Setting your goals for Google Adwords, Tricky?

Not at All. Every company has to set its business and marketing goals internally, which are then translated in advertising campaigns. Here are the sorts of questions you’ll want to consider in order to set campaign goals, along with the responses a customer like WorldBites would give.

1. How much do you want to invest in keyword advertising?

We want to spend roughly the same as last year, about $20,000 a month for all campaigns combined.

2. What kind of results would be best: generating leads,1 increasing traffic or conversion2 to sales, lowering your cost-per-acquisition, or something else?

We want people to think of WorldBites first when they’re looking for ethnic food recipes, catering, or ordering ethnic and exotic food online.
• WorldBites@Work wants to raise awareness of its services, since very few people in target cities know about them. Campaign goal: lower the cost-per-acquisition by 30 percent (to under $82 each).
• WorldBites Recipes wants to increase traffic so it can sell more advertising on the site. Campaign goal: 1,000 people download recipes in a designated 14-day period.
• WorldBites.com wants online orders to be more profitable. Campaign goal: 50 new customers per month, and 30 haggis orders for Robert Burns’ birthday.3

3. What would you consider a good ROI (return on investment) on your advertising spend?

WorldBites wants to average 300 percent ROI.
By putting specific numbers to each key objective, you can objectively measure your success, and tailor the advertising to meet or exceed your goals. With these WorldBites goals in hand, the next step is to begin choosing keywords.

1 Leads consist of contact information (email, phone, address) for those people who visit your site based on seeing your ad. Qualified leads are those who are likely to fit the profile of your best customers, or have taken additional action, such as signing up for a newsletter or otherwise asking for followup.

2 Conversion is a measure of people who have taken the next action step you desire - buying, registering, or subscribing, for example.

3 ROI (Return on Investment) The revenue a company generates from an investment such as an advertising program. ROI is based on tangible benefits (bottom-line increases in revenue or decreases in expense).

AdWords Account Basics
• Your Account is divided into separate Campaigns
• Campaigns are divided into Ad Groups
• Ad Groups are comprised of Keywords
• Keywords trigger your ad when a user searches for them on Google or our partner sites; the ad text is called Creative
• All Keywords within an Ad Group must run on the same Creative
• You can run multiple Creatives per Ad Group

More to follow...