...n digitalcameras, they only see ads for digital cameras. If someone doesa search on organically grown coffee beans, they only see adsfor organically grown coffee. Google AdWords enables you toimplement precisely targeted advertising.What is Google AdWords?Open up a Web browser and go to the Google website. Type in thesearch term coffee and click search. Essentially, twotypes of search results come up: on the left and below are theorganic search results that nobody has sponsor...

...ed. On the rightside of your browser window and sometimes above the organicresults are the Sponsored Links. The Sponsored Links are paidadvertisements. Sponsored links are always identified as such bythe heading Sponsored Links.As participants in this automated auction, each of theseadvertisers is bidding for the keyword coffee. They only pay ifsomeone is interested enough to click on the advertisement; ifnobody clicks on the ad, the cost is zero. The higher theadvertiser bids on a keyword, the higher in the rankings the adappears and the more likely web searchers will see it. Rankingmeans visibility, though you do not have to be at the top of therankings or bid the highest amount for prospects to see your adand click on it. Your goal is to get the lowest Cost-Per-Click(CPC) and the highest quality clicks (sales and leads) for yourbudget.Find your NicheSometimes with popular keywords (e.g., coffee) there are manycompanies competing. On the other hand, popular keywords getmillions of searches so there might be enough clicks to goaround. The only way to find out if a particular keyword willwork for you is to try it. The problem is that many otheradvertisers are bidding for the popular keywords so your CPC islikely to be high. You are more likely to get a low CPC withmore obscure, highly targeted keywords. It will take somethought to come up with the right keywords.Our coffee roaster would probably want to try the keywordcoffee, and watch it like a hawk as it could result in many lowquality clicks (not many conversions to leads or sales). If akeyword does not produce high quality clicks after a reasonabletrial period (a couple weeks), then remove it; it may even beobvious sooner that a particular keyword is costing money butnot producing results.Perhaps our coffee roaster sells shade-grown coffee thatprotects Central American songbird habitat. While far lesspeople are searching for shade grown coffee than just coffee, itis likely to yield a lower CPC and higher quality clicks.Getting StartedThe first thing you need to get started with AdWords is a goal.Is your goal to make direct sales via e-commerce on yourwebsite? Is your goal to capture sales leads that you canfollow-up with and make the sale? Alternatively, is your goal acombination of both of these outcomes? Once you have determineda goal you need a website that helps you achieve that goal.Your website should be eye-catching and well organized, andinclude landing pages for your products or services. To see someexamples of landing pages, do a search for your services, andlook at what other companies in your market are doing. Thelanding page can be your main website if your website tightlyfocuses on one product or service you are advertising (e.g.,this permission-based email marketing website). Otherwise, thelanding page should be a page within your larger website thatfocuses on the specific product or service you are advertising(e.g., this page for web hosting).If you are selling directly from your website, your site shouldinclude a secure e-commerce system. Any good, technicallycompetent web design firm can set this up for you.If you want sales leads, then your site should include a call toaction to persuade people to request more information. The waythey submit a lead is to click on a link to a lead capture form.You need a form that at a minimum sends you-or the appropriatesales staff-an email but ideally should also create a lead foryou in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system such asSalesForce or SugarCRM.Whether you are selling directly from your website or capturingleads, your website should always have obvious ways to contactyou using whatever method the prospect feels most comfortableusing: a contact form, email, or telephone. Some companywebsites make it hard to figure out how to contact them for moreinformation.It is important to have a number of people - both inside andoutside of your company - test your website for usability andease of use. Prospects should never have to wonder how to buyfrom you or how to contact you to ask a question about yourproducts or services.Sign-up for Google AdWordsOnce you have a goal, website, and landing page, you are readyto sign up for Google AdWords. Learn by doing. It is easier towrite the advertisement and select keywords using the tools thatGoogle provides during the sign up process. In addition, someWeb hosting providers have collaborated with Google, and canoffer you a free AdWords coupon to get you started.If you plan to spend at least $30/day on AdWords, Google offersa JumpStart program to help you get started using AdWords.Google JumpStart specialists will help you create a campaign.The cost of the program is $299 but Google will apply that as acredit toward the cost of your initial clicks. Not having usedJumpStart myself, I cannot vouch for its quality though Googlegenerally offers high quality services.Campaigns and Ad GroupsThe Campaign level is where you set your daily budget, languagetargeting, location targeting, ad distribution preferences, andthe start and end dates for your campaigns (if applicable).The Ad Group level is where enter your keywords and theadvertisements themselves. Each Ad Group has one or more ads.Write at least two ads for each ad group so you can trydifferent approaches and compare the results.In my experience, it has been beneficial to create multiplecampaigns so I can experiment with different parameters andcompare the results. Campaigns that work well I keep; campaignsthat do not work well, I delete. TargetingChoose the language you want to target, and then the countriesor territories. This requires some thought. Can you offer yourproduct or service globally, in just the United States, or injust your city or region? You can target your campaign to theworld or to specific countries, regions, states, or cities. For even more precise targeting, you can even target yourcampaign to a certain number of miles from your business or evenan area bounded by coordinates. Write your AdvertisementsYou have just a 25-character title get their attention, and a70-character ad to get people interested enough to want to clickon your ad. It is not a lot of text so make it pithy.Write the Headline, the text of the ad, and enter the DisplayLink (always link to main page of your website), and then enterthe Destination URL (your landing page). The Destination URLmight be your main page or a page within your main websitededicated just to selling the product at hand. Below are acouple of fictional ad examples. I do not work in the coffeeindustry but I do enjoy a good cup of coffee. Headline: Shade Grown Coffee Beans Description line 1: Shadegrown coffee. Tastes Description line 2: better & saves valuablerainforest. Display URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.comDestination URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com?&utm_id=coff1Another example: Headline: Shade Grown Coffee Beans Description line 1: Coffeethat tastes better and Description line 2: protects valuablerainforest. Display URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com/Destination URL: www.goodshadegrowncoffee.com?&utm_id=coff2Conversion TrackingTo track the conversion rate of your campaigns - i.e., how manysales or leads you get for your investment - requires a littlepreparation. You will need to have your webmaster embed snippetsof code to the appropriate pages on your website. Googleexplains how to setup and implement your conversion trackingcode in the Google AdWords help section of their site.Choose Your KeywordsAs I mentioned earlier, it is important to pick good keywords.Initially, choose both general keywords and narrowly targetedkeywords, and carefully evaluate the results. Keep keywords thatare getting you results, and remove keywords that are notworking for you. You will probably need to run your campaignsfor a while before you will have enough information to determinewhich keywords are succeeding for you.In the keyword space provided in the setup process, list thekeywords or keyword phrases you would like to use. Becausepeople tend to type fast when they search the web, be sure toinclude common mis-spellings of your keywords. Here are someexample keywords that our fictional coffee roaster might use:coffee coffe shade grown coffee shade grown coffe shade grownshade coffee coffee shade grownTo get more keywords enter a keyword into the Keyword ToolBox and click on Get More Keywords. This willgenerate additional keywords, some of which will be relevant toyou and some of which will not be relevant. Keep the relevantkeywords and toss the rest.Now, you have a good starting list. Later, you will want to addnew keywords, and remove non-performing keywords. A good keywordis one that yields you conversions into customers or good leads.Google Search versus Google Content NetworkGoogle AdWords can place your add in essentially two places:Google search and the content network. Google search are resultsfrom searches that prospective customers do directly usingwww.google.com. The content network consists of Google partnersites and sites that run advertisements through Google's AdSenseprogram.In my experience, Google search has yielded much more qualityclicks than the content network. The content network is worthtrying but I recommend putting it into a separate campaign soyou can measure its results against your Google search campaign.The content network is opt-out, and is not possible to opt-outduring the setup process. However, to opt-out of the contentnetwork for a specific campaign, you can go back to campaignsettings and uncheck the checkbox for content network.Then setup a separate campaign where you focus on the contentnetwork and opt-out of the search network. Compare the resultsbetween the two campaigns. It is possible that you will findGoogle search is more productive than the content network but,of course, your results may be different from mine.If you want to keep it simple until you are more comfortablewith AdWords, I recommend starting with just the search network.Then come back in a few weeks and setup a separate campaign totry the content network, and compare the results to what you aregetting with the search network.Your Daily BudgetYour daily budget for your campaign is the ceiling on your dailyspending. You can set this number at whatever you want. It is agood idea to start out with a relatively low daily budget whileyou refine your AdWords effectiveness. As your ad campaignssucceed and bring you more business, you will likely want toincrease your budget.Start with a daily budget of about $10 to $15 per day andgradually increase that amount as you fine-tune your approach.Your BidIn addition to your daily budget, you will need to set a maximumbid that you are willing to pay as a Cost Per Click (CPC). Thisrequire some trial and error to get right. Being the highestbidder is not really what that you want. Instead, you want toget the most quality clicks you can for your budget. If you bidtoo high, your CPC will be too high and will eat up your budgettoo fast; if you bid to low you will not get enough clicks andhence enough sales.You might try starting with a bid of $2.50, and see what happensfor a day or two. Then gradually raise or lower the bid,depending on results. If clicks consume your daily budget in acouple of hours, then lower your bid. If the advertisements arenot getting many clicks, then raise your bid. Continue thisprocess until you find the optimal bid. Leads and SalesWhat if visitors are clicking on your ad but are not buying orcontacting you? That likely means your ad is working but yourwebsite or landing page is not persuading prospective customersto take the next step. It can also mean that your product orservice needs some work to become more competitive. Compare whatyou are offering to your competitors.The simplest things can make a dramatic difference. When yourlanding page is not getting you conversions, change one thingand see what happens over the next day or two. That way, you candetermine which changes work. Do not be afraid to try possiblesolutions, knowing that some changes will fail and some willwork well. Recently, one of our landing pages was not getting enoughconversions so I made some minor changes to the wording on thepage and conversions started going up the next day. On anotherpage, we replaced our very simple order form with a much moreelaborate version. Our sales for that service immediatelyplummeted. We simply changed the order form back to the simplerversion and sales picked up again immediately.Harvesting From the Money TreeThe Google AdWords money tree is now planted, optimized, andworking to bring you leads and sales. What do you do now?Harvest it, of course, by solid follow-through and providing thebest possible service for your clients.Go back from time to time, and take a look at your results. Makeadjustments to your budget and bids as needed. Write anotheradvertisement that takes a slightly different tact. Remove an adthat is not producing high quality clicks for you. Make someimprovements to your website to see if you can increase yourconversion rate.Practice Kaizen - a Japanese word for continuous, incrementalimprovement. Even if your Google AdWords money tree is providinggood yields, there are always ways to improve its performance.So pour yourself a cup of good coffee, and get started usingGoogle AdWords today!