Buying Google Adwords advertising for your online shop

Google Adwords for your online shop is something you need to take seriously. I think it is one of the most brilliant ways to market a shop because you can follow the money and see what your ads actually lead to. But you will not get the full benefit by simply buying a handful of obvious keywords.

Here I discuss my view of Google Adwords in April 2009. These are the experiences and assessments I had then, using the name and tools we used at that time.

Google Adwords for your online shop needs to be measurable

There are other options too, including Yahoo. But I focus on Google here because, back then, I estimate that Google has around 90 per cent of the market I am discussing. That makes it the most interesting player to me.

The big argument is measurement. If you buy a newspaper, radio or television ad, I believe you can only track a small part of its effect. The rest becomes guesswork. I am pretty blunt about it: I do not think those guesses are much use when you need to know what you are getting for your money.

With Google Adwords, you can see how many people have seen the ad and how many have clicked. Add Google Analytics and you can follow how they move through the shop and what they end up buying or not buying. That is the kind of knowledge you need.

If you have not set it up properly, I believe you are missing out on money. How much, I cannot tell you. But you need to know what Adwords is and use the opportunity to measure.

You stop too soon with your keywords

I use an example from a plumbing company where I am on the board. They have one or two employees who do nothing but buy Google Adwords. That says something about how much work can be involved.

My message in the video is that fewer than 1,000 keywords is too few. I even strengthen my wording to 5,000. I do not care whether you are an undertaker or sell supertankers: My point is that you need to work far more thoroughly on specific searches. The figures are my blunt advice from 2009, not a documented minimum for every business.

Imagine a travel agency. You start with holidays to Crete, holidays to Rhodes and the other obvious destinations. After ten minutes, your energy has gone and perhaps you have found 150 terms. But your competitors are buying the same terms.

Besides, a search for a trip to Rhodes does not tell you very precisely what the customer wants. By plane? By train? Do they want to walk there? The search is broad. When everyone also bids on the same search in an auction system, it becomes expensive.

A specific search tells you what customers want to buy

Instead, try thinking of a search such as: cheap flight holiday to Crete in August. It is much more precise. If your ad matches it and you send customers to a page about exactly that, a cheap flight holiday to Crete in August, I believe there is a much greater chance of a purchase.

It takes a lot of work. In return, there is a good chance your competitors have not bothered to do the same. The more words customers use and the more specific the search becomes, the further along I generally believe they are in the buying process. Their Dankort comes out more readily when they know what they want to buy.

So I see two advantages: Less competition for specific searches can mean cheaper clicks, and a better-qualified customer can mean better conversion. In the video, I also say that 95 per cent of searches happen that way. That is the figure I give in 2009; I do not present evidence for it.

My final comparison is that a small campaign using only broad terms can be like buying rotten apples at ten times the price, and in small quantities to boot. Work on the precise searches before deciding you are done. You can find more of my experiences with online sales and marketing in E-pusher.