " atlanta engineering services" it yeilds Results - 1,990,000; see who is currently advertising check out companies on the top 3 pages of your search and see what they are doing on their websites.
after you got keywords you want to work w/ google adwords can tell you what the cost per click is... best thing to do is focus on narrowed down searches over broad based searchs... "engineering" will cost more than "atlanta engineering", etc (you can also setup your account to only show in specific areas (country, state, etc)
there are lots of settings like spreading out your $$$ ads or you can just blow through them... the best is to do some trial and error and see what works for you. i was working for a company spending 200-300$ a day (thats a decent size budget)
there are tons of things you can be looking at; i would highly suggest working on some SEO tatics if you are planning on going the google adwords route; also some people find yahoo to be successful but i totally prefer google and think it is a better venture if the market/budget is there.

[Danny]

well what i mean by buy/sell...

sell - IA.com sells ads on our site basically we post up adword space to make $

buy - basically you buy clicks

here are a few tips:


do research on your market find out what keywords are most searchable... put a simple google search in like " atlanta engineering services" it yeilds Results - 1,990,000; see who is currently advertising check out companies on the top 3 pages of your search and see what they are doing on their websites.
after you got keywords you want to work w/ google adwords can tell you what the cost per click is... best thing to do is focus on narrowed down searches over broad based searchs... "engineering" will cost more than "atlanta engineering", etc (you can also setup your account to only show in specific areas (country, state, etc)
there are lots of settings like spreading out your $$$ ads or you can just blow through them... the best is to do some trial and error and see what works for you. i was working for a company spending 200-300$ a day (thats a decent size budget)
there are tons of things you can be looking at; i would highly suggest working on some SEO tatics if you are planning on going the google adwords route

Thanks. This is part of my seo/marketing plan. I have a good set of keyword/phrases to start with but we dont have 300 bucks a day to spend on adwords. Does it even make sense to spend less than that? I was thinking a couple hundred a month. My keywords are fairly targeted (1000-3000 searches per month mostly). Thanks again!

Is adsense whats refered to as selling? Or is that seperate?

[Paul]

Thanks. This is part of my seo/marketing plan. I have a good set of keyword/phrases to start with but we dont have 300 bucks a day to spend on adwords. Does it even make sense to spend less than that? I was thinking a couple hundred a month. My keywords are fairly targeted (1000-3000 searches per month mostly). Thanks again!

Is adsense whats refered to as selling? Or is that seperate?

ya adsense/adwords are their programs.

how much is your budget? if you don't have that much of a budget then you need to work really hard to maximize your $. i would suggest ad stealing your competition so you can get a idea of the maximum return on adwords. what i mean is launch your adwords campaign and then do the searches you targeted and click on your competitors over and over again driving up their $ and wasting their ads :goodjob: (you don't want to do this too long b/c it can back fire if these companies have people watching ads/clicks)

[Danny]

ya adsense/adwords are their programs.

how much is your budget? if you don't have that much of a budget then you need to work really hard to maximize your $. i would suggest ad stealing your competition so you can get a idea of the maximum return on adwords. what i mean is launch your adwords campaign and then do the searches you targeted and click on your competitors over and over again driving up their $ and wasting their ads :goodjob: (you don't want to do this too long b/c it can back fire if these companies have people watching ads/clicks)

Done that before, but only to companies i dont like/ have nothing to do with my search.

Think i am going to start off around 200 a month. Is it a good idea to group key phrases together that have similar CPC into the same campaign? Instinctively i want to group all the cheep key phrases together and all the expensive ones together, that way i can manage them a little bit better.

I have been spying on competition, i need to do it a little more.

[Paul]

Done that before, but only to companies i dont like/ have nothing to do with my search.

Think i am going to start off around 200 a month. Is it a good idea to group key phrases together that have similar CPC into the same campaign? Instinctively i want to group all the cheep key phrases together and all the expensive ones together, that way i can manage them a little bit better.

I have been spying on competition, i need to do it a little more.

ya that is a small budget whether or not it will be effective for you i can't say, but honestly if the first month doesn't yield anything useful i would consider other avenues for marketing. google adwords is far more effective if you have a decent budget to work w/ :goodjob:

[Danny]

ya that is a small budget whether or not it will be effective for you i can't say, but honestly if the first month doesn't yield anything useful i would consider other avenues for marketing. google adwords is far more effective if you have a decent budget to work w/ :goodjob:


Do you have any recommendations? The kicker is I am not trying to drive 100s and 1000s of people to my site. I just need a handful of people that are actually interested.

Is there a way to see if a competitor has an adwords campaign running (i doubt)?

[Paul]

Do you have any recommendations? The kicker is I am not trying to drive 100s and 1000s of people to my site. I just need a handful of people that are actually interested.

Is there a way to see if a competitor has an adwords campaign running (i doubt)?

ya keyword search before you launch your campaign - if you are just trying to drive traffic to your site you may want to look in to more SEO tatics b/c it will benefit you more in the long run. a couple hundred dollars a month in adwords will probably bring you very little results.

[Danny]

ya keyword search before you launch your campaign - if you are just trying to drive traffic to your site you may want to look in to more SEO tatics b/c it will benefit you more in the long run. a couple hundred dollars a month in adwords will probably bring you very little results.


ok. im going to do both, and experiment with both. Like i said im a hesitant to unload a bunch of money into adwords, i would get alot of traffic but thats not really my goal.

thanks again.