But here is where most folks have a problem. They stock up only on obvious keywords and are missing incredible opportunities for attracting more searchers. Thinking “out of the box” means pondering the non-obvious ways that prospects may be looking for your company.

The number one rule that you have to remember when doing your keyword research is that you have to get into the mind of your prospects. You have to think like they think. So how do you do that? There are several ways.

First of all, why not ASK them? What’s wrong with asking your customers what led them to your website. If you take leads over the phone, make sure that you have a form that is required to be filled with that information. If you sell a product online, follow up with an e-mail that asks them why they needed your product or how they found you. The answers may surprise you.

Let’s say that you sell a software product that fixes registry problems. Here are a few obvious keywords you would may want to bid on:

-fix registry problems
-problems in registry
-how to fix registry problems
-having pc registry issues

Of course, you would bid on many more keywords than those, but you get the picture. However, you are missing out on many opportunities because you are not thinking “out of the box.” You are what we like to refer to as “too close to your business.” You may have heard it another way: “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Do you really think all of your clients know what they want when they first begin searching for a solution to their problem? Of course not! More thorough research would have revealed some of the following keywords:

-error 403
-what does error 403 mean
-kernel 32 dll error
-spool 32

These keywords reveal examples where users don’t know that they even need registry software. They just know that they are having problems and are searching for the solution to that problem; and more than likely they need an answer fast. If you had gotten into your prospect’s mind by thinking out of the box, you would be running a more successful Adwords campaign.

The same scenario works in any business. Let’s take an entirely different profession and say you are an attorney that specializes in workers compensation issues. I just took a pause from writing this article and typed in “workers compensation” into Google. Guess what? Pages and pages of paid Google Adword ads, advertising the wares of workers compensation attorneys all across the nation.

But what if I don’t know I need a workers compensation attorney? So let’s type in another keyword phrase: “what if I got hurt at work”? Guess what? FAR fewer ads show up. In fact, there are so few that I could probably be on the first page of Google for under $0.05.

Now granted, that keyword phrase is probably not searched on very much, but don’t you think that folks who ARE searching on that keyword term would be much more likely to be a prospect than someone who just enters the words “workers compensation” into Google? After all, just because I search “workers compensation” doesn’t mean I need legal services. I may need insurance instead.

And don’t you think “what if I got hurt at work” would be a highly PROFITABLE keyword as well? Now all you have to do is find lots more highly profitable keywords and soon you will be well on your way to absolutely dominating your competition in your Google Adwords campaign.

Thinking out of the box is not hard, if you just…well…think out of the box! Get into your prospect’s mind and soon you will be getting into your prospect’s pocketbook – in a legal way, of course – and you will be well on your way to managing a highly successful Google Adwords campaign.

There was a time last summer when my aging dog was down in her hips. I looked around on the internet and did what most animal-loving human beings would do and typed “hip problems for dogs” into Google. A bit of quick research later and I determined that the answer I needed relied on what is called a doggie wheelchair.

So next, I typed “doggie wheelchair” into Google. You can imagine my surprise when I found 10 PPC ads staring at me advertising doggie wheelchairs…or so I thought. Upon further investigation I determined that almost half of them weren’t advertising doggie wheelchairs at all. They were in fact advertising human wheelchairs. Now there were several multi-million dollar corporations that were inadvertently advertising to a pet-loving fanatic that had absolutely NO interest in human wheelchairs that spin around and cost thousands of dollars.

So what does that matter, you may ask? As long as someone doesn’t click on the ad, they don’t have to pay…right? WRONG! First of all, I must admit that I am like a lot of surfers and am click-happy. I don’t necessarily read every word of the ad before I click it. Lo and behold, I cost some poor multi-million dollar company a few dollars when I clicked on their ad for a product I did not want or need.

But what about the other ones that I had the sense to recognize weren’t pertinent before I clicked. Well, I must admit that I felt like “punishing” them for being so stupid by clicking on their ad for human wheelchairs, but I knew that they had already received punishment enough because I knew that Google was penalizing them with a lower CTR and that leads to a higher ad cost in the long run. CTR stand for “click-thru rate.” You see, even though I did not click on their ad, they paid. They paid in the form of higher ad costs down the road.

So why did they have to pay when someone did NOT click their ad and how does this affect your business? Let’s say you are an attorney and you bid on the keyword phrase “attorney”. Now someone comes along and searches for “free attorney”? If your search shows up, then you may get the click…ouch…unless you are free, but I highly doubt it. Or what if a high school student is doing a research paper on a legal subject and types in “articles about attorneys”. Oops, there you are again.

What if neither of the two examples actually clicks on your ad? Let’s say that no one is as click-happy as I am, does it still cost your money? You bet it does! Google is keeping score of your CTR and “rewards” you for getting more clicks. Yes, you may be happy that the freebie-seeker and the high-schooler didn’t click your ad, but by not clicking your ad they hurt your overall CTR and in the process helped to raise your rate.

To solve this problem and better profit with Google Adwords you you should know how to put “negative matches” in your Adword campaign. You would definitely want to tell Google that if a searcher includes “free” or “articles” then NOT to include your company in the search results. Before launching a Google pay per click campaign, you need to take the time to learn how to use the product and how to do proper research – not only for good keywords, but for the “bad” ones as well. If you can’t find the time, then hire someone who knows how to manage a successful Google Adwords campaign for you.

I find it amazing how long someone will bid on a keyword that is losing money. How do I know that they are losing money? Simple. Using stealth keyword research I can see not only how long some competitors have used certain keywords, but their ad position, how their ads have varied over time, and how their website has changed as well.

Next, I visit their website and look for signs that they may be getting poor conversions…and since I know my numbers and what it takes to get a conversion, it doesn’t take a complicated math formula to quickly and easily determine that a competitor may be throwing away sometimes thousands of dollars a month by advertising on a single keyword.

You may ask, “Why would someone continue advertising on a keyword that is losing them money?” There are four (4) answers that immediately come to mind when I hear this question.

1. They are ignorant and don’t know how to run an adword campaign properly.

2. They know that the keyword is losing money, but don’t care because they are trying to establish “brand awareness.” (See answer #1 for my opinion on this strategy.)

3. The company is funded by venture capital and their goal is not necessarily to produce a profit, but to go public or be bought as soon as possible if they don’t go bankrupt first.

4. The more likely reason is that their Google Adword campaign is making money as a whole and they are leaving “well enough” alone. In other words, collectively, all the keywords that they are bidding on are making them money; they just don’t pay attention to which ones are good keywords and which ones are bad.

Since #4 is the most commonplace, let’s examine how this situation can be corrected. Depending on your level of daily spend, you should perhaps be monitoring your keywords on a daily basis.

Learn to trust your market. Your market will tell you which keywords work and which keywords don’t. Your market has a voice and they always vote with their wallet or pocketbook.

Too often it is easy to “fall in love” with a keyword just because WE think it is a good one. But if you have tested that keyword properly and determined that a statistically significant amount of traffic has arrived on your website because of that keyword, but the conversions associated with that traffic is poor, then it may be time to end your love affair with that keyword and focus on finding more profitable ones.

There are many Adwords management tools that allow you to track, test, and analyze keywords so that you are utilizing your Google Adwords campaign in the most efficient manner. Some of these tools are free and others are quite expensive.

But just having the right tools does not necessarily mean that you are going to profit from them. You must invest some time to master them as well, so you can handle your Google Adwords campaign management efficiently, and dominate your competition.

In fact, it may be wrong to use the term “game” at all since Google Adwords campaign management is anything but a game; it is a serious business endeavor that requires training, skill, and a lot of hard work. But let’s use the word “game” anyway, since I like sports – especially major league baseball.

In baseball I notice that these days there are many “specialists” and almost every pitching staff has what is called a left-handed pitching specialist, normally a lefty whose “bread and butter” is striking out left-handed hitters. Then there is the designated hitter. In the American League, the designated hitter is commonly a player who may not be the best fielder in the world, but they flat-out know how to hit the ball. So manager’s carefully consider not only which player to put in that spot, but also which order to put the designated hitter into the lineup, usually depending on the opposing team’s pitcher.

If only folks who play the game of Google Adwords would manage their Adwords campaign as effectively as a baseball manager! If they did, then they would recognize what I like to call “specialty keywords” chosen for their ability to do one thing and one thing well – convert the prospect into a customer.

What do I mean by “specialty keywords”? Specialty keywords are keywords that are specific – keywords that are designed to get clicks and bring targeted traffic to your website. You do not always want generic terms because not only are these keywords super-competitive and consequently, expensive, but the traffic that they bring to your site may not be at all what you are looking for.

If you are an attorney whose specialty is handling DUI cases, do you really want to bid on the keyword “attorney”? What chance do you have that someone typing “attorney” into a search engine will actually require a DUI attorney anyway?

“Well,” you may say, “I’ll just write an ad that mentions my DUI services so that they will only click on my ad if they need counseling for a DUI.” There are many advertisers who practice such tactics and then they wonder why their campaigns are so unprofitable. There is a good reason.

One of the factors that plays into your costs for a keyword is the relevancy of your ad to that keyword. In fact, poor keyword selection and irrelevant ads could be driving up the entire cost of your Google Adwords campaign. Not only that – when you DO get the expensive click, you get it from someone who does not really want your services anyway.

If you are going to play the Adwords Management game, then you had better treat it seriously and get your head into the game…and if you don’t have time to acquire the proper skills to play it the way it should be played, then perhaps you should take a chapter from big league baseball owners…hire a big league manager to manage your Adwords campaign for you.

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.