Beginners Guide to Running an AdWords Campaign – 6 Steps to Follow

Google AdWords can be a fantastic opportunity to boost the online presence of your brand and improve your businesses ability to find and retain customers. This post will highlight 6 steps to follow in order to set up your first AdWords campaign effectively.

1 – Determine Objectives

First you need to establish the overall objective of your campaign, i.e. to improve page views, improve your sites Google rank or improve overall website traffic. Choosing an objective will help focus your campaign.

2 – Targets

Next it is important to choose some targets for your chosen objectives, this will allow you to measure the success of your campaign e.g. increase online revenue by 10%, grow website traffic by 15%, improve the sites click through rate by 20% or improved the time spent on each page by 20%.

3 – Measurement

The third stage is measurement; this step will allow you to measure and keep track of your targets. The measurement stage is critical to calculating your return on investment (ROI); this stage will help you measure your progress in achieving your overall targets. The targets can be measured through Google Analytics or through your own companies’ revenue and sales figures.

4 – Construct Your Campaign

After creating your objectives, targets and measurement, it is now important to log on to Google AdWords to create your campaign. First log on or create an AdWords account. Following this click into the campaign summary tab, then keywords targeted, this allows you to name your campaign. Next, write your advertisements making sure they are, clear, succinct and have a call to action. This will be an important part of driving traffic towards your website. Thirdly add the keywords related to the advertisements and continue.

5 – Link Google AdWords with Google Analytics

Linking accounts will allow you to track your campaign and aid your ability to measure your ROI.

6 – Check Account Regularly

Checking your account regularly will improve your control over the campaign, giving you the ability to make small changes to the advertisements etc. This will enhance your ability to control and position AdWords operation effectively.

Finally good luck with setting your first campaign up!

Push Strategy in Digital Marketing – Improving Your Online Presence

This week I attended a guest lecture run by the search marketing agency Propellernet at the University of Brighton on the role of public relations (PR) in Digital Marketing and how important PR can be in driving a successful website.

Propellernet are a search marketing agency that specialise in improving the visibility of their clients websites, they operate in many business channels such as travel, retail, fashion and finance. To find out more visit their website Propellernet.co.uk.

The main focus of the presentation was on push and pull tactics and how these tactics can help improve your websites visibility. Push tactics are proactively building links one by one, i.e. ‘pushing’ your information out to potential customers. Pull tactics are earning links, so building creative content ‘pulling’ potential customers to the website.

In this blog we will focus on push tactics, propellernet gave some main categories to work on to develop your push tactics and improve your websites authority and visibility. We will run through four main tactics that can improve your websites online presence.

      Link Chasing

It is important to ask other websites (relevant to your client’s or your own website) to link back to the website you are working on. This will give your client’s or your own website better coverage improving the brand name and websites visibility.

Reactive Pitches

Monitoring the daily news will enable you to create reactive pitches; a reactive pitch is the process of reacting to a relevant news story integrating your own company products or ideas. For example a news story is breaking on safety when skiing; your company sells skiing helmets. Creating an article outlining your products and ideas may help drive traffic towards your website. This will also promote your brand name and products in such a way that a customer may want to purchase a product off the company.

Planned Features

Planning features to post on your website to run alongside related events can be an excellent way of improving your websites online presence.  For example featuring an article, blog post or special deal on your website to tie in with events like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St Patricks Day, Bank Holidays, or Sports Events like the Football World Cup or Olympics can be beneficial and is a great way of attracting attention to your website.

Blogger Product Reviews

Product reviews is a great way of getting an honest third party review on your products, these can be advantageous when consumers are thinking about purchasing one of your products. Good reviews will help spread your brand name and products; this will in turn drive traffic towards the website and increase the brand exposure online.