The Scary, Growing Ad Group, It’s the Attack of the Adblob!
We participated in the Greater Lansing Business Monthly Fall Showcase yesterday, and I was a presenter at the Lansing IT Council’s Google 101 event. Both went very well. At the Showcase, we had lots of interested companies stop by, and we also saw a lot of old friends and colleagues. At the Google 101 presentation, it was myself, Bill Hamilton of TechSmith, Ryan Vartoogian of Spartan Internet Consulting, and Travis Stoliker of Liquid Web. It was a very exciting honor to be on this panel with such respected and successful individuals, and their companies.
The areas I spoke on within the presentation were:
Search Engine Result basics - explaining the difference between paid and organic results.
Ad Group Development and Ad Construction - a real favorite topic of mine.
Key takeaways - I got to wrap up the presentation with key points of emphasis, and well as some tangible takeaways, such as setting up a Google Webmaster Tools account, and registering with the Google Local Business Center, and some resources available at Google.
Getting back to Ad Groups, I discussed the importance of setting up very tightly constructed ad groups, with with specific and ultra-relevant keywords. I have seen too many companies group several keywords and keyword variations into too few ad groups. The result are ad groups which generate low click through rates, or worse yet, ads that show up for keywords that are too broad, and attract clicks that result in poor visits to your site. Now that is expensive! In the spirit of Halloween, I like to call it the Attack of the the Adblob!!!
You may start with good intentions and a few keywords centered around your service or product, and then over time the temptation to keep adding keywords to it that you think users may type in. Or maybe you are passive in your approach, grouping in a lot of keywords into just 2-3 ad groups thinking it will just magically work.
While it is good to add relevant keywords that your target audience may type in, you need to establish ad texts in different ad groups that address the diverese keyword variations. And I am not talking about just the color of your product either. Be thinking about those keyword variations for ad texts. ”Halloween costume” should be not in the same ad group as “Halloween masks”. Is there a rule of thumb on the number of keyphrases? Well no, but anything more than 8 should have you concerned.
A fundamental driver to any good Adwords venture is small ad groups. This approach enables specific ad creation, which allows for the usage of keyword variations in ad text, which allows for higher click through rates, which means a better Quality Score, which means lower cost per click. Whew! But seriously, that is the cycle, and that is why that approach is important.
Enjoy your Halloween,,, and don’t let the Adblob massacre your AdWords budget!
Back to School Part 2
Well, it was back to school again on Friday — Google School if you will. I was up late cramming like a college student on Thursday night, as I took the exam to become a Google Adwords Qualified Individual. In an industry where there still is not a lot of qualifications or official status degrees, this is an important one. The exam was not very difficult, and only a couple of billing and international questions caught me off guard a bit. You need at 75% to pass, — I got a 90%. This is wildy exciting. No, really, let’s party, I’ll bring the Bombay Sapphire.
In all seriousness, as our industry moves forward, I hope that there continues to be industry certifications and qualifications that appear. I know that currently the SEMPO and the WAA offer some as well. Some colleges have started to take mild approaches as well. My hope is that sometime in the very near future a major Big 10 university we see offered Online Marketing as a degree choice, or least as a cognate/minor. I would envision a curriculum encompassing classes on business aspects of web design, online brand development, online social media, paid search management, web analytics, and of course organic optimization. I think there is a good demand for it, and as a learning base of the opportunities in the industry grows at the younger levels, this demand will increase.
In the meantime, we rely on Google and Yahoo to set standards and bars, which we will continue to strive for and achieve at Netvantage Marketing. Speaking of bars,,,, did you bring the tonic, ,,, or least a lime!
Back to School
I had an opportunity to do some guest teaching at Mason High School yesterday. I came in for Kristin Higgins’s Info Tech class. I talked about the importance of Google, and how it will become an increasingly important channel for marketers to market to their generation. To make the point obvious to them, we took some polls. We took an obvious poll of how many of them watch TV, or even watch the commercials on TV. Many of them barely listened to the radio, much less listening to those commercials. Finally, I rattled off some search engines, Yahoo, Live, AOL, Cuil, Omgili, Ask, and a few kids raised their hands. Then of course it was nearly 100% of those that raised their hands for Google as their search engine of choice. We then talked further about how Google will become the primary marketing channel for their generation of consumers.
We then walked through some fun keyword volumes examples, such as approximatley how many times do you think Jay-Z was searched on Google in September. (1.8 Million) I showed them some of the basics of natura search, keeping light, of course. We then walked through and set up a Google AdWords campaign for Mason Bulldog Sweatshirts, writing the ad, selecting geography, setting the budget, etc. Within 10 minutes, there ad was showing on Google, which of course was neat.
Finally, I talked about careers in search marketing, and in marketing/IT in general. Within this, I mentioned the Capital Area IT Council, and their efforts in trying to promote careers in our field, and getting people excited. As high school kids go, many haven’t thought that far ahead, but I tried to stress the possible educational/career track, as well as the many benefits of working in our industry. In summary, it was great to be in the classroom with young people, and give them a little insight into how a powerful marketing channel works. I look forward to representing Netvantage Marketing, and the CAITC in the future with such events.
