IS YOUR GOOGLE ADWORDS ACCOUNT BEING MANAGED PROPERLY?
Whether you manage your dealership Google Adwords account in-house or contract an agency to take care of it for you, there are tools and best practices that can make a huge difference in the number of visitors to your website.
Are your keywords optimized? How’s your quality score? Are your AdWords producing the results you want? Is the click-through rate where you want it to be? Are you using the right ad extensions? Are you spending too much? Too little? Has your head exploded yet?
Google AdWords is a digital marketing tool that, when used correctly, can drive more traffic to your website, support sales and marketing campaigns, and create opportunities to capture leads.
However, it’s by no means a simple tool to wield and, like any tool, if you use it the wrong way, the results will be less than desirable. If you don’t know what you’re doing it could be comparable to using sandpaper to wash your car.
WHAT IF YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG?
If you’re not running a fully optimized Google AdWords account, you’re quite literally throwing your money away. You may as well start setting fire to hundred dollar bills.
An incorrectly managed AdWords account eliminates the benefits of Google AdWords completely.
The issue that most people experience is that Google isn’t in the habit of telling you your account may not be running to the best of its ability. It’s up to you to make sure your AdWords account is optimized.
HOW TO DO IT RIGHT
To manage your AdWords account correctly means you are taking advantage of all the benefits AdWords has; which means your ads will be:
Cost Effective with a Controlled Budget: Because you only pay when people click your ad, you’re getting a much better ROI right out of the gate. Compare an ad that you pay for only when people engage with it to a print newspaper ad or billboard that may or not be seen, and if it is seen, will be difficult to measure whether it’s making your customers take an action. You’re also required to set a daily budget with AdWords so you’ll never go over your set budget.
Targeted: The targeting option for Google AdWords ensures you’re speaking to the right people, in the right area, at the right time. Pushing ads more heavily during the day, for example, is great for dealerships that want to increase their walk-in traffic.
Measurable: A massive part of running a successful AdWords campaign is the ability to measure the results. Constantly test different ad groups, and ad copy, and make the necessary changes to make sure you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck. Google AdWords comes with built-in analytical tools allowing users to measure impressions (the number of times your ad is displayed), the number of clicks, your click through rates, the number of conversions (if you’re using conversion tracking) and many more.
ENOUGH GENERALITIES, WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE SURE YOUR ADWORDS ACCOUNT IS RUNNING OPTIMALLY?
Here are a couple of ways you can really make your AdWords campaigns work for you:
Structure Your AdWords Account: Your mom wasn’t telling you to clean and organize your room simply so she wouldn’t have to. She probably told you so you could develop some great structure and organization habits for when you would be running digital marketing campaigns. Okay, digital marketing likely wasn’t a thing when your mom was telling you to clean your room but structure and organization matter!
Piling your broad search keywords into a single campaign or ad group can be a first indication that you’re wasting your ad spend. As Adam Kreitman at Digital Marketer points out “it’s better to split those keywords into ad groups” or better yet, get even more specific.
Optimize Keywords: Getting clicks to your AdWords campaign isn’t the hard part. Getting the right people to click is the tricky part. By spending some time researching the keywords for your business, you can drive more of the right traffic to your website. You can even use long tail keywords; specific phrases (containing 3 or more words) that may result in less clicks but will target a more qualified user.
The best campaigns will use a combination of Exact Match and Broad Match keywords. Think of Exact Match as a sniper gun. While it is more difficult to use and shoots only a single bullet at a time, an exact match is going to attract more qualified traffic; meaning better conversion.
When using Broad Match keywords, be sure you’re using them to identify potential keywords you may have otherwise missed but don’t run them long term. Broad Match keywords are going to negatively affect your Quality Score because they are going to have lower click through rates and can be less relevant to your audiences; meaning lower conversion. Like a shotgun, using Broad Match is going to generate a lot of matches, but when you are hunting ducks, why waste bullets on trees. Mine your Broad Match keywords for other keywords you can use in exact matches and then discontinue.
Use Automation Features: Automation tools provide additional options that can increase your ROI. Using Keyword-specific tools in your ads means your ad heading will automatically become whatever someone just searched for making them more likely to click it, or the countdown feature can drive traffic and conversions by highlighting days remaining on a sale or dwindling inventory.
Test, Measure, Revise, Repeat: If you don’t know the importance of testing ads (ideally in A/B splits), measuring the results, running with the successful ads and introducing new ads to test against the successful ones, then we may not be able to help you. The idea that you hit the perfect ad from the onset of your campaign is akin to hitting a major-league home run with your first at-bat in little-league. I mean, it’s possible, but highly unlikely.
By constantly measuring the results of your AdWords campaign, testing new ads, and optimizing your keywords, you can continually increase your advertising ROI and help your customers find you more easily.
Hopefully these tactics can help get you back on track with ensuring your account is running properly (or at least confirm that you are on the right track).
There are all sorts of built-in tools and best practice techniques that can make or break your AdWords campaign. DealerXchange manages a number of AdWords accounts for clients and our optimization techniques show positive results, drive more traffic, and result in more conversions.
DEALERXCHANGE RECENTLY OPTIMIZED A GOOGLE ADWORDS ACCOUNT FOR A CLIENT
AND WITHIN 30 DAYS THEY EXPERIENCED A 281% INCREASE IN SITE TRAFFIC.
Not sure if your AdWords is the best it can be? We are happy to review your Google AdWords account with you for free and identify areas for improvement. We’ll even suggest some simple fixes so you can start seeing results right away!