Below are some AdWords tricks you can actually use. I submitted these tips to the MarketingSherpa Community as part of their seventh annual ‘Marketing Wisdom from the Field’ report.
When geo-targeting try not to use radii or self defined areas, use the location targeting offered by Google as this will ad a forth line of text to your ad and will dramatically increase CRT, quality scores and drive more visitors who convert better. I have seen a 100% increase in conversions rates with a 30% drop in conversion costs by switching to this strategy with some clients.
Experiment with banner ads in placement targeting on the content network. There is a reason Google has recently created a banner building tool inside their platform — they have massive inventory holes for banner space due to the economic downturn. Banner ads are the first things large companies cut out of an ad budget because they have low conversion rates. A smart user of of AdWords can find great placements and can send out targeted messages with banners.
Lastly, and this is so so important, all AdWords users need to be aware the the AdWords data they see inside Google Analytics that are associated with specific keywords are NOT accurate. GA does not show actual search queries in their AdWords reporting, instead they show the keywords inside your campaign that pulled the visitor to the site. There can be an enormous difference between these two pieces of data. You must use either a GA filter to grab this data or use a 3rd party tool like hittail. Building negative keyword lists from actual search query data is essential for all AdWords campaigns.
Even more lastly… make sure you make your bidding decisions based upon statistically significant data. Learn what statistical significance is, make a decision about what you want your confidence level to be, and stick to that plan. I have seen many people make permanent decisions about ads, about keywords and about Google Optimizer tests based on data that was not significant. Even if you choose 95% confidence level, you have a one in 20 chance of making a WRONG decision that could permanently affect your campaign’s performance. The fact is most people use “gut feel” confidence levels that have less than 80% confidence. This means that one in five of their decisions are dead wrong. It shocks me that this concept is not discussed more.
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