7 Proven Tactics to Create a Cost-Effective Google Adwords Campaign

Alphabet generated $26.24 billion in the second quarter of 2018 with 86 percent of the revenue coming from the company’s advertising platform – Google AdWords (now known as Google ads).

This statistics is a clear indication that businesses around the globe are aware of the efficacy of Google Adwords and many of them are investing heavily in it. In 2017 alone, over 1.5 million businesses generated $283 from Google’s different platforms.

However, despite the positive statistic outlook, generating returns from Google Adwords campaign depends on a number of factors.

In fact, many advertisers suffer huge losses in the hands of Google because of the lack of knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

If you don’t have the knowledge or you fail to do the necessary work before setting a budget, Google will drain your account faster than you could imagine.

Since we have spent millions in Google Adwords for clients and for ourselves, we know what gets results and what doesn’t. Here are a few proven tactics to create an awesome Google Adwords campaign:

Understand What Adwords is For
Many advertisers fail even before setting up an Adwords campaign. If you are a beginner or still trying to get better at Google Adwords campaign, it is pertinent to understand the platform’s strength and weaknesses.

Google Adwords is not designed for brand awareness campaigns. If you are looking to get more eyeballs to see your brand’s story at the least cost possible, you are better off sticking to social media platforms like Facebook. Google Adwords is best suited for lead generation campaigns because it lends itself to super-specific, buyer intent targeting and most importantly, it is measurable.

Build a Customer Persona and Focus On the end Goal
The goal is not to use buzzwords or write vague statements that do not inspire your audience to take action. If you are looking to generate sales from your campaign, create a customer persona and narrow down to your potential customers end goal.

The best way to find out your potential customers goal is to ask yourself the problem your customers are looking to solve when they purchase your product or service. It is that simple but a lot of people complicate thing for the customers an for themselves, hence, losing out to competitors.

For instance, let’s say you are offering a meal plan subscription service, you can use keywords like “healthy meal plan” or “meal plans” so that when people at the other end of the spectrum (your potential customers) search for “meal plans for busy moms” or “healthy meal plans”, your ads will pop up.

Take a look at the example above to understand what am trying to say. Ensure that your headline is offering solutions to a problem.

Create Scarcity (Fear of Missing Out)
Psychologically, humans like doing things at the last minute so as not to lose out on the benefits that may accrue from buying something after it is no longer in the market. That is why people spend million in cryptocurrency ICOs.

You can infuse scarcity into your ads either by stating that you have limited quantity or that your customers have limited time to get in or lose out.

While this tactic can be highly effective, I advise you use it only when there is a scarcity for the product you are marketing. Or maybe you plan to create one yourself by hoarding the product or service. It doesn’t make sense to set a countdown timer for 50% off during a specific time window and you turn around and continue to sell at 50% off days after the countdown had expired.

I wouldn’t take such advert serious and am sure you wouldn’t either. Creating scarcity is particularly useful for events like seasonal sales promotion, talk of Christmas Sale, Eid Sale, and the popular Black Friday.

Add Statistics When Possible
Still talking about triggers, statistics and social proofs are great emotional triggers. People like to associate with companies that have social proofs or statistics to back up their claims. This works in Google Adwords just as it works with any other marketing platform.

If you are a service provider and you have the statistics such as years of experience or the amount of money you have helped your client to earn or save, including it in your ad copy can prove to be effective.

Take the ad above as an example and see how the advertiser included the company’s experience in the ad copy. And I guess the ad is doing pretty well, given it is ranking in the number one position for the keywords “VAT Accounting Company in UAE”

Personalize Your Campaign
People look at ads the same way they look at most things in life – what’s in it for me. They want to be included which is the reason email marketing was pretty successful in its early years. People were stunned by the sheer mention of their names at the beginning of the email.

Since we can’t achieve that with Google Adwords, at least not yet, we can make it a little personal by using the word “You” to relate to the customer.

A look at the ads above and you will agree with me that the first one is the winning campaign. Even though we don’t know it’s performance, I bet you will click that ad over the others because it is telling “YOU” what “YOU” will get by clicking on it.

Go Hyper-local With Your Copy and Targeting
Like I said earlier, Google Adwords campaign is super-amazing for lead generation. However, targeting people with a specific geographical area will help you get a better result. Even if you are offering a worldwide or nationwide service, it is advisable to target one city per ad. it makes the customers feel that you are easily reachable.

If you are operating internationally, to make this work,  instead of using the normal call forwarding feature in your Google Ads call extensions, employ the services of a call tracking provider and buy local phone numbers for the countries or cities in which you operate.

Try Variations of Your Campaign
One merit of digital marketing over traditional marketing is the ability to run variations of a campaign to determine the winning one. So, once your ad has started running, monitor it and test different headlines, and even landing pages to see which is driving higher returns.

There you have the 7 tactics that we use to generate great returns for our clients. If you are generating good returns from your Google Adwords campaign, do get in touch with us.