How to use Google Image Ads

Setup a new campaign, set to ‘content network only’, use CPC bidding.

Create a number of AdGroups, each with 2-10 keywords (use the “wonder wheel” for help choosing relevant keywords)

You don’t need to set “placements”, you can let Google find the best sites on which to show your ads (to start with – see below)

You absolutely must utilize conversion tracking, or forget the whole thing

Choose a ‘conversion goal’ that will allow you to get at least 5 conversions a day – this means that you can graduate to utilizing Conversion Optimizer as soon as possible, a great tool! So for example if you’re selling products & only making 1 sale a day, choose an earlier step in the process (eg, adding a product to the shopping cart) as the conversion. You need data & the faster you can get it, the quicker you’ll be profitable

Conversion optimizer rocks! One reason you want to get lots of conversion data is to start using this tool as quickly as possible

Run placement reports regularly (at least weekly). For ‘Content Network’ campaigns, exclude ‘bad’ placements just like you’d add negative keywords. You might also want to bid a little more on sites that generate cost effective conversions to get even more traffic from them

ONLY create 300×250 ads to start with. Create a number of different ones (different images, different copy etc) & test test test. Only when you have a decent amount of data, should you choose the best ad & create the other sizes.
This gets you 2 big benefits:
1. it’s cheaper to only create 1 size – which means you can try a wider range of tests
2. you get better much faster

Other thoughts:

If starting out with standard image ads (ie not animated), create your images to be 300×239 pixels (google adds an 11 pixel footer & you don’t want google resizing your images!)

Match the image in the ad to the landing page where possible (yep that means multiple landing pages if you want to test different image ads – use Google Website Optimizer to easily see which page converts best)

Depending on your market, start with ~$1.10 bids (so many people start at $1 & you want to just beat the majority without spending a fortune). See how many impressions you get & adjust accordingly

You may want to exclude certain categories of placement, eg death, tragedy etc

Have lots of AdGroups on ‘tangents’ to your main topic, eg what other topics are people looking at that are interested in your product… think about their demographics & psychographics

‘Peel & stick’ winning placements into a new campaign (& consider running this as a CPM campaign)
remember to add these sites as negatives in the original campaign!

Finally, when you think you’re done testing, test some more!

If that all sounds like too much work – fill in the form below & request a sneak peek of our upcoming module from the AdWords Bootcamp on Using Google Image Ads in Your AdWords Account.

As you may already know how much I don’t like GoDaddy & am not a fan of their practices… which is why I cancelled all of my domains with them months ago…

So you can imagine my surprise to wake up this morning to an email & a charge on my credit card from GoDaddy “according to our agreement”….The cheeky buggers!

Yep I know, I agreed to the T&Cs, I should have read the agreement more closely, 10% my fault. I get it.

BUT – as the master Godin points out in this Influence economy, trust is a fragile thing. Mess with it once & it goes away. Forever. And the disgruntled talk!

FYI I highly recommend namecheap for .com domains & netregistry for .com.au – neither company is sneaky.

1. purple cow – seth godin
2. meatball sundae – seth godin
3. the star principle – richard koch
4. the 80/20 principle – richard koch
5. cashflow quadrant – robert kiyosaki
6. re-imagine – tom peters
7. getting everything you can out of all you’ve got – jay abraham
8. unique ability – catherine nomura
9. 4 hour work week – tim ferris
10. the seven day weekend – ricardo semlar
11. secrets of internet entrepreneurs exposed – dale beaumont

plus, more web related:
don’t make me think – steve krug
waiting for your cat to bark – bryan eisenberg
the long tail – chris anderson
the irresistible offer – mark joyner
web analytics an hour a day – avinash kaushik

#1 create a new campaign for every country you want to advertise in. If you sell a digital product in, say, Australia, NZ, UK, USA & Canada, the only way to get sensible statistics for each of those countries is to have 5 separate campaigns. For instance if you mix them all together & pick ‘all english speaking countries’ then that keyword with average position 4.6 might be in the #1 or 2 spot in NZ & Canada, 4th in Oz & UK & position 9 in the States. Information you need to know in order to manage the account properly

#2 always create separate campaigns for Search vs Content traffic. Not only are the bid prices wildly different, the text of your Ads needs to be different too – you’re dealing with 2 very different mindsets. One group are actively searching, the other are browsing & you’re trying to catch their attention & interrupt them

#3 segment by keyword – here are some general suggestions:

• You might have some keywords that are product/service (hopefully experience!) focused & some that are variations on your brand name(s) – if you always want to be found for your brand (and why wouldn’t you?) then you’ll want to set a higher budget for those words & perhaps a lower one for more general product phrases. The only way to do that is to have different campaigns for each
• You might have location specific keywords – these are becoming essential in many markets. You could use groups for this but it’s often better to use different campaigns & set the location of each campaign to the location mentioned in your Ads. eg show the ‘this service in sydney’ ad only in the sydney or NSW state region.
• some keywords are very general – the ones used early in a buyers decision making cycle (eg “plasma tv”), others are very specific (eg “Sony PlasmaPro FWD-42PV1″). You may want to limit your spend each day on the general stuff, but always get found if someone is looking for a particular product number – again 2 (or more) campaigns with different budgets will solve this

And if it all sounds too hard to create different AdGroups & Campaigns, make sure you install the AdWords Editor – it makes moving keywords, ads & groups as easy as dragging & dropping!

To that end, here’s a few ideas that might help you find a market to sell to.

See what people wish for … If enough people are wanting to do/have/be something, there’s a market there

People also wish for books on Amazon, see the most wished for & fulfill those needs.
See what people want to do & what products have already been created for them – a great potential source of affiliate product ideas

Want to see what women (mainly in America) are concerned with/want/need head to Oprah’s message boards

Or what people are looking for when it comes to wealth at RichDad.com forums

See how trends change over time & what’s hot right now

and if you’re thinking of creating a class, see what already exists (or partner with an expert!)

Happy thinking!!

My answer is almost always to start with AdWords. Why? Because I’m a huge fan of the 80/20 rule.

Start with the 20% of effort that will give you 80% of the result. Then, once you’ve cracked Google & found what works there, by all means take your results to the other advertising options.

Below is a fairly typical shot from a client’s analytics report… It shows the traffic coming to their site from people searching. Now admittedly Yellow Pages isn’t in this report (it’s under referring sites report) but that showed a grand total of 26 for the same time period

Now again, bear in mind that this site hasn’t been optimized, but it’s in a fairly small niche, with little competition. But still, there’s about 30x the traffic coming from Google as there is from msn & 45x the traffic than from yahoo!

Of course, I could prattle on about how much easier to use AdWords is, how much faster you can test your headline, offer, price, even domain name or how well it works with Google Analytics… but I won’t. Suffice to say – just try it for your business (or blog!). Run a small test, with a low budget & see what happens.

I think you’ll like what you find.

 

It gives some great examples on just how easy it is to use these days & has this interesting quote from Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance

We’re just coming out of the early adopter phase. We’re starting to see more and more mainstream people … people that are not Silicon Valley technofreaks, that are not online entrepreneurs

If you have some jobs on your to do list, from the mundane ‘re do the graphics on the homepage’ to the somewhat larger ‘build a customer database’, then give elance, rentacoder or www.guru.com a try

You’ll love the price & the quality – most of the time – is excellent.

 

By spending as little as 5 minutes a week, you can track some key areas of your site that will give you clues & insight into the minds of your visitors. That means you can get better and better at offering them exactly what they’re looking for … which results in dramatic increases in the number of leads generated or sales made

• See where visitors are leaving your site – once you know where the ‘holes’ are in your site, you can patch them up & keep visitors on your site for longer, leading to more and more sales
• Find out how your visitors are finding you. If you’re spending a lot of money on Yellow Pages & other directories you need to find out exactly how many prospects they send to you and if its worth your while to continue… WebSavvy just saved a Sydney legal firm $10,000 a quarter. They stopped spending on a well known Sydney directory and now spend less, get more qualified visitors & spend a fraction of what they used to.
• Speaking of which, do you already use Google AdWords? (hint: if you don’t, you need to give it a try!). Google Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google AdWords – so you can track which keywords generate the most signups/sales & which are actually losing you money

• See how long visitors stay on your site. Measure this number each week & notice any changes.
• Depending on the type of site you may want this number to be as short or as long as possible – the number isn’t important, it’s the trend over time as you start to change bits of your site
• You can see at a glance where your visitors are coming from. For example, if you have lots of visitors from New Zealand, do you offer a product that they can purchase? Is there a version of your product or service that could be altered, or created to make the most of this market?
• Maybe you’re thinking of updating your site, but not sure how much or how little to do? Google Analytics will show you dozens of useful reports so that you can see exactly how your site is used. If you are going to redesign your site, wouldn’t it be useful to know the screen size of your average visitor – or better yet, all the screen sizes & connection speeds for all of your visitors last month. Then you could take this real data to your web designer to make sure you build the site that best suits your visitors
• Knowing which days (or which hours of the day) are most popular can save you thousands on your advertising – whether that’s online, tv, radio or even just your own newsletter. Once you know when its most profitable to advertise, uou can stop the unprofitable media & just keep those that make you money
• Oh yes… it’s FREE!

All up, Google Analytics offers over 80 different reports on all aspects of your website that allow you to follow a prospect from the moment they search for you, to the point where they become a customer. Valuable & vital information that allows you to better target your advertising, create more effective marketing campaigns & offer what your customers want to buy.

Do you have a Google Account?

If you’re going to use Google AdWords or Analytics, you’ll need a Google Account.

This does not mean that you have to get yet another email address or pay Google any money, just go to
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Enter your current email address, pick a password (Google even tells you how good the password is), choose your country, read & agree to the Terms of Service.

Google will now send you a quick email to confirm that you are who you say you are. Just click the link in this email & you’re set.

NOTE: sometimes this confirmation email goes astray or finds its way into the Spam or Junk folder of your account. If you haven’t received a confirmation email after 5 minutes, check these and/or click the link again to resend the email.

If you already have a Google AdWords account, you won’t need to go through these steps.

For as little as $5/hr you can get some really amazing people to do much of the work you need. These guys and girls are from all over the world, some are students, some work full time – almost all will provide you with great service. The way these sites work is a little like ebay – only with the price going down, not up!

First sign up for an account (it’s free), then ‘post’ your project. So, for example, if you wanted a new sales page created for your site, you’d write out the specifications you want to copywriter to stick to & probably show them examples of the type of thing you’d like.  So you might include a list of other websites, your existing copy, maybe even a list of questions that you’ve collected from your customers (so they know what appeals to your customers emotionally).

Then you choose the category you’d like your project shown in & pick a deadline for both the completion of the bidding process & for how long you want the job to take.  Submit the project for approval (by a human editor to make sure the rules aren’t abused), then sit back & wait – usually not for very long! If it’s a popular area (like web design) you’ll start getting quotes within minutes of your project being approved.

Many different specialists will make bids to complete the project for you. They can’t see each other’s bids so you’ll usually get quite a few low ones & the odd high bid.  Each provider or coder has a rating next to their name that is an average score given to them by past project owners like you. If they do a great job, they might get 9 or 10 out of 10. If not, they’ll get a lower score. What’s great is that you can read the rating & comments of all the previous projects they’ve worked on & get a really good idea how reliable they’re going to be.

Then when you’ve chosen a provider, place the amount of the bid into an escrow account using your credit card. This ensures that they can’t access your money until both sides are satisfied that the project is complete. Your money is totally safe.  It’s a great system, and one that will save you hours of frustration & potentially hundreds, even thousands of dollars.