How to Win the AdWords Game
What does being an affiliate manager and using Google AdWords have in common?
Well, it is really simple.
I needed a way to test new creatives and sales pitches before I gave them to my best affiliates.
After considering multiple options, I came to a conclusion that the fastest and the most practical way to do this would be to use pay-per-click engines. Furthermore, of all PPC engines out there, I picked Google AdWords for my tests.
Here are 4 reasons why:
- You can add/modify your listings almost in real-time (just a few minute delay). With other engines, you have to wait 3 to 5 business days to have your listings approved.
- You can run multiple ads for a single keyword at the same time. The ads' positions are determined by a maximum CPC and CTR, not just by the maximum CPC alone. Google with its partners can provide an enormous amount of traffic quickly for any category imaginable.
For the reason #1, I would like to point out that you do appear on the Google SERPs sponsored links right away, but you still need to wait a few days to appear on its partners' sites. I'll go over the advantages of being shown on the partners' sites later on.
Here is one more reason (probably the most important one) why I use PPC:
You always need to test your new ads, sales letters, and products with the highest quality leads. An offering that produces poor results with good leads will not produce better results with worse leads.
In other words, it is better to fail fast than to drag a poor offering forever. In my situation, there are only two practical ways to apply this principle to work:
- I could run e-mail campaigns for the past customers (customers who bought more than once and who bought a lot would be even better).
- I could utilize a source of fresh, highly targeted traffic.
One of the most valuable assets of any business is its customer base. Your customer base is not something you want to mess with. Imagine how high the unsubscribe rate of the list would be if you started running 2-3 test mailings per day for your past customers!
Even if you forget about people who unsubscribe, wasting the time of your customers -- people who trusted you and your offering -- by turning them into test subjects is simply not a nice thing to do. It is a sure way to ruin all your future attempts at the back-end marketing with those who did not unsubscribe.
That leaves the second-best option, using PPC traffic.
A carefully planned PPC campaign can bring highly targeted leads in a short amount of time. Since I use AdWords for testing, I am on a limited budget. This makes things a lot harder because my tests must be overall profitable. If I waste my budget, I won't be able to test any more.
At the same time, the fact that I'm constantly testing implies that 90% of my efforts result in losses. Since only about 10% of my tests turn out to be profitable, they must generate enough money to cover themselves and to cover all failed tests.
If unlike me, you are planning on using AdWords to its fullest potential, this post might very well save you a lot of time and money. This post should not be considered a definitive guide in any way. It is simply a description of common patterns in successful tests and techniques that I use.
Terminology
I use certain terms and abbreviations throughout this post and future posts. Below, you can find a brief explanation of each of them.
Please note that some basic understanding of the Internet marketing in general and knowledge of Google AdWords in particular are required in order for the report to make sense.
I include just a short explanation for each one of them, but you should be able to find much more information on the net.
SERP - search engine results page
ROI - return on investment
USP - unique selling proposition
CTR - click-through ratio
CPM - cost per thousand (impressions)
PPC - pay per click
widget - a hypothetical product
conversion ratio - a percentage of leads that perform a desired action (sign-up, sale) attribute - a specific visual or conceptual element of a page, an ad creative, or a sales letter (used in fine-grained performance comparison testing)
widgets- a search term
"widgets" - a phrase match
[widgets] - an exact match
link title - external links to outside resources
link title - internal document links
How to Win the AdWords Game
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