Use Google Adwords for your innovation projects
Most marketing guys already know this, but I recently learned it is not the case for innovation leaders and intrapreneurs. You should start using Google Adwords for your innovation projects – also if they are business-to-business projects.
In a recent network meeting, we got into a discussion on sales and marketing strategies for early stage projects. Two of the participants mentioned they had great success using Google Adwords. They said that:
• it was more effective than hiring a sales assistant
• you got an instant global reach for the niche markets they focused on
• a smart and aggressive Adwords strategy helps you build long-term brand awareness
• they could improve on their landing sites (where the users end when they click on a link) and thus make the return on investment even better
It was interesting to observe the responses around the table. This was new to them and they definitely got some new inspiration for their sales and marketing efforts. Perhaps you should also check out Google Adwords and find ways to learn more about internet advertising strategies for your projects.
Adwords can be great. It’s important to know though that it takes an iterative process of analyzing, testing, and refining your campaigns every couple months to make the most of it. Here are some questions to consider. Are we:
- Perhaps paying too much for certain keywords or phrases?
- Using an appropriate mix of head (common) and tail (specific) terms and phrases?
- Effectively excluding certain terms so to prevent ads from appearing on irrelevant SERPs (search engine results pages), where some terms may have multiple meanings?
- Directing the ad traffic (homepages, site sections, customized landing pages based on user demo/psychographic, and interest levels)?
I haven’t actually gotten into campaign mgmt. for time constraint reasons and a lack of entrepreneurial projects, but the principles apply. I had learned about all this from the book Website Optimization: http://bit.ly/mirgW which gave a balanced look at SEO, Adwords, and many other online marketing considerations. Well worth at least keeping on the shelf as a MBA level book for long term understanding so that one can better communicate with an internal team specialist OR an outside consultant, and inquire on capabilities, project tasks, and performance.
Mario, thanks for your input on this. Other suggestions are highly appreciated
Google is relying more and more on Quality Score; i.e. their algorithm that defines impressions/views of your ad versus what you pay and most importantly, how many “viewer” clickthrough. As a result, you need to build very small Ad Groups (10-12 keywords) that have primary keyword in Ad and on your Landing Page to drive good Quality Score. We also would not turn on any PPC campaign until Google’s free Analytics is installed; you want to track bounce rates (visitors who clicked away), of course lead conversion, keywords clicked on and also run reports. Finally, your post is “spot on” – you want to make sure you have lots of “negative” keywords set up in the campaign “free” as an example.