Artdomain Art Marketing Blog

In this last article on Artists and Google AdWords I want to give you 5 secrets to help you be more successful with Google AdWords :-

1. Split Test Your Ads
   One important tactic is to constantly have two adverts running per Ad Group, which is called ’split-testing’.  These adverts don’t need to be hugely different, as small differences in Google AdWords can make huge differences in your Click Through Rate (CTR), and therefore the amount you are charged for your ads.
    
   With this tactic you have to monitor your ads regularly, and delete the ad that is performing poorly once you have established, say after 1000 page impressions (times your ad has been shown for a search), that one ad is better than the other.  Then create a new ad to compete with the previous best ad. 
    
   To ensure that Google doesn’t automatically decide which is the better ad (and subsequently start showing that ad more often) you have to choose ’Edit Campaign Settings’, just under the Campaign name, and in the Advanced Options section choose ‘Rotate: Show Ads more Evenly’.  You would want to do this if an ad had a better sales conversion rate but wasn’t the best CTR, as Google would automatically show the ad with the better CTR more.
   
    
2. Small Changes can make a Big Difference
   Small changes to your ad copy can make a huge difference to your CTR.  It’s all about attracting the eye to your ad, engaging the viewer with your ad by interesting copy, and encouraging the viewer to take action i.e. click on your ad.  Consider using capital letters at the start of the important words in your ad title, use capitals in your visible web address, use alliteration in the ad title or text, create a time sensitive offer in your ad i.e. 25% off ENDS this weekend, if you use Google Checkout as your payment system - get this set up so that it shows under your ad, as this can make your ad very visible to the scanning web surfer.
    
3. Set up Google Analytics on your Site
   Along the top green bar of Google AdWords there are also other tabs including ‘Analytics’.  With Google Analytics you insert a small piece of HTML code into each page of your website, which allows Google to track which pages of your website are visited and which words were being searched on by the viewer that brought them to your site.  Along with AdWords you can then see which keywords are most effective at bringing in visitors plus which keywords are attracting the visitors most likely to browse around the site, rather than bounce back to the search results.  This will give you the information you need to delete some keywords, as you will see through Analytics which keywords are bringing visitors most and least interested in your art.  Plus you will see which ‘phrases’ people are searching on that you may not have already thought of, and can then incorporate them as ‘exact’ keyword searches into your campaign.
    
   For more advanced use you can set up ‘Conversion Tracking’ (on the green Google AdWords Campaign Management toolbar).  This will allow you to set up a code that you can insert into the landing pages that a viewer would arrive at after making a purchase, or signing up to your newsletter.  You can then see exactly which keywords have brought to your site your most valuable visitor.
    
4. Bid to be in position number 2 or 3
   Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you should bid to be at the top slot number 1 for your keywords.  This spot gets a lot of clicks but a lot of these are spontaneous clicks, and not necessarily because your ad has been read and matches what the searcher is looking for.  To change the bid amount for individual keywords choose either the ‘Edit’ button under the ‘Settings’ for that particular keyword, or if you want to change the bidding amount for multiple keywords, check the boxes beside the keywords you want to change and choose ‘Edit Keyword Settings’:
   
    
   If you are on one of these top spots, your ad gets a higher ‘click through rate’ (CTR). This is good is because the Google AdWords system actually rewards you for having an ad with a high CTR by charging you less per click! This is because Google AdWords makes more money from ads that have a higher click through and means that you can often be paying less per click than some of your lower placed competitors!
    
5. Key an eye on your Ads!
   Don’t just think that you can set them up and let them run happily away…you will end up paying more than you need to if you do this.  You have to keep monitoring them, optimising them by the techniques above and in the earlier articles.  The reward is that you will be bringing in much more targeted visitors than before you used AdWords, and if you have set up the Conversion Tracking and Analytics, you can see very clearly which visitors are the most valuable, and then spend your time trying to increase the number of those types of web visitors.
    

I’d love to hear what your experiences are of using AdWords, or your comments on any of the AdWords articles on the Artdomain blog.

Here’s the two earlier articles:

• Google AdWords to Promote your Art - Artists & Google AdWords Article Part 1
• Getting Started with Google AdWords - Artists & Google AdWords Article Part 2