Mastering The Art Of Google Adwords
Ajay Ahuja started his online business in October 2003 with absolutely no technical knowledge and has experienced online sales of over GBP 2m amassed from just a computer, a broadband connection and a bit of spare time. Ajay knows the sites and software that will save you your precious time and money and - used right - make you a tidy stream of cash.
First you need to open a Google AdWords account. To do this visit:
It’s fairly simple to open an account and use. One thing you can always be assured of with Google and that is useability. It’s very easy to get your adverts on to Google. I see plenty of badly worded adverts which I am sure never get clicked. If these idiots can use Google AdWords I’m quite sure you can!
The difficult bit is getting them aired enough and getting them clicked enough. This is what I want to focus on because this is the difficult bit.
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Know your customers |
Segregate customers |
Cater for personalities |
Cater for ad types |
Write ad |
Allocate search terms for each ad group |
Test, monitor and revise |
Once you have filled this in you can move on to constructing the ads.
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Know your customers |
Segregate customers |
Cater for personalities |
Cater for ad types |
Write ad |
Allocate search terms for each ad group |
Test, monitor and revise |
Know your customers
In this part forget about me, me, me, it’s you, you, you! Or to rephrase correctly it’s less about you, you, you and more about them, them, them! Them being your customers.
Who are the type of people who are willing to buy off you? You really need to understand them. It’s them who pay your bills so had you better get to know them. The way to identify them is to know who would want your product or service. If you’re selling a property refurbishment service then you can be assured that the following traits exist in a potential customer:
- 1.They own their own home.
- 2.They have more than £5,000 in the bank to spend.
- 3.They earn significantly more than the average salary.
- 4.They are over 18.
- 5.They want to enhance their home/assets.
You can also make some wilder judgements like:
- 1.They have a better sense of the value of money than others.
- 2.They might run a business on the side as well as being in employment.
- 3.They are time constrained.
- 4.They lack the know-how regarding the refurbishment business.
This is a small list. The idea is just to sit back and think about who would actually purchase your product or service. Don’t have blind belief that your product is so great that everyone would as the truth is that the majority won’t!
Steve clearly understood the customer for two large pizzas!
Here’s a checklist of prompters that will help you establish some of the traits of your typical customer.
1 Know Your Customers (Worksheet 1) |
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Questions |
Answers |
1. What industries surround your product and who do these industries serve? |
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2. How much does your typical customer earn? |
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3. What job does your typical customer have? |
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4. What age group is he or she in? |
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5. Are they male or female? |
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6. Why have they arrived at your site? |
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7. Are they based in a specific region? |
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8. What else is your customer interested in? |
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9. How intelligent is your customer? |
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10. Are they married? |
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11. Do they drive? |
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12. Do they own a credit card and have good credit? |
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13. Do they own their own home? |
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14. Are they in a professional trade? |
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You can find this worksheet at: www.MassiveAndPassive.co.uk/ worksheets.html.
Based on the answers to these questions and more you should be able to create a pool of traits of your typical customer. I’m sorry if this sounds like a marketing diploma, but the diploma is there for a reason (I’ve never studied for one but they make excellent points!). Once you have a pool of traits we can start building real people out of these and start segregating the customers.
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
Know your customers |
Segregate customers |
Cater for personalities |
Cater for ad types |
Write ad |
Allocate search terms for each ad group |
Test, monitor and revise |
Segregate customers
So we have a whole load of traits - what do we do with them? We can group traits together to build up a typical customer and give them a name. This is probably the most difficult thing to do. It requires really understanding your product and picturing the type of people that would buy your product.
Let’s say I was marketing Chapters 4 and 5 about how to get traffic to your website as an eBook. I would need to know my product inside out and I would need to have an idea about my potential customers. Well I know my product and I think I know my customers. Based on my understanding of my product (being these chapters) I have come up with the following customer types for my product of ‘how to get more traffic to your website’ with their associated motives.
Customer category |
Typical customer |
Motives |
Explanation |
Owner |
Business person |
To increase online profits |
This is the most clued up customer you can have. They understand income and expenditure and how they interact with each other. They will carefully evaluate what you are offering and consider what you’re offering an investment rather than a purchase. |
Part owner |
Partner of business or sales director |
To increase sales |
This person is part of an organisation and is either a partner or director with decision-making powers. They are where they are as they are good at getting sales. This is their main focus. Cost acquisition per customer is something for the accounts department to sort out! |
Part-timer |
Runs business alongside employment |
To reduce costs |
This person works and runs a business on the side. They don’t have the time to really analyse too much as they work. Time is the limited resource with this person. They will look for a cheap way to promote, to preserve the salary from their employment. |
In the industry |
Owns a business in the PPC (pay per click) industry |
To increase knowledge level |
This person works in the PPC industry. It pays to keep ahead of the game. They have a thirst for knowledge about PPC. If they can get just a few tips then it’s worth it as they can transfer to this to their customers. |
It took me a long time to come up with this. About a day’s thinking. But it is important that you do give this part of the exercise some real thought. Use the worksheet opposite to help you.
2 Segregate Customers (Worksheet 2) |
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Customer category |
Typical customer |
Motives |
Explanation |
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You can find this worksheet at: www.MassiveAndPassive.co.uk/worksheets.html.
You need to know who your customer is and why they want to buy your product. So for example if you are a retailer of video games then your customer categories and motives may be as follows.
Customer category |
Typical customer |
Motives |
Explanation |
Adult |
An adult who plays video games |
To get the latest games at the cheapest prices |
An adult will want to get the best price as they are parting with the money. They will also want the latest games to be available and they may not know what game to get until they browse the site. |
Parent |
A parent who has a child who plays video games |
To get the video game of their child’s choice for the cheapest price |
A parent will want to get the best price, for a specific game that a child has chosen. |
Child |
A child who plays video games |
To get the video game and the most freebies the site is offering (and instructing their parent to use their credit card) |
A child may not be so focused on price, but will want to get extras on top of the purchase. |
So you can see that these three customer types are very different with differing motives. We can use these differing motives to construct well targeted ads so we can capture all three types. But before we get to the ads we can further segregate the customer. Read on…
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3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
Know your customers |
Segregate customers |
Cater for personalities |
Cater for ad types |
Write ad |
Allocate search terms for each ad group |
Test, monitor and revise |
