Ever been in a checkout lane at a supermarket, where you and 10 others were waiting their turn, only to notice a newcomer use the lane four aisles over and get immediate service? The lane was open all the time, but you got into the crowded one because everyone else was, too.

It works that way in the Adwords management game as well. Everyone is following everyone else; they are using others’ keywords, using the same ads, and even coveting equal top ad positions on the page. Now don’t get me wrong. There is much to gain by legally and ethically using your competitor’s work to take a shortcut to where you need to be, but you have to know when to follow and when not to.

Many times the most hotly contested keywords are simply not worth the price others are paying. And more times than not, I suspect, the company with the ad in the very top position is losing money on that placement. Often, people are bidding up keywords that don’t even bring conversions – these keywords are what we call “losers” – and probably aren’t worth minimum bid pricing, but since everyone else has that keyword and the price is high, then people just naturally “follow the crowd.”

There have been many studies that show that people often do something I call “clicking their way down.” In other words, they click first on the ads with the highest position, but they are prone to hitting the “back” button and clicking on lower ads until they are satisfied that they have enough information to make a purchasing decision.

Now, armed with this information, do you still want to follow the crowd and buy your way to the top ad position? Maybe!

Here are the rules I like to follow:
-Covet top ad positions for well-thought-out keywords.
-Try to rank lower for more generic keywords

In cases where the prices on keywords are artificially higher because of intense competition, I don’t really care to be in the top ad position for that keyword – ESPECIALLY if it not a targeted keyword, meaning it is too “generic.”

It does not make much sense to pay an outrageous price per click in an effort to be in the top ad position for the term “legal”, but it may make lots of sense to be in the top ad position for the term “legal real estate services in Austin”.  The latter keyword indicates that the searcher knows exactly what she wants. She has, perhaps, already performed a few searches that were not quite as targeted as this one, and has now refined her search in an effort to get more pertinent information.

So what are the instances where we SHOULD be a follower of someone’s Adwords campaign. A good example is “stealth research.” Others call it “spying.” But whatever name you call it, keyword spying is perfectly legal, ethical, and vitally important if you want to take a shortcut to profitability and learn from your competitors’ efforts and mistakes.

Keyword spying involves using a free or paid research tool that tells exactly what keywords your competitors have been using over a certain time period. You can use this research to find profitable keywords. For now, don’t worry about how these spy companies get their data, just make sure that you take advantage of one of these services so that you can benefit from your competitors prior research.

Some of the keyword spying tools that are available include Spyfu, PPC Webspy, and Keyword Spy to name a few. There are many others. The key is that you invest time to actually learn how to use all of their features and then apply those to your business.

But even when spying on your competitors, it is always good to remember that just because they are doing something, doesn’t mean it works. Use your own judgement and intuition – or hire a professional Adwords management company who already has these tools and can use them in combination with their own experience to help you successfully manage your Google Adwords campaign and stand out from the crowd.

Even if your website has a 20% conversion rate (and depending on how you define “conversion” and the industry that you’re in a 20% conversion may be phenomenal) that means you are still failing with 80% of the prospects those clicks bring to your site.

So if you have 10 clicks and fail with 8 of them, but can find a way to make that scenario profitable, then the only thing you need is MORE failure!

Another way to say it is that you need more clicks. Instead of 10 clicks why not 1,000 or even 10,000 if the 10 clicks worked? That’s what we call “ramping up” a campaign.

The problem is that many Adwords campaigns fail because they fail big first. Instead of testing the water with their big toe first, they jump right into the deep end and many end up diving in head first without so much as testing the depth of the water (so to speak). Fast failure that you can’t make profitable will burn through a budget and give the advertiser a bad taste of what could have worked out to be a tremendously profitable venture into the rewards of Adwords marketing and sometimes only a small tweak is what you needed to make an Adwords campaign successful.

Yes, you are going to fail most of the time, but let’s find out a way that we can make that failure as profitable as possible. In order to succeed with Google Adwords or any other search marketing campaigns there are some basic skills that you are gong to have to have. These skills include:

– How to do proper keyword research

– How to properly organize and format those keywords once you find them (This is a skill that even the best Adword campaign managers lack.)

– How to write ad copy will that entice clicks

– How to write ad copy that encourages conversions (Again a skill that most pros have failed to master.)

– Recognizing Which keyword terms are priced too high and you need to avoid

-Where you want to rank on a page (Hint: Depending on your market, it may not always be the 1-3 adword positions!)

How to outsmart your competition on bidding
Before you learn to master these skills you should not begin your Google Adwords campaign with a huge daily budget, neither should you bid exorbitant amounts on keywords that may put you out of business. Many times we find that the keywords that everyone is bidding so high on don’t convert well anyway!

For example, let’s say the keyword “attorney” is going for $8 a click. Let’s think for a second, do you really want to bid on that keyword? Unless you know what you are doing with that search term, then your ad may show in the following instances:

-When someone needs an attorney (Good)
-When a college kid is doing a research paper on attorneys. (Bad)
-When someone types in “free attorney” (Very Bad)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to spend your money on a keywords such as “accident attorney in Georgia” (if that is where you practiced)?

The bottom line is that you will fail more in Google Adwords than you will succeed, but if you can figure a way to make even the small failures profitable, then it may be time to ramp up your campaign in a big way.

Sometimes you may be “in over your head” or perhaps you don’t have anyone in your organization that has the time to manage your Adwords or other search marketing campaigns efficiently. That’s when you need to seek the advice of a PPC or Adwords Management expert so that they can help you fail “profitably”.

Good keyword research and bidding skills may get your ad shown in a top ad position when someone does a search, but if you don’t have a compelling headline, you may be wasting a lot of money. On the other hand, you can have poor ad placement, ranking near the bottom of the page, but if your headline sticks out, then you will end up “stealing” clicks from your higher-ranking competitors.

So if you don’t know how to write good headlines, where can you start? Start by looking at some of the ads that appear when you search for your keywords in Google. Now, if you are a student of mine, you already know my philosophy about the top ad position. Hint: “The top ad position is not always the place you want to be, and the company advertising there, does not necessarily know what they are doing.” But there ARE instances when the top ads will have the best headlines. Look at those ads and pay attention.

Another method that I like is to use a research tool, such as Spyfu or Keyword Spy to see which ads of a competitor have consistently been in positions #4-6. Many times you will find that your competitor affords to rank lower because they have strong headlines that out-convert higher-ranking ads. Read those headlines and learn from them as well.

Also, it may be beneficial to look OUTSIDE of your industry for Adword headline ideas. How about a real (at the time of this writing) live example?

Let’s say I am writing an ad for an attorney and need an inspiring headline. I will now search for a babysitter to get ideas. So I just typed “need a babysitter” into Google and here is an incredible idea from an ad whose headline is: “Need a Local Babysitter?” I love the word “local”. I can now use the headline “Need a Local Attorney?” or write another headline that includes the word “local”. At the time of this writing, a quick search on “need an attorney” showed no ads on the first page using the word “local.” My ad would definitely stand out!

You may be wondering, “Can I steal headlines? Is that plagiarism?” There is no rule that says you cannot use the same headline your competitor is using. But you must remember, 99% of the time the advertiser is doing SOMETHING wrong. So if you are going to copy a competitor, I suggest you copy only what works. Sure, I like to look at competitors’ ads and take notes. I even recommend starting a digital “swipe” file, where you take headlines that you really like and copy them to a document and keep adding to that file for future reference.

There are many free resources on the web that can train you to write good headlines and we will cover some great headline-writing techniques in a later article, but the most important thing is that you recognize your return for investing time into learning how to write a great headline. If you can’t afford to invest your time, then hire a copywriter who knows how to write headlines and ad copy for search marketing ads. Many Adwords management companies also have specialists who are experts in writing headlines and ad copy that can turn otherwise so-so advertising into highly successful Google Adwords campaigns.

Sometimes that punishment results in your website being removed from its index and search results. Other times, it may be an “adjustment” downward for your page ranking. Here is how Google puts it in their own words:

“Google may temporarily or permanently remove sites from its index and search results if it believes it is obligated to do so by law, if the sites do not meet Google’s quality guidelines, or for other reasons, such as if the sites detract from users’ ability to locate relevant information. We cannot comment on the individual reasons a page may be removed…”
(Google Webmasters/Site Owners Help Manual)

The “Google Slap” is mostly used when referring to cases where organic listings are penalized. Organic listings are free search results that appear below and to the left of paid ads; however, make no mistake about it; you can get “slapped” for running bad Adword campaigns as well. An example of having one’s Adword campaign being slapped would be where perhaps your ads were costing $3 a click and suddenly Google raised your minimum bid to $10.

Here are some of the common mistakes people make in their Adwords Management that result in Google slaps:
-Poorly written ads with extremely low click-through rates
-Using too many broad-matching keywords, which really have no relevancy to the terms searched on; this will also result in low click-through rates, which will get you “slapped” with higher ad prices.
-Low quality scores, where there is no relevancy between the keywords searched on, the Adword copy, and the landing page.
-Using a destination URL that is not congruent with the display URL in your ad
-Deceptive advertising; DON’T do this.

There are many other ways to get yourself slapped, but I think you may be getting the picture. Now, what you REALLY want to get from Google is what is referred to as “Google Love.”

Google loves for its searchers to find what they want; in fact, if you can figure out a way to make sure that your products or services are exactly what a searcher is looking for, Google will LOVE you. It’s really that simple. Many people try to over-complicate this.

Google loves for its searchers to be happy and they will reward you will lower-priced ads if you can consistently and effectively make this happen. Many advertisers don’t know it, but the ads at the top are not necessarily the ones who are paying the most. The Google bidding process factors in something called a “quality score,” which is the great equalizer. Quality scores assure Google that an advertiser cannot simply “buy” their way to the top position without giving the searchers value in return.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather be loved than slapped – especially when we are talking about my Google Adwords campaign. If you follow Google’s guidelines, do your market and keyword research, and spend some time learning about effective Adword campaign management techniques, I promise that you will feel lots of love…and not only that…you will find yourself with a profitable Adwords campaign.

You know it’s time to outsource your Adwords management when you find yourself having to spend more and more in Google for your clicks. The vast majority of Google Adwords users do NOT know how to properly set up and manage their Adwords campaigns and often find their click cost rising higher and higher. They find their costs climbing so high in fact that it makes more sense just to shut down their campaigns altogether. Whereas a Professional Adwords Management company could easily make it so that their click costs drop lower and lower and at the same time make their ad get shown higher in Google.

You Could Be Majorly Hurting Your Business in Two Ways-

Are you having great success with your Adwords campaigns? By that I mean are you getting all of the traffic you want for the price you want to buy it for? I don’t care how high your ad shows up in Google, (anyone can get their ad ranked #1 or #2 by spending an insanely high amount of money per click.)

Successful Adwords management means getting more traffic by spending less money to get it. If you’re trying to save money by managing your Adwords campaigns yourself but you don’t know how to make it so that you’re spending less money and getting more traffic you’re really loosing a lot more money than you’re saving and hurting your business by leaving much more money on the table.

Where is your time best spent?

Did you know that successful Adwords management can take hour of maintenance each month? Are you sure that your time is best spent trying to figure out Adwords management to save you from having to spend money on outsourcing? Are you aware that professional Adwords management companies use thousands of dollars worth of software and man hours. Quite frankly I don’t see how anyone can save money managing their Adwords internally unless that is they have at least 8 months off work to learn the ins and outs of Adwords management full time.

Here’s What You Need To Do

What you need to do is begin thinking with this mindset, “Yes, I need to completely focus my time and energy in places where they well spent and where I can get the most accomplished for my business. I need to save money by outsourcing my Adwords campaigns so that I can get the most out of my Adwords investment. I need to insure that I put my Adwords management into the hands of a professional who will help me to get not just more click, but help turn those clicks into conversions, leads and sales for my business.

You can have the best Adwords campaign in the world, but if you have a crumby site that can’t keep visitors on your page for very long you might as well call it quits and invest your money somewhere other than the Google Adwords world. Great Adwords Management can only take you so far. I can tell you right off the bat if a site is going to convert in very many or very few sales. How do I do this? Easy I study the key factors that grab a visitor’s attention, hook them into reading a sales page, keep them on the site longer…etc. Multi Variable testing has proved that there is a wrong and a right way to set up every aspect of a sales page.

Headline

The headline is the very first thing (or should be the very first thing) a visitor sees when he comes to your website. By looking at that he will determine whether or not your site has anything to do with what he’s actually searching for and whether or not actually reading your sales page will be beneficial or worthy of his time. Basically, you need to understand that you could be getting all of the traffic in the world, but if you can’t contain that traffic (because you have a crumby headline) then you’re not making near as many sales as you could be. What’s the point in paying for a click if you’re hardly trying to keep the visitor on your site for more than 5 seconds?

Two Types of People are coming to Your Site;

those who are going to buy and those who aren’t. Okay, great. You have this amazing product and an awesome sales page. Let’s say you’re converting 9% of your clicks into sales. You’re doing pretty dang good but what about the other 91% of people who don’t buy your product? What are you getting out of them? Nothing…? I’ll bet that a decent percentage of those people were at least interested in your product but just didn’t have enough courage to bite the bullet and buy.

What you need to do is offer a free video or a free downloadable gift of some sort for the people who don’t buy. You should have an optin box where all they have have to do is fill in their name and email address and you’ll send them a free video on “whatever”. Then you’ll be building a targeted list of people who are interested in your product or service. You can then follow up emails and special offers through an auto responder and make sales that you otherwise would have never made.

Many times, once someone on your email list has bought from you before they will buy from you again. Once you get a new product you can pitch it to your lists of targeted prospects and make more sales. You see, Adwords management is not about just barely getting by and making enough sales to make a small profit with enough left over to keep your Google Adwords campaigns running. Adwords management is about getting the most out of your traffic, converting your clicks into sales and building lists of targeted prospects who will buy from you again and again.

Most people are losing money in Adwords management

Either they do not know how to make their campaigns have perfect relevancy, or they don’t have the time and necessary software required for all managing Adwords. If you’re an Adwords advertiser there is simply no excuse for not ensuring that your Adwords campaigns have perfect relevancy.

Why is relevancy so important? It is the key to paying less for your clicks and getting the most out of your Adwords investment. Wouldn’t you like to spend less in Google Adwords and get the same amount of clicks you’re getting now? It’s very doable. As a matter of fact, if you take the time to make your campaigns perfectly relevant you could actually spend less than what you are spending now and get even more clicks!

Making campaigns have Relevancy is so important in Adwords management because it decreases the amount you have to pay per click, causes your ad to get shown higher in Google and in most cases causes your ad to get more clicks. When a searcher does a search in Google for the keyword “acoustic guitar” and sees the keyword “acoustic guitar” appearing in your ad, the searcher will naturally be more inclined to click your ad because they see that it is relevant to what they just searched on.

You’re absolutely failing in Adwords management if you’re not making your campaigns have perfect relevancy because you’re pretty much telling Google that you’re just an ordinary Adwords advertiser who doesn’t mind paying increased amounts for your clicks. Don’t be fooled that’s exactly what will happed to you too.

I’m sure that if you have already noticed in your Adwords account that Google keeps upping the minimum bid prices for several of your keyword. Guess what… It only gets worse. A large portion of Adwords advertisers end up having to shut down their Adwords campaigns because they simply can’t afford to keep spending so much in advertising costs for so little traffic.

If you’re not getting the amount of traffic you want from Google Adwords then it’s obvious. There’s something majorly wrong with your Adwords campaigns. Google Adwords is a great way to get a very steady stream of traffic pumping into your website and if you know what you’re doing in Adwords management you can get as much traffic out of your niche as possible by getting your ad shown higher in Google (more clicks) and by decreasing your click costs? How do you do that? You do it by making your campaigns relevant ofcourse! If you’re not sure how to do this, then I highly suggest you find a PPC management company to get the job done for you. Don’t wait… Succeed!

Here’s a good reason to stay far away from Adwords management companies that go on and on about their “keyword research”. Keyword research can be VERY expensive if it’s not done the right way. I see keyword research as a crutch for many Adwords management companies. After all, how hard can it be to build a large keyword list, sit back and watch as a client spends countless dollars testing out a new keyword list then simply seeing which keywords are profitable or not.

My point is keyword research is something that is very cost efficient and doesn’t require a ton of wasteful spending. Keyword research is also something that should be done very gradually to prevent wasteful spending on large amounts of keywords that don’t convert into sales or clicks. (This would damage your campaign history too).

Watch Out-
If you stumble upon a company that talks about keyword research without telling you about the following things, watch out. If they don’t mention these next few thing to you then 1) they don’t have what it takes to protect your wallet from wasteful spending, 2) They’re not doing much work for you…AT ALL.

Adwords Management is Not All About Keyword Research

In fact Keyword Research implemented without these next techniques is flat out, dangerous, stupid and lazy!

Adgroup Relevancy-
Adgroup Relevancy is extremely important in Adwords management simply because Google HATES campaigns that have little or no adgroup relevancy. Regardless of how many hours it takes to set a campaign up like this, even if it a brand new keyword list your campaigns should be set up with perfect relevancy. Each keyword should be put into an adgroup all on its own or either be put into an adgroup with just a few closely related keywords. It may take hours to set up a campaign like this but it’s a crucial step in decreasing outrageous click costs.

Ad Relevancy-
I can’t tell you how many times lack of ad relevancy KILLS Adwords campaigns. Google is obsessed with relevancy, of course and expects to see that your ads are perfectly relevant to the keyword that was searched on. Each one of your keywords an ad written especially for that individual keyword with the keyword searched on appearing at least twice in the ad. Why don’t Adwords management companies tell you about this? This is a crucial part of keyword research! First of all you will get sorry results and high click costs if your ads don’t have perfect relevancy! Secondly how can you possibly get accurate results from “Keyword Research” if you’re contaminating your research with ads that don’t convert and that cost a fortune?

Landing Page Relevancy? What the Heck does that have to do with keyword research?
Don’t be fooled. Landing Page Relevancy has a heck of a lot to do with keyword research. Think about it… What exactly is the purpose of keyword research? The purpose of keyword research is to find which keywords are:

A-Profitable (Are People searching under this keyword looking to buy my product?)

B-Cost Efficient- (Providing a great return on your click cost investment)

C-HORRIBLE – (You need to find which keywords are not bringing you targeted traffic and sales. You know, the ones that cost you so much money but don’t bring in a dime. You need to find these keywords and DELETE them.)

Landing Page Relevancy is where with a combination of special programming and Search Engine Optimization, you make your landing page perfectly relevant to your keyword list. This keeps customers on your site longer and makes Google charge you far lower costs per click. Whatever you do make sure that you don’t fall for the whole “Keyword Research Speech” most Adwords management companies are giving because Keyword Research is “nothing” without the strategies I mentioned above.

Many businesses have found great success in Adwords by outsourcing their Adwords management to highly trusted Adwords management companies. It takes a lot of time and energy to manage an Adwords account, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Not to mention outsourcing Adwords management can save your company a ton of money. In Adwords management the primary goals should be to decrease client’s costs per click in Adwords and to increase the amount of traffic going to the client’s site.

Decreasing click costs take a huge boatload of knowledge and skill.
The reason why it takes so much knowledge and skill is because in order to effectively decrease a client’s click costs an Adwords manager must do two difficult yet vitally important things.

A- The manager must totally rework the client’s campaign to make it have “Perfect Relevancy”. That means the keyword lists must be totally re organized so that each keyword is very closely related to the other keywords in its adgroup. Each keyword needs to have its own, individual ad so that the ads and the keywords will have perfect relevancy. The Adwords manager must also use advanced programming and skill to make the client’s landing page be perfectly relevant to each and every keyword.

B- The Adwords manager must also continuously manage and tweak bid prices so that the client’s ads are shown in strategic positions and so that the client is insure a good return on their Adwords investment. Professional Adwords management companies make it possible for clients to utilize a special tool call, Conversion Optimizer.

Split Testing is Key in Adwords Management

Split testing a client’s ads every single day is always part of “a professional google Adwords manager’s” agenda. Split testing is the key to getting far lower click costs and terrific ad placement in Google. I’ve found that not only does Split testing a client’s ads every day significantly decrease their click costs and help them achieve great ad placement; It also helps them get a lot more traffic. Google loves well written, highly relevant ads so naturally it’s going to display them higher. People obviously love relevant, well written ads as well because they click on them a lot more!

When looking to outsource your Adwords management, it’s extremely important that you find a company that Split Tests your ads every single day. Be advised, split testing is not an easy task because it has to be done EVERY DAY. If you stumble upon an Adwords management company that does not put much emphasis in Split Testing, watch out… As a matter of fact just run in the opposite direction. Any Adwords management company that is not concerned with the key strategies that save you money is definitely one you want to stay far away from.