Breaking the Adwords Code

How to sell online?

2008-05-31T02:11:00.000-07:00

Learning to sell online is not just about setting up an online store, sourcing for products, designing a professional-looking site or setting up a payment system. Google “How to sell online” and you’ll realize that most of the pages listed within the search results focus on the steps above.

However, the major key to SUCCESS in selling online is not about having the best check-out system, a professionally designed online store or strategic product placement. While these are important, merely setting up a store alone is inadequate for a successful online business. It is a necessity that eventually will need to be looked at, but not a core aspect of selling online.

So, how do you sell online profitably?

1. Identifying a niche product

What sells online? What are people looking for when they shop online? Does everything sell online? Do you know of any product sources for an excellent niche product?

Obviously, you can’t sell everything under the sun and compete head-on with the big players in the market. Instead, if you are able to penetrate a specific niche market with significant demand volume, you are heading off to a good start.

2. Identifying niche keywords

This relates to drawing web traffic to your site. Obviously, before you are able to successfully sell anything, you’ll first need to draw traffic to your site. Traffic from search engines is an essential source. To capture the right audience, you’ll need to find out which keywords your customers are using to search for your products.

You’ll soon realize that there is huge competition from other websites competing for the top 10 spots in the search engine results. This means that you’ll need to optimize niche keywords that has significant searches, but lesser competition, in order for your site to be listed at the top. Visit http://www.what-sells-online.com for more information on search engine optimization tactics.

3. Online advertising

When selling online, you need to get the word out to the masses on the existence of your new website. The fastest way to do this is to use Pay-per-click online advertising tools such as Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing.

The challenge here is that these tools can become double edged swords. Use them carelessly, and you’ll end up spending lots of unnecessary money on the wrong target audience.

Apart from that, with competition on the usage of Google Adwords as a website or product advertising tool, Google has incorporated an ad ranking system for ads displayed. Therefore, the right strategies in using Google Adwords are essential for successful online marketing.

One of the most useful and relevant resource around I've found is the The Adwords’ Winners Playbook. This is worth checking out if you want to learn about tactful Adwords usage for effective advertising, and avoid bursting your marketing budget.

4. Product Sourcing

Another important area learning how to sell online is to find the right product sources. If you are selling digital products, you’ll probably need to try out the product yourself before you can attest to its usefulness. There are many digital products sold online, which evidently turn out to be not what its sales page claims to be.

On the other hand, selling fast moving products such as electronic items or apparel requires regular sourcing of the best prices. As the Internet has become an almost efficient marketplace, consumers are able to research for the best prices quickly and comfortably online. With this, they will only buy a product at the lowest prices.

In this case, beating your competition when selling online would mean being able to source for the lower priced product from your suppliers.

Further Reading

If you’d like more information on how to sell online, check out these references:

http://www.what-sells-online.com
http://www.ebizwebpages.com/how_to_sell_online
http://www.free-ecommerce-information.com/sell-online/20-tips.htm

5 ways to improve your Adwords Quality Score

2008-03-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

Using Google Adwords to promote your product or your website may seem easy at first. However, if your ads don’t show or when you are slapped with a minimum bid price of $5 per keyword, you’ll begin to wonder why.

The fact is, your bid price isn’t the only factor influencing your ad placement. Keyword combinations, landing page quality and ad copy are also important. In addition, Adwords give top rankings to ads with high click through rates particularly for competitive keywords.

So, how do we break this? We work on improving the Adwords Quality Score. Here are 5 tips for this:

1. Beef up your Landing Page

Keywords you use must appear on your landing page.
Use Meta tags properly to ensure that Google sees the relevance of your landing page.
Make sure that your landing page has a good balance of incoming and outgoing links. Google doesn’t like selfish landing pages, with only minimal outgoing links.
Finally, use the Website Content section of Google Adwords Keywords Tool Analyzer to determine what Google sees as relevant keywords on your landing page.

2. Keep your Keyword Groups Small and Related

Put related keywords together, as Google would see them as more targeted
Test each keyword group with each ad copy
Change combinations of broad, exact, phrase and negative matches
Check your click-through-rates and see them change as you change your keyword combinations

3. Have your keywords appear in your Ad Copy

Remember to incorporate keywords in your Ad Copy.
Keywords will be bolded, thus increasing visibility to your ad.
Spilt test your ad copy against click through rates.
Ads that do not have matching keywords against keywords in the keyword groups are more likely to be ranked lower.

4. As ad quality improves, lower per-click bid price

Ad placement is determined by both click-through-rate and Bid Price. Once your Click-Through-Rate has increased, then you are able to lower your bid price and still maintain a relatively high ranking.
At times, getting the highest ranking may mean you may be wasting money on random clicks. To avoid unwanted clicks, it may be better to get ranked between 2^nd and 4^th place.

5. Test, Test, Test!

Always spilt test your ads to get the best results. Conquering the Google Adwords code is not an easy feat. It takes continuous working, testing and tweaking, before the best ads and optimum placements are produced.

Ultimately, getting your Adwords Quality Score up requires continuous improvement, with the use of the right methods. Mindvalley's Adwords Winner's Playbook is one of the books that deals with this in great detail. This way, you won't end up losing your money on high cost per clicks on the wrong target market.

Further Reference
10 Ways to Improve Your Adwords Quality Score - A Case Study
6 SEO Tips to improve your Adwords Quality Score

6 steps to Breaking the Adwords Code – Part 2

2008-02-24T05:42:00.000-08:00

In the Part 1 of 6 steps to Breaking the Adwords Code, we focused on picking the right keywords and how to group keywords as our first steps in breaking the Adwords Code. This post explores the remaining 4 steps essential for success in using Adwords profitably!

3. Optimize Ad Copy

Words in your Ad Copy that are part of your keywords list will be highlighted. This helps to increase click-through-rates and also lower your cost-per-click. You will be surprised how small changes to the words in your Ad Copy can significantly change CTR and CPC.

The copywriting of you ad should focus on helping people find what they are seeking for, or help solve their problems. Use words to try to make it your solution simple to them. Also, communicate Benefits, not Features, as people like solutions they can relate to.

Capitalization of keywords is also essential, as it helps draw attention to words you’d like to focus. Use several variations in capitalization, and test for best results.

It’s also important to TELL your customer what you want them to do. Finally, be creative, and not boring.

4. Create Landing Pages for high Quality Score

Your readers decide to buy based on what they read on your Landing Page. As you have only 10 seconds to capture your reader’s attention, ensure that the headline corresponds to the ad. Then, get your content to focus on your Most Wanted Response. Do not let your reader navigate away from your copy. Finally, you’d want to make your order button clearly visible, or your checkout form prominent. Ensure that your keywords are incorporated into your landing page copy, and that you have a balanced number of incoming and outgoing links for a high quality score.

5. Apply optimum bidding strategies

Cost-per-click is also a factor for Adwords success. With Google adwords, you have the facilities to track ad performance through average revenue per sale, profit per sale, and your conversion rate. With these numbers, you can then decide if you are paying too much per click, or whether a specific keyword is generating the results you are paying for.

Another point to note is that Google does not necessarily place ads with the highest bids on top rankings. The ad position is determined by the cost-per-click multiplied by the click-through-rates. Therefore, you may end up paying a high cost-per-click just to get your ad up at the top.

According to the Adwords Winners Playbook by Mindvalley however, getting your ad at the top may mean that you may be getting unwanted clicks. Instead, you should aim to be at the 2^nd to 4^th positions for optimal results.

6. Split Test for Success

Spilt Testing is a continuous effort, encompassing several steps:

Write different versions of the same ad
Wait for the ads to reach 30 clicks and see which one performs better. Google will place the ad with the higher click through rate at the top.
Take the better performing ad, create another ad, and test again for better results
Refine your ad till you get a high click-through-rate, for a low bid price.

The 6 steps highlighted in this post are just the tip of the iceberg in breaking the Adwords Code. In the complete Adwords Winners Playbook of 91 pages, you’ll find it packed with detailed information on how you can create an edge with your Adwords Campaign. Check it out here - Adwords Winners Playbook by Mindvalley.

6 steps to Breaking the Adwords Code – Part 1

2008-02-21T00:57:00.000-08:00

You need to learn how to break the Adwords Code if you are:

Spending TOO MUCH money on Google Adwords, with little results

Wondering why you have such Low Ad Impressions

Confused when Google tells you that your Ad Quality Score is Low

Thinking of giving up on Google Adwords or your Internet Marketing Venture

I’ve experienced all of the above before, and like you, also considered giving up. That was when I stumbled upon the Adwords Winners Playbook by Mindvalley.

Now, if you have used Adwords before and you want to SEE PROFITABLE RESULTS, then the following steps are important. You see, Google has designed their Adwords PPC system to be sophisticated. This means you’ll need a good strategy to be able to use the Google Adwords system to your advantage.

These steps are some which I’ve picked out from the Adwords Winners Playbook by Mindvalley.

1. Pick the right Keywords

First, a list of possible keywords for your campaign needs to be created. You need to know how to use keyword variations. Learn how to use online keyword tools such as Google Suggest, Wordtracker and Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Next, use Broad, Phrase, Exact or Negative Keyword matches in your Adwords settings. For example, if you place key phrases in quotes (“), this would mean that your ad will show when there is a match with the phrase.

2. Proper Keyword Grouping

Small keyword groups and their relationship to Ad copy, affects the minimum bid price for each keyword. Also, matching keywords to Ad copy, will help to increase click-through rates, to have more targeted ads, to know how much to bid for your ad, and finally, to beat your competitors.

While running your ad, you should implement a continuous process of scrubbing your keywords in order to eliminate keywords that do not generate the results you want.

The remaining 4 steps in Breaking the Adwords Code shall be covered in Part 2 of this series. For detailed information on each of the steps above, check out Adwords Winners Playbook by Mindvalley.

Why isn’t your Google Adwords campaign working?

2008-02-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

With Google Adwords being one of the best PPC programs around, it is no surprise then that many internet marketers are deftly using this to make money online. Naturally, many internet marketers have claimed to share their Google Adwords success secrets in downloadable PPC guides, often sold on affiliate sites.

Google Adwords PPC use is not as easy as it seems

Many PPC ebooks do not deal with the strategies needed for success in Google Adwords.

Merely knowing how to setup a Google Adwords campaign is inadequate for successful online advertising. The following are some of the pitfalls of Adwords PPC use when not implemented strategically:

Your ad does not appear if your cost per click is too low. At times, a minimum of $5 per click is required for highly competitive keywords.
Your ad does NOT appear if your ad copy is not optimized properly.
Your ad does NOT appear if your landing page contributes to a low Google Adwords Quality Score.
Keyword combinations, when not optimized, may mean fewer ad impressions.
Your ad is NOT listed on the first page as your competitors are willing to pay a higher cost per click.
You waste paying for clicks from the wrong target group.

In essence, you need a winning PPC play strategy to optimize your Google Adwords campaign for successful and profitable results. A good PPC guide would incorporate a process to select relevant keywords, form optimum keyword groups, write catchy ad copies, produce copywriting for quality landing pages, and incorporate testing methods to continuously improve the campaign.

All these elements for success can be obtained from The Winner’s Playbook by Mindvalley Labs. This is NOT a Google Adwords PPC guide for the beginner, but rather an essential framework for success in using Google Adwords.