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Chapter 1: AdWords.
I was lucky enough to be a beta tester for @Andy Black's Marketplace - Andy's AdWords Course - Get found by the people already looking for you. Whizzing through the course within half a day, my fingers were itchy to get going.
I held myself back for quite a while, because I made a promise to myself to not dive into technical skills anymore, but that's another story.
Week 01, W/C 31-Jul-17
I launched two initial campaigns on the 31. of July. Two days later, I had my first call from AdWords. Let's dive into it:
Goal
My initial goal was to put my newly gained AdWords knowledge to the test and see if I could generate leads for myself. If this experiment went well, I was thinking to add AdWords to my service offer. But, first things first.
Insight
I'm a graphic design freelancer covering all sorts of services within the industry, based in Vienna, Austria. Living and working in the capital can be good for the volume of my impressions, but it could also mean I'd have to compete with a lot of competition for top ad positions, resulting in high average costs per click (CPC). Let's see.
Campaign 1
Within this campaign, I am bidding on my (brand) name. I set this up to catch everybody who happens to type my name into Google. Spend should be low, since there is no competition bidding on my keywords (brand- & personal name) - at least not locally.
Campaign 2
I opened Excel and wrote down my initial 16 keyword seeds (to use Andy's words) I wanted to bid on. These keyword seeds were names for professions and products within the industry.
For example:
I used Google's Keyword Planner to check if my assumptions were realistic. I then went ahead and defined 9 locations I wanted to cover. Combining these two keyword seeds <profession> and <location>, I came up with 144 permutations. It took me around half a day to create ad groups and the according ads for each of those 144 permutations. I then went ahead and prevented my spend from running away by setting up a shared daily budget of €5 per day. I scheduled my ads to be shown from Monday to Saturday, 8 am to 8 pm. I was targeting small business owners locally and assumed these were the times they'd be in the office actively looking for people like me.
While I didn't bother writing the perfect ad copy (I wanted to get some results as quickly as possible), I increased the real estate of my ads on the SERP by adding the following ad extensions:
Results
Getting my first call after my first 8 clicks build up a lot of expectation. Let's see what the data says:
Key lessons learned:
Conclusion & Future Plans:
>> Up next: Chapter 1, Week 02, W/C 7-Aug-17
I was lucky enough to be a beta tester for @Andy Black's Marketplace - Andy's AdWords Course - Get found by the people already looking for you. Whizzing through the course within half a day, my fingers were itchy to get going.
I held myself back for quite a while, because I made a promise to myself to not dive into technical skills anymore, but that's another story.
Week 01, W/C 31-Jul-17
I launched two initial campaigns on the 31. of July. Two days later, I had my first call from AdWords. Let's dive into it:
Goal
My initial goal was to put my newly gained AdWords knowledge to the test and see if I could generate leads for myself. If this experiment went well, I was thinking to add AdWords to my service offer. But, first things first.
Insight
I'm a graphic design freelancer covering all sorts of services within the industry, based in Vienna, Austria. Living and working in the capital can be good for the volume of my impressions, but it could also mean I'd have to compete with a lot of competition for top ad positions, resulting in high average costs per click (CPC). Let's see.
Campaign 1
Within this campaign, I am bidding on my (brand) name. I set this up to catch everybody who happens to type my name into Google. Spend should be low, since there is no competition bidding on my keywords (brand- & personal name) - at least not locally.
Campaign 2
I opened Excel and wrote down my initial 16 keyword seeds (to use Andy's words) I wanted to bid on. These keyword seeds were names for professions and products within the industry.
For example:
- graphic designer vienna
- brochure designer vienna
I used Google's Keyword Planner to check if my assumptions were realistic. I then went ahead and defined 9 locations I wanted to cover. Combining these two keyword seeds <profession> and <location>, I came up with 144 permutations. It took me around half a day to create ad groups and the according ads for each of those 144 permutations. I then went ahead and prevented my spend from running away by setting up a shared daily budget of €5 per day. I scheduled my ads to be shown from Monday to Saturday, 8 am to 8 pm. I was targeting small business owners locally and assumed these were the times they'd be in the office actively looking for people like me.
While I didn't bother writing the perfect ad copy (I wanted to get some results as quickly as possible), I increased the real estate of my ads on the SERP by adding the following ad extensions:
- Sitelinks: I link to various sections on my landing page - directly from the ad.
- Callout: I added keywords I thought would increase the chances of somebody clicking on my ad, such as features of my offer.
- Structured snippets: I used these to already show all my services within the ad.
- Call extensions: I added my phone number (I got one specifically dedicated to AdWords) to be integrated into the ad as well.
Results
Getting my first call after my first 8 clicks build up a lot of expectation. Let's see what the data says:
- Only 13 out of 144 keywords were getting impressions.
- Only 7 out of 13 keywords were getting clicks.
- The top keyword in terms of impressions was shown 4 times as much as the one with the second highest impression count.
- Because of my short head campaigns, the average CPC (cost per click) was relatively low, yet higher than I'd expected.
- For the same reason, the CTRs (click through rate) were relatively high for a start.
- The average position for my top performing keywords was quite high - which means that looking at my average CPC, it's not that expensive to be shown among the top search results.
- The search impression share tells me that my ads were shown around 8 times out of 10 (on average) - not bad either.
- Oh, and I had my first call.
Key lessons learned:
- A keyword can consist of various seeds ( © @Andy Black)
- What people type into Google is not a keyword, but a search term
- A search term might trigger some of your keywords at the same time
- Multiplying seeds leaves you with permutations of your keywords
- You'd want to generate a separate ad group for each permutation, so you can analyze and compare the data collected
- Adding negatives such as "design" helps save money on people looking for information about the design process itself, such as students.
- Patience is key. After 5 clicks I already thought my funnel is broken and my website sucks, since nobody called.
- I wanted to go global and start showing my ads around the globe. I received the advice to start local, and figure this out first. What's the use of trying to sell logos to somebody in Chicago if I cannot sell to people right around the corner?
- The industry I am in is a bit more competitive and difficult, compared to "emergency electricians" for instance. People tend to shop around more, take more time and try to really make a conscious decision. This means that everything within the funnel had to be point on, from the ad copy to the landing page graphics.
- The power of speed. Instead of fiddling around on my landing page, I buried my ego under a stack of paper on my desk and just decided to send people to a less than optimal landing page. Why? Well, I could spend weeks trying to design a landing page for what I *THINK* people might be looking for. Or I could simply buy some data and act accordingly.
- Average ads also produce clicks.
- A less than optimal landing page also produces calls.
Conclusion & Future Plans:
- Based on the search terms people typed into Google, I can see what they are looking for.
- Based on that, I'd build out the according landing pages and optimize ad copy.
- This saves a lot of time and money you otherwise would have invested into building stuff nobody is looking for.
- Once the first results trickle in, I'd also go look at the competition.
- Oh, and obviously I don't have much of a brand yet:
>> Up next: Chapter 1, Week 02, W/C 7-Aug-17